Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Olu Dara was born Charles Jones III on January 12, 1941 in Natchez, Mississippi. After moving to New York City In 1963, he changed his name to Olu Dara, which means “God Is Good” in the Yoruba language. In the Seventies and Eighties, he played alongside David Murray, Henry Threadgill, Hamiet Bluiett, Don Pullen, Charles Brackeen, James Blood Ulmer, and Cassandra Wilson. He formed two bands, the Okra Orchestra and the Natchezsippi Dance Band.
His first album, In the World: From Natchez to New York, released in 1998, revealed another aspect of his musical personality: the leader and singer of a band immersed in African-American tradition, playing an eclectic mix of blues, jazz, and storytelling, with tinges of funk, African popular music, and reggae. His second album Neighborhoods, with guest appearances by Dr. John and Cassandra Wilson, followed in a similar vein.
Dara played on the 1994 album Illmatic, on the song Dance, and he sang on the 2004 song Bridging the Gap, all by his son, rapper Nas. Besides recording two albums as a leader, cornetist, guitarist and singer Olu Dara has recorded fifty-four as a sideman with the likes of Doug Carn, Oliver Lake, Julius Hemphill, Nona Hendryx, The Be Good Tanyas, Rickie Lee Jones, Terumasa Hino, Jack McDuff, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and James Newton, among others.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Wilton “Bogey” Gaynair was born on January 11, 1927 in Kingston, Jamaica, Gaynair was raised at Kingston’s Alpha Boys School, where fellow Jamaican musicians Joe Harriott, Harold McNair and Don Drummond were also pupils of a similar age.
Beginning his professional career playing in Kingston’s clubs backing such performers as George Shearing and Carmen McRae, he traveled to Europe in 1955, basing himself in Germany because of the plentiful live work that was offered. Bogey recorded only three times as a bandleader and two of those recordings came during visits to England, 1959’s Blue Bogey and Africa Calling in 1960, on Tempo Records but the latter went unreleased until 2005 due to the label’s demise.
Gaynair returned to Germany shortly after recording these sessions where he remained based for the rest of his life. He concentrated on live performance with such bands as the Kurt Edelhagen Radio Orchestra and played at the opening ceremony of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. He was involved in extensive session work and was a guest artist on Ali Haurand’s Third Eye in 1977 but only recorded one more jazz album under his own name, Alpharian 1982. Among the numerous artists he performed with included Gil Evans, Freddie Hubbard, Shirley Bassey, Manhattan Transfer, Horace Parlan, Bob Brookmeyer, and Mel Lewis.
In September 1983, he suffered a stroke during a concert, and from then until his death, he was unable to play the instrument. Tenor saxophonist Wilton Bogey Gaynair passed away on February 13, 1995 in Cologne, Germany, aged 68.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Allen Eager was born in New York City on January 10, 1927 and grew up in the Bronx. He could read at the age of three, learned to drive at the age of 9 with the help of his mother after she caught him driving a garbage truck near the hotels that his parents owned in the Catskill Mountains. He took clarinet lessons with David Weber of the New York Philharmonic at the age of 13. He briefly played with Woody Herman at the age of 15, and at the same age, he took heroin for the first time.
By sixteen he was playing in Bobby Sherwood band, then went on to play with Sonny Dunham, Shorty Sherock, and Hal McIntyre. Eager was then with Herman again for a year in 1943, Tommy Dorsey, and Johnny Bothwell in 1945. After World War II he became a regular on the 52nd Street in New York City leading his own ensemble from 1945–47. His recording debut as a leader was for Savoy Records in 1946 with pianist Ed Finckel, bassist Bob Carter, and drummer Max Roach.
Influenced by Lester Young, his playing style on tenor saxophone was, along with contemporary saxophonists Zoot Sims, Stan Getz, Al Cohn and others. Adopting the musical forms pioneered in bebop, he also adopted the drug dependency of a lot of the bebop players in the 1940s. Allen was a member of several bands led by black musicians including Coleman Hawkins, Fats Navarro, Tadd Dameron and Charlie Parker and recorded with trumpeter Red Rodney for Keynote Records in 1947.
He would go on to play with Gerry Mulligan, Terry Gibbs in 1952, and shortly after with Buddy Rich. He then briefly abandoned music and drugs, becoming a ski and horse riding instructor. In the Fifties, he returned to again led his own ensemble as a saxophonist, frequently playing with Howard McGhee. He lived in Paris for a couple of years, then returned to the U.S. in 1957, Eager recorded The Gerry Mulligan Songbook under Mulligan’s leadership, which was his last recording for 25 years.
After this, he essentially retired from jazz, pursuing skiing, competitive auto racing, and LSD experiments with Timothy Leary. In the late Sixties he settled in Florida with his family, played with Frank Zappa in the 1970s, and in 1982 Eager made a comeback with an album for Uptown Records, entitled Renaissance. He toured with Dizzy Gillespie in 1983, and with Chet Baker. Tenor and alto saxophonist Allen Eager passed away from liver cancer on April 13, 2003 in Daytona Beach, Florida.
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Daily Dose OF Jazz…
Carson Raymond Smith was born on January 9, 1931 in San Francisco, California and his older brother, Putter, was also a notable bassist & composer. His early work was in West Coast jazz, playing with Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Russ Freeman, and Chico Hamilton and recorded with Clifford Brown, Dick Twardzik, and Billie Holiday at Carnegie Hall through the Fifties.
In 1959, he toured with Stan Kenton, then in 1960 recorded with Charlie Barnet. 1962 saw Carson moving to Los Angeles, California and playing with Charlie Teagarden and Lionel Hampton. He toured Japan with Georgie Auld in 1964.
Later in the 1960s, he played with Buddy Rich, Arno Marsh, and Carl Fontana. He held a longtime residency at the Four Queens Hotel in Las Vegas, where he accompanied visiting musicians such as Art Farmer, Lew Tabackin, Zoot Sims, and Chet Baker. Double-bassist Carson Smith passed away on November 2, 1997, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe Harris was born on December 23, 1926 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, growing up in the Manchester neighborhood. He learned to play the drums by taking lessons at an early age from Pittsburgh’s Bill Hammond, who taught his the rudiments of drumming. His musical education included symphonic percussion such as tympani and xylophone and by age 18 he was playing in big bands and touring the country.
As a young man in 1946 he moved to New York City, where he played with Dizzy Gillespie over the next two years, helped pioneer Latin jazz, and anchored the house band at the famed Apollo Theater. Balancing jazz with the heavier R&B sounds of tenor saxophonist Arnett Cobb in the late ’40s, Harris gigged with singer Billy Eckstine in 1950, and worked with Erroll Garner, Jimmy Heath, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, Billie Holiday and James Moody.
Following a decade as one of the early bebop drummers, Joe took off for Sweden with his first tour in the summer of 1956 with trumpeter Rolf Ericson. His subsequent expatriate status put him in the company of other transplanted instrumentalists including trumpeter Benny Bailey, with whom he recorded from 1957 – 59, and pianist Freddie Redd. He taught himself to speak Swedish fluently and learned a fair amount of German and Japanese, eventually moved to Sweden, married and had a daughter before living in Germany and Japan for a time.
Harris eventually returned to the States for TV work in Los Angeles, California among other things. The drummer would later study music in the Far East, Egypt, Africa and Latin America prior to settling back in his native Manchester, scaling back his performance schedule with local musicians. He continued to practice daily, mentor students and teaching jazz history and drums for years at the University of Pittsburgh until his death on January 27, 2016 at age 89.
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