Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harold “Money” Johnson was born in Tyler, Texas on February 23, 1918 and didn’t start playing trumpet until he was fifteen. Moving to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1936, he jammed with Charlie Christian and Henry Bridges before joining Nat Towles’s band.
He played with Horace Henderson and Bob Dorsey before returning to Towles’s band in 1944 in Chicago, Illinois. He also played with Count Basie, Cootie Williams, Lucky Millinder, and Bull Moose Jackson during the decade.
In the 1950s Money’s associations included Louis Jordan, Lucky Thompson, Sy Oliver, Buddy Johnson, Cozy Cole, Mercer Ellington, Little Esther, and Panama Francis.
The Sixties saw Johnson played in the house band at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and recorded with King Curtis in 1962. He toured the USSR with Earl Hines in 1966. From 1968 he played in the Duke Ellington Orchestra and also worked again with Hines and Oliver.
He recorded with Buck Clayton, Pearl Bailey, Red Prysock, Barbara Lews, Jack McDuff, Houston Person, and Jesse Stone. Trumpeter Money Johnson, whose last performance was on the night before, transitioned from a heart attack on March 28, 1978 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Graham Collier OBE was born on February 21, 1937 in Tynemouth, Northumberland, England. After leaving school he joined the British Army as a musician, spending three years in Hong Kong, China. He subsequently won a Down Beat magazine scholarship to the Berklee School of Music, in Boston, Massachusetts studying with Herb Pomeroy.
After graduating in 1963 he returned to Britain and founded the first version of an ensemble devoted to his own compositions, Graham Collier Music, which included Kenny Wheeler, Harry Beckett and John Surman. Later configurations included Karl Jenkins, Mike Gibbs, Art Themen and many other notable musicians.
As the first recipient of an Arts Council bursary for jazz, Graham was commissioned by festivals, groups and broadcasters across Europe, North America, Australia and the Far East. He recorded nineteen albums, worked on stage plays, musicals, documentary and fiction film, and radio drama productions.
Collier was an author and educator, writing seven books on jazz, giving lectures and workshops around the world. He launched the jazz degree course at London’s Royal Academy of Music and was its artistic director until he resigned in 1999, so he could concentrate on his own music.
Bassist, composer and bandleader Graham Collier, who along with a group of jazz educators formed the International Association of Schools of Jazz, transitioned from heart failure on September 9, 2011.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edward Valentine Bonnemère was born on February 15, 1921 in Harlem, New York and during his school days was a church pianist. After military service in World War II he played with Claude Hopkins, and received his master’s degree from New York University.
In 1953 Eddie led a combo with Ray Barretto in the Savoy Ballroom. In 1955, he had a Mambo band, then in 1956 moved to Detroit, Michigan and became part of the house band at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge. He released a 10-inch album Ti-Pi-Tin / Five O’Clock Whistle on the Royal Roost label. He followed in 1959 with his trio recording Piano Bon-Bons and in 1960 The Sound of Memory. By 1964, with the participation of Kenny Burrell, he released his Jazz Orient-ed album on Prestige Records.
The mid-1960s, Bonnemère was one of the protagonists of an Africanization of the Catholic Mass spearheaded by Fr Clarence Rivers, as part of the Black Catholic Movement. Influenced by Mary Lou Williams he composed the Missa Hodierna for jazz ensemble and choir, which was first presented in 1966 during a service in Harlem’s St. Charles Borromeo Church. It was the first Jazz Mass ever in the United States. This mass was also performed in the Town Hall together with Howard McGhee’s instrumental composition Bless You.
In later years he worked as a church musician and composed the Missa Laetare and other liturgical works. He was also musical director of the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle in Manhattan, New York whose choir recorded his Mass for Every Season.
Pianist and composer Eddie Bonnemère transitioned on March 19, 1996 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Georg Riedel was born January 8, 1934 in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia, and in 1938, when he was four years old, the family fled to Sweden following the German annexation of the Sudetenland. He attended school in Stockholm, Sweden and at the Adolf Fredrik’s Music School.
The best known recording featuring Riedel is probably Jan Johansson’s Jazz på svenska (Jazz in Swedish), a minimalist-jazz compilation of folk songs recorded between 1962–1963. He recorded with other leading Swedish musicians including trumpeter Jan Allan and Arne Domnérus.
As a composer, George worked almost exclusively writing music for Astrid Lindgren movies, including the main theme from the Emil i Lönneberga (Emil of Maple Hills) movies. He also composed the music for several films by Arne Mattsson in the 1960s as well as for film adaptations of novels by Stig Dagerman.
Double bassist and composer George Riedel, played on Jazz at the Pawnshop in 1977, at 87 continues his involvement with jazz.
Bestow upon an inquiring mind a dose of a Karlovy Vary double bassist to motivate the perusal of the genius of jazz musicians worldwide whose gifts contribute to the canon…
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
David Lee, Jr. born January 4, 1941 in New Orleans, Louisiana played professionally from his early teens. While serving in the U. S. Army, he was a member in several bands. In 1969, he co-founded the New Orleans Jazz Workshop.
In 1969 Dizzy Gillespie brought Lee into his band and soon after he was working with Roy Ayers in 1971 and Sonny Rollins for three years beginning in 1972. The Rollins recordings were hard swinging but included the plethora of tempos of the Seventies.
Forming a quartet but never recording as a leader, he continued to work as a sideman. On August 4, 2021, drummer and composer David Lee, who recorded Yoshiaki Masuo, Charlie Rouse, Lonnie Liston Smith and Richard Wyands among others, transitioned at 80 years of age.
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