Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joshua Redman was born February 1, 1969 in Berkeley, California to tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman and dancer Renee Shedroff. As a child he was exposed to various kinds of music at the Center for World Music in Berkeley and received early lessons in music and improvisation. Upon graduating from high school he matriculated through Harvard graduating summa cum laude. He then turned down an opportunity to study law at Yale to become a professional musician.
His career kicked into high gear after winning the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition in 1991 and began focusing on developing his style beginning as a sideman alongside Javon Jackson on Elvin Jones’ Youngblood recording. He followed up with an appearance on his father’s 1992 album Choices. After a short apprenticeship period Redman began recording for Warner Brothers, first with his self-titled project and then Wish with Pat Metheny, Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins.
With successive albums from ’93 to ’96, Joshua briefly joined Chick Corea, recording and touring. From 1998 – 2002 he returned to recording as a leader bringing the world such albums as Beyond, Passage of Time and Elastic, the later bringing a more adventurous and playful Redman to the fore with the later including pianist/organist Sam Yahel and drummer Brian Blade.
Redman became the artistic director for San Francisco’s SF Jazz Collective from 2004-2007, made several television appearances including Reading Rainbow with Levar Burton and performed on the soundtrack for the Mia Farrow Story. On his album, Back East Redman paid tribute to Sonny Rollins 1957 album Way Out West, teaming up with musicians including Brian Blade, Christian McBride, Al Jackson, Joe Lovano, and his late father.
Joshua Redman is an inaugural member of the Independent Music Awards judging panel to support independent arts and continues to compose, tour and record.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tubby Hayes was born Edward Brian Hayes on January 30, 1935 in London and started playing the violin at the age of 8, changed to the tenor at twelve and started playing professionally at fifteen. His early influences were Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz. In 1951 he joined Kenny Baker and playing in the big bands of Ambrose, Vic Lewis and Jack Parnell.
Tubby led his own octet in 1956 and encourage by Victor Feldman he started playing the vibes in December of that year. Following his octet, Tubby co-led the Jazz Couriers with Ronnie Scott from ’57 to ’59 and toured Germany with Kurt Edelhagen. His international reputation grew rapidly and he was the first British contemporary to appear regularly in the U.S. at the Blue Note, the Boston Jazz Workshop and Shelly Manne’s Manne-Hole.
In 60’s London he led his own big bands, hosted his own TV show, sat in with Duke Ellington’s orchestra, and with Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck and others. Tubby appeared in All Night Long, and with his own quintet in The Beauty Jungle and House of Horrors.
Hayes was a virtuoso musician on tenor and flute, an excellent vibist, and a composer/arranger of rare talent. He toured extensively through Europe playing the major festivals, such as Antibes, Lugano, Vienna and Berlin. He was one of the few Brits that recorded as a leader of all-American groups with Clark Terry, Roland Kirk and James Moody.
Plagued with heart trouble he underwent open-heart surgery in the late Sixties, putting him out of action until 1971. Working again was brief and while undergoing a second heart operation, Tubby Hayes died on June 8, 1973 in Hammersmith, London, England. He was just 38 years old.
More Posts: flute,saxophone,vibraphone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott was born Ronnie Schatt on the east side of London on January 28, 1927. He grew up in a single parent household after his father, dance band saxophonist Jock Scott separated from his mother shortly after his birth. His introduction to music was on a cornet he purchased from a local junk shop, then moved on to the soprano saxophone and finally settling into the tenor by his teens. Ronnie first starting playing in public performing with aspiring drummer Tony Crombie and was soon playing an occasional professional gig. After a stint with bandleader Carlo Krahmer and touring with trumpeter Johnny Claes, Ronnie joined the popular big band of Ted Heath in 1946.
However, changing economics made big bands increasingly unfeasible, and as bebop crossed the pond to the U.K., he and Crombie traveled to New York City to explore the source firsthand. Scott regularly returned to New York after signing on to play the Queen Mary’s transatlantic voyages alongside alto saxophonist Johnny Dankworth. Despite his travels Scott remained a cornerstone of the growing London bop scene, and in late 1948 he co-founded Club Eleven, the first U.K. club devoted to modern jazz. During this time he developed the lyrical but harmonically complex style that would remain the hallmark of his career.
In 1953 Scott formed a nine-piece group that made its public debut in conjunction with a London appearance by Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic touring revue and working from arrangements by trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar, the Scott band’s debut proved to be a landmark moment in the history of British jazz heralding the true starting point of the postwar era. Yet in 1955, assembling a full-size big band proved creatively and commercially disastrous but left him a household name throughout Britain. In ‘57 he co-founded the Jazz Couriers with fellow tenor saxophonist Tubby Hayes, scaling to even greater heights of fame.
1959 saw Scott looking to create a jazz club emulating those of New York’s famed 52nd Street and on October 31st, with borrowed money, he opened Ronnie Scott’s Club at 39 Gerrald Street. Over the next two years as popularity grew, Scott hosted the likes of Dexter Gordon, Roland Kirk, Stan Getz, Sonny Stitt, Ben Webster and Sonny Rollins. By 1965 he moved the club to it’s present location on Frith Street, becoming the epicenter of London’s jazz community and bringing to the stage everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Albert Ayler over the next decade.
At the time of his death on December 23, 1996, Ronnie Scott’s Club was perhaps the most famous jazz venue in all of Europe.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Marty Paich was born Martin Louis Paich on January 23, 1925 in Oakland, California. He started his music career taking lessons on the accordion followed by the piano and by 10 he formed his first of several bands and by 12 was playing regularly at weddings and similar social events. He attended a series of professional schools, served in the Army Air Corps during WWII leading various bands and orchestras until his discharge. Marty went back to school studying composition and graduating magnum cum laude in 1951 from the Los Angeles Conservatory.
Paich had an extraordinary ear for style and an eclectic taste. His early work included arranging and playing the score for Disney’s Lady and The Tramp, accompanist for Peggy Lee, playing piano for Shorty Roger’s Giants and touring with Dorothy Dandridge.
During the 1950s, Paich was active in West Coast jazz performance while also working intensively in the studios. He not only played on, but arranged and produced, numerous West Coast jazz recordings, including albums by Ray Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, Terry Gibbs, Shelly Manne, Anita O’Day, Dave Pell, Buddy Rich but it was his association with Mel Torme and their work with the Marty Paich Dektette, albeit difficult at times, was what many jazz critics consider to be the high point of their respective careers.
The 60’s moved him to the studios and television working for Andy Williams, Al Hirt, Dinah Shore, Glen Campbell, Sonny & Cher, the Smothers Brothers and winning an Emmy for Ironside.
In a career which spanned half a century, he worked as a pianist, composer, arranger, producer, music director and conductor for such artists as Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Sarah Vaughan, Stan Kenton, Jack Jones, Art Pepper, Stan Getz, Barbra Streisand, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Linda Ronstadt, and Michael Jackson and a hundred others. Marty Paich passed away on August 12, 1995, aged 70 from colon cancer, at his home in Santa Ynez, California.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
J. J. Johnson was born James Louis Johnson in Indianapolis, Indiana on January 22, 1924. He started studying piano at the age of 9 and at fourteen decided to play the trombone. By 1941 he began his professional career with Clarence Love and followed by Snookie Russell in ’42, then playing through the forties with the Benny Carter Orchestra, participating in the first Jazz At The Philharmonic organized by Norman Granz in Los Angeles.
He would tour and record with the Count Basie band, Illinois Jacquet and then began leading and recording small groups featuring Max Roach, Sonny Stitt and Bud Powell. By 1951 he took a job as a blueprint inspector but never abandoned his love for music as documented by his compositions Enigma and Kelo recorded by Miles Davis, garnering an invitation to play on the 1954 classic Davis Blue Note session, Walkin’.
Johnson went on to lead groups with Kai Winding, arranging for and backing Sarah Vaughan, following with a successful solo career touring the U.S., the U.K. and Scandinavia. He recorded a wide range of albums with notables as Bobby Jaspar, Clifford Jordan, Freddie Hubbard, Tommy Flanagan, Cedar Walton, Andre Previn and the list goes on and on.
In 1958-59 Johnson was one of three plaintiffs in a court case that hastened the abolition of the cabaret card system. By the sixties he was concentrating more on composition, writing a number of large-scale works that incorporated elements of both classical and jazz.
The 70’s saw J.J. in Hollywood scoring for film and television – Across 110th Street, Starsky & Hutch, and the Six Million Dollar Man but racism and other prejudices kept a black jazz musician from securing the amount and quality of work he was qualified to perform. However, his compositions including “Wee Dot”, “Lament” and “Enigma” have become jazz standards.
The trombonist, composer and arranger also authored a book of original exercises and etudes and a biography titled “The Musical World Of J.J. Johnson. He was voted into the Down Beat Hall of Fame in 1995. Diagnosed with prostate cancer, on February 4, 2001, he committed suicide by shooting himself.