Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe Mooney was born in Paterson, New Jersey on March 14, 1911 and went blind when he was around 10 years of age. His first job, at age 12, was playing the piano for requests called in to a local radio station. He and his brother, Dan, played together on radio broadcasts in the late 1920s, and recorded between 1929 and 1931 as the Sunshine Boys and the Melotone Boys, both sang while Joe accompanied on piano. They continued performing together on WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio until 1936, after which time Dan Mooney left the music industry.
In 1937, he began working as a pianist and arranger for Frank Dailey, a role he reprised with Buddy Rogers in 1938. Through the early 1940s, Joe arranged for Paul Whiteman, Vincent Lopez, Larry Clinton, Les Brown, and The Modernaires. Putting together his own quartet in 1943, he sang and played the accordion with accompaniment on guitar, bass, and clarinet.
In the last half of the 1940s his group experienced considerable success in the United States. By 1946, a newspaper columnist wrote that Mooney’s music “has the most cynical hot jazz critics describing it in joyous terms, such as exciting, new, the best thing since Ellington, and as new to jazz as the first Dixieland jazz band was when it first arrived”. As for Mooney himself, the columnist wrote that he “played in virtuoso fashion … a fellow who knows not only his instrument, but jazz music, both to just about the ultimate degree.”
In the 1950s, Mooney sang with the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra and played with Johnny Smith in 1953. After moving to Florida in 1954 he concentrated more on the organ and recorded in 1956. 1963 saw a group of friends form a company to produce a record, Joe Mooney and His Friends. He recorded again in the middle Sixties. Accordionist, organist, and vocalist Joe Mooney passed away after a stroke at age 64, on May 12, 1975, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eddie de Haas was born Edgar O. de Haas of Dutch descent on February 21, 1930 in Bandung, Java. His father was a flutist and played the ukulele and as a teenager, he became enthusiastic about jazz at the age of ten. A move from Java to the Netherlands in 1946 and it was while there he started playing bass in 1951.
He first accompanied Pia Beck, then Don Byas. He was on a European tour with Wally Bishop in 1952/53, accompanied Bill Coleman, 1954/55 Martial Solal, Zoot Sims/Henri Renaud, Dave Amram/Bobby Jaspar and Chet Baker on his European tours. In 1956 he played with Vera Auer and had his own trio. In 1957 he went to the United States.
In the United States, he initially played with Terry Gibbs, Miles Davis, Bernard Peiffer, Sal Salvador, Benny Goodman, Charlie Mariano/ Toshiko Akiyoshi, Blossom Dearie, Charlie Singleton, Chris Connor, Kenny Burrell, Roy Haynes, and Kai Winding, among others.
In 1962 he had his own quartet with Bobby Jaspar. In 1964/65 he was with Gene Krupa and in 1966/67 in Germany. He also spent a long time in France and other European countries, was in the backing band of Johnny Mathis in the early 1960s and accompanied Peter, Paul & Mary in the 1960s. 1964/65 worked in Gene Krupa’s big band and with Al Haig. Afterward, he worked as a freelance musician.
Since the 1960s he has been married to singer Geraldine Bey, who was then a member of the vocal group Andy & the Bey Sisters around her brother Andy Bey. 1968 saw him move to Chicago with his wife and later he regularly accompanied musicians in Chicago in the showcase. While living there he played with Von Freeman, with whom he also recorded, and Jodie Christian. In 1975 he performed at the Chicago Jazz Festival.
He is also on albums by Mezz Mezzrow, Dave Amram, Bob Wilber, Von Freeman, Chet Baker, Roy Haynes, Sonny Stitt, Louis Smith, Sir Charles Thompson and to hear Slide Hampton.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Howard Riley was born on John Howard Riley on February 16, 1943 in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England. He began learning the piano at the age of six and started playing jazz as early as the age of 13. He studied at the University of Wales from 1961 to 1966, then Indiana University, and finishing up at York University in 1970). While studying he played jazz professionally, with Evan Parker (1966) and then with his own trio (1967–76), with Barry Guy on bass and Alan Jackson, Jon Hiseman, and Tony Oxley for periods on drums.
He worked with John McLaughlin in the late Sixties, the London Jazz Composers Orchestra and Oxley’s ensemble through the Seventies to 1981. He and Guy worked in a trio with Phil Wachsmann from 1976 well into the 1980s and played solo piano throughout North America and Europe. He played in a quartet, with Guy, Trevor Watts, and John Stevens, did duo work with Keith Tippett, with Jaki Byard, and with Elton Dean. From 1985 he worked in a trio with Jeff Clyne and Tony Levin.
Pianist and composer Howard Riley who worked in jazz and experimental music idioms continues to teach at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Goldsmiths, University of London, where he has taught since the 1970s.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Nathan Tate Davis was born on February 15, 1937 in Kansas City, Kansas and eventually would travel extensively around Europe after World War II. He moved to Paris in 1962 but would return to the U.S. by 1969, holding a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University and was a professor of music and director of jazz studies at the University of Pittsburgh, an academic program that he helped initiate.
He was the founder and director of the University of Pittsburgh Annual Jazz Seminar and Concert, the first academic jazz event of its kind in the United States. He also helped to found the university’s William Robinson Recording Studio as well as establish the International Academy of Jazz Hall of Fame located in the school’s William Pitt Union and the University of Pittsburgh-Sonny Rollins International Jazz Archives.
One of Davis’ best known musical associations was heading the Paris Reunion Band from 1985 to1989, which at different times included Nat Adderley, Kenny Drew, Johnny Griffin, Slide Hampton, Joe Henderson, Idris Muhammad, Dizzy Reece, Woody Shaw, and Jimmy Woode. He also toured and recorded with the post-bop ensemble leading Roots which he formed in 1991. He composed various pieces, including a 2004 opera entitled Just Above My Head.
He retired as director of the Jazz Studies Program at Pitt in 2013. Davis also served as the editor of the International Jazz Archives Journal. Over the course of his career, he recorded eighteen albums as a leader.
Multi-instrumentalist Nathan Davis, who played the tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, and flute, and was awarded the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation’s BNY Mellon Jazz Living Legacy Award at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, passed away in Palm Beach, Florida on April 8, 2018 at the age of 81.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Walter “Baby Sweets” Perkins was born on February 10, 1932 in Chicago, Illinois. Starting out in his hometown, he began his professional career drumming with Ahmad Jamal in 1956–57. He recorded as a leader for Argo Records in 1957 under the name MJT+3 with trumpeter Paul Serrano, Nicky Hill on tenor saxophone, Muhal Richard Abrams on piano, and bassist Bob Cranshaw.
1959 witnessed the regrouping under the same name with Willie Thomas on trumpet, Frank Strozier on alto saxophone, pianist Harold Mabern, and Cranshaw on bass. They recorded four albums for Vee-Jay in 1959 and 1960 and played in Chicago until 1962 when Walter made his move to New York City.
Perkins played with Sonny Rollins in 1962 and accompanied Carmen McRae in 1962–63. By 1964 he was playing with Art Farmer and Teddy Wilson, however, following this he recorded with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, George Shearing, Gene Ammons, Charles Mingus, Billy Taylor, Etta James, J.J. Johnson, Johnny Coles, Booker Ervin, Jaki Byard, Lucky Thompson, Pat Martino, Sonny Stitt, Sonny Criss, Ray Bryant, Duke Pearson, Bobby Timmons, and Charles Earland. And that’s the shortlist as he recorded some 44 albums throughout his career as a sideman.
Drummer Walter Perkins passed away on February 14, 2004 in Queens, New York.
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