Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ali Jackson Jr. was born on April 3, 1976 in Detroit, Michigan. His mother, a classical pianist, taught him piano and how to read music at age 4, his father, a professional bass player, taught him music theory and gave him drums lesson from rudiment books.
Attending Detroit’s prestigious Cass Technical High School, he went on to matriculate through The New School For Jazz and Contemporary Music and privately studying with Elvin Jones and Max Roach.
Ali has recorded two albums as a leader and as a sideman has performed and recorded with musicians including with Joshua Redman, Anat Cohen, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Wynton Marsalis, Jacky Terrasson, Craig Handy, James Carter, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Aretha Franklin, George Benson, Harry Connick Jr., KRS-1, Marcus Roberts, Cyrus Chestnut, Joshua Redman, Diana Krall and Eric Reed.
Ali Jackson is currently the drummer with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, performs with the Wynton Marsalis Quintet, Horns in the Hood, and leads the Ali Jackson Quartet. He is also the voice of “Duck Ellington,” a character in the Penguin book series Baby Loves Jazz and has hosted “Jammin’ with Jackson,” a series for young musicians at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Dizzy Club Coca-Cola.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Terence Oliver Blanchard was born March 13, 1962 in New Orleans, Louisiana and began playing piano at the age of five and then the trumpet at age eight. He played trumpet recreationally alongside childhood friend Wynton Marsalis in summer music camps but showed no real proficiency on the instrument. While in high school, he began studying at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and then studied at Rutgers, toured with Lionel Hampton, joined Art Blakey and became the Messenger’s music director.
While playing with Blakey, Blanchard rose to prominence as a key figure in the 1980s Jazz Resurgence as a co-leader of a quintet with saxophonist Donald Harrison and pianist Mulgrew Miller, The Harrison/Blanchard group recorded five albums from 1984-1988 until Blanchard left to pursue a solo career in 1990 and recorded his self-titled debut for Columbia Records.
He scored and performed on every Spike Lee movie soundtracks, including his 4-hour HBO Hurricane Katrina documentary “When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts” and the soundtrack for “Red Tails”. Composing for other directors, with over forty scores to his credit Blanchard is the most prolific jazz musician to ever compose for movies.
Terence has recorded eighteen albums, been nominated for twelve times and won five Grammy Awards, has won Soul Train Music Award, an Emmy and Golden Globe among others. On the short list his collaborations include Herbie Hancock, Diana Krall, Gary Bartz, Jane Monheit, Dianne Reeves, Christian McBride, Lewis Nash and McCoy Tyner.
Composer, educator and trumpeter Terence Blanchard is the artistic director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at the University of Southern California. All the while, he has remained true to his jazz roots as a trumpeter and bandleader on the performance circuit.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Wilbur Little was born on March 5, 1928 in Parmele, North Carolina and originally played piano but switched to bass after his military service. Steeped in the hard bop and post bop idioms, he moved to Washington, D.C. in 1949 and played with Sir Charles Thompson, Leo Parker, Margie Day and others. Little was also a member of a trio that supporting visiting jazz musicians like Miles Davis and John Coltrane.
Little’s wider recognition came when he joined J.J. Johnson’s trio from 1955 to 1958 and led to copious freelancing as a sideman with the Tommy Flanagan Trio, Sonny Stitt, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Kenny Burrell, And Clark Terry.
Never leading his own sessions, Wilbur recorded albums with Elvin Jones, Archie Shepp, Bobby Jaspar, Tommy Flanagan, Randy Weston, Dave McKenna, Horace Parlan and Al Haig. In his latter years he worked with Charles Tolliver, Clifford Jordan and Barry Harris.
By 1976 he was in Japan with Duke Jordan, then moved to the Netherlands in 1977. He lived there for the rest of his life until his passing on May 4, 1987 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bheki Mseleku was born Bhekumuzi Hyacinth Mseleku on March 3, 1955 in South Africa. Entirely self-taught, though his father was a musician and teacher, his religious belief denied musical access to his children. Growing up in Apartheid he was subjected to restricted healthcare and lost the upper joints of two fingers in a go-karting accident.
His musical career began in Johannesburg in 1975 as an electric organ player for the R&B band Spirits Rejoice. After performing at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1977, Mseleku settled in Botswana for a time, then moved to London in the late 1970s. He attempted to settle into the jazz scene in Stockholm from 1980 to 1983, but returned to London. It was not until 1987 that Bheki made his debut at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, playing piano unaccompanied by other musicians, with a saxophone in his lap that a wider audience became familiar.
With the release and notoriety of his 1991 debut album Celebration, and subsequent nomination for a Mercury Music Prize that Verve Records signed him for several albums. The first of these featured Joe Henderson, Abbey Lincoln, and Elvin Jones.
Twelve years and five albums later Bheki recorded his final session “Home at Last” in 2003, having spent most of his last years in South Africa. He never found an outlet for his skills and established a new band in London that was very well received by fans. Over the course of his life Bheki Mseleku lived with diabetes and on September 9, 2008 the pianist, saxophonist, guitarist, composer and arranger passed away in his London flat at age 53.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Orrin Keepnews born March 2, 1923 in Bronx borough of New York City and graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English in 1943. And was subsequently involved in bombing raids over Japan in the final months of World War II before returning for graduate studies at Columbia in 1946.
While working as an editor for the book publishers Simon & Schuster he moonlighted as editor of The Record Changer magazine in 1948 and by 1952 along with the magazine’s owner Bill Grauer, produced a series of reissues on RCA Victor’s Label “X”. The following year they founded Riverside Records, which was originally devoted to reissue projects in the traditional and swing jazz idioms.
Signing pianist Randy Weston was the label’s first modern jazz artist, who helped them to begin paying attention to the current jazz scene. Their most significant early move came in 1955, when they were made aware of the availability of Thelonious Monk, who was leaving Prestige and from this point, the label concentrated on the burgeoning modern jazz scene.
Keepnews produced significant young artists as Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, Wes Montgomery, Johnny Griffin, Jimmy Heath and was soon rivaling Blue Note and Prestige as a New York independent jazz label. In 1961, Keepnews produced what many regard as one of the greatest live jazz recordings of all time with the Bill Evans Trio, Sunday At The Village Vanguard and Waltz For Debby. However, in 1963 Grauer died of a heart attack and a year later the company was bankrupt, closing the Riverside doors. Not to be trumped, Keepnews founded Milestone Records in ’66 and released albums by McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Lee Konitz and Gary Bartz. 1972 saw him in San Francisco as jazz A&R for Fantasy Records who bought both Riverside and Milestone masters.
Returning to freelancing he opened the doors of Landmark Records in 1985 that eventually passed to Muse Records in 1993. Over the course of his career he has won several Grammy Awards, including Best Album Notes and Best Historical Album; was given the Trustees Award for Lifetime Achievement, received an NEA Jazz Masters Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 in the field of jazz.
He continued to be responsible for extensive reissue compilations, including the Duke Ellington 24CD RCA Centennial set in 1999 and Riverside’s Keepnews Editions series. Orrin Keepnews, writer and record producer, passed away on March 1, 2015 in El Cerrito, California.
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