Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eric J. Gale was born in Brooklyn, New York on September 20, 1938 and began playing the double bass when he was 12 years old, also playing tenor saxophone, trombone and tuba before settling on the guitar. The basis of his style was formed on the 50s and 60s R&B circuit.
He majored in chemistry at Niagara University but was determined to pursue a musical career, and began contributing to accompaniments for such stars as Maxine Brown, Jackie Wilson, The Flamingoes, The Drifters and Jesse Belvin in the 50s.
Eric began to attract rather quickly the attention of King Curtis and Jimmy Smith, who began recommending him for studio work. His reputation as a first call studio musician in the Sixties became widely recognized and he eventually appeared on an estimated 500 albums.
By the 70s he had teamed up with the AM/CTI label eventually working with Creed Taylor exclusively on CTI and its subsidiary label KUDU as a session musician. He finally got his break as a leader in 1973 with his well received “Forecast” LP that showcased his skill as a front man. He was a co-founder of the mid-70s funk band “Stuff” which garnered wide acclaim.
Among the list of Who’s Who musicians and vocalists he recorded with over the course of his career were David “Fathead Newman, Mongo Santamaria, Bob James, Paul Simon, Lena Horne, Johnny Hodges, Quincy Jones, Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Peter Tosh, Grover Washington Jr., Herbie Mann, Esther Phillips, Joe Cocker, Carly Simon, Van Morrison, Billy Joel and Aretha Franklin, along with a stint in her stage band.
Shortly after recording on Al Jarreau’s Tenderness album, guitarist Eric Gale died of lung cancer on May 25, 1994, at the age of 55 in Baja, California.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Emily Remler was born September 18, 1957 in New York City and began playing the guitar when she was ten. Initially inspired by hard rock and other pop styles, she experienced a musical epiphany during her studies, from 1974 to 1976 while at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. She began listening to Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis and John Coltrane taking up jazz with a ferocious intensity, practicing almost constantly, and never looked back.
After Berklee, she hit the New Orleans blues and jazz clubs working with FourPlay, and Little Queenie and the Percolators before beginning her recording career in 1981. Championed by guitar great Herb Ellis, he referred to her as “the new superstar of guitar”.
Emily recorded on the Concord label, quickly developing a distinctive style with her diverse influences through versions of standard tunes and genres. Her first album as a leader “Firefly” won immediate acclaim and her bop guitar on her follow up “Take Two” was equally well received. Her next two albums, “Transitions” and “Catwalk” traced the emergence of a more individual voice, with many striking original tunes, while her love of Wes Montgomery shone through on the stylish “East to Wes”.
In addition to her recording career as a leader and composer, Emily played in blues groups, on Broadway and with artists as diverse as Larry Coryell, Astrud Gilberto and Rosemary Clooney, produced two popular guitar instruction videos, won the “Guitarist Of The Year” award in Down Beat Jazz Magazine’s international poll, in 1988 she was “Artist in Residence” at Duquesne University and in 1989 received Berklee’s “Distinguished Alumni” award.
Guitarist, leader and composer Emily Remler died of heart failure at the age of 32 at the Connells Point home of musician Ed Gaston, while on tour in Australia on May 4, 1990.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Steve Turre was born September 12, 1948 in Omaha, Nebraska but was raised in San Francisco, California to Mexican American parents. He began studying the violin but switched to trombone by age ten, later studying at the University of North Texas. By 1968 he was playing with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, went on to gig with Carlos Santana and toured with Ray Charles in 1972.
In 1970, encouraged by Kirk, Turre started playing conch and other seashells as musical lip-reed instrument. He has a collection of shells of various sizes, which he has picked up during his travels around the world. Turre leads “Sanctified Shells,” which is a “shell choir” made up of brass players who double on seashell releasing their first album in 1993.
Steve has had a long experience with Latin jazz he has become a skilled cowbell and Venezuelan maracas player. The internationally renowned trombonist, recording artist, arranger, and educator has won the Down Beat Reader’s poll for best trombonist in 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2006. He has been the trombonist for the Saturday Night Live band since 1985 and has taught jazz trombone at the Manhattan School of Music since 1988.
Turre has recorded 18 albums as a leader and has worked as a sideman on another 206 sessions with such luminaries as Monty Alexander, Carl Allen, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Frank Wess, Ray Barretto, Andy Bey, Art Blakey, Lester Bowie, Don Braden, Cecil Bridgewater, McCoy Tyner and Kenny Burrell among others. He continues to perform, record and tour.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Elvin Ray Jones was born on September 9, 1927 in Pontiac, Michigan. By age two he said he knew he held a fascination for drums watching the drummers in circus marching band parades go by his home. Elvin joined his high school’s black marching band, where he developed his rudimentary foundation. Upon discharge from the Army in 1949 he borrowed thirty-five dollars from his sister to buy his first drum set.
In Detroit, Jones played with Billy Mitchell’s house band at Detroit’s Grand River Street Club before moving to New York in 1955 where he worked as a sideman for Charles Mingus, Teddy Charles, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Wardell Gray and Miles Davis. By 1960 he was working with John Coltrane on his seminal work “A Love Supreme” and the relationship lasted until 1966.
Remaining active after leaving Coltrane, Elvin led several bands in the late sixties and seventies that are considered highly influential groups, notably a trio with saxophonist Joe Farrell and bassist Jimmy Garrison. He recorded extensively for Blue Note under his own name during this period with groups featuring prominent as well as up and coming greats like George Coleman, Lee Morgan, Frank Foster, Steve Grossman, Dave Liebman and Pepper Adams to name a few.
Elvin Jones’ sense of timing, polyrhythms, dynamics, timbre, and legato phrasing brought the drums to the foreground and his free-flowing style was a major influence on many leading rock drummers, including Mitch Mitchell and Ginger Baker. He performed and recorded with his own group, the Elvin Jones Jazz Machine, whose line up changed through the years, and recorded with both his brothers Hank and Thad over the course of his career.
He taught regularly, often taking part in clinics, playing in schools and giving free concerts in prisons. His lessons emphasized music history as well as drumming technique. Elvin Jones died of heart failure in Englewood, New Jersey on May 18, 2004.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Theodore Walter “Sonny” Rollins was born on September 7, 1930 in New York City to parents from the U.S. Virgin Islands. The young Theodore started out at eleven years old on the piano, receiving his first alto saxophone at thirteen and by sixteen switched to the tenor. By high school he was playing in a band with other future jazz greats like Jackie McLean and Kenny Drew.
1949 saw Rollins recording with Babs Gonzales, J. J. Johnson and Bud Powell and through 1954 performed with Miles Davis, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk. During this early period in the fifties he was arrested for armed robbery, arrested for violating his parole using heroin and sentenced the Federal Medical Center in Lexington, KY where he kicked his habit, although he was afraid sobriety would impair his musicianship. Little did he know at the time he would soar to greater height.
His early influences Louis Jordan, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young which did so much to inspire the fleet improvisation of be-bop in the 1950s. Rollins drew the two threads together as a fluid post-bop improviser with a sound as strong and resonant as any since Hawkins himself.
Sonny’s widely acclaimed sixth album “Saxophone Colossus” was recorded on June 22, 1956 at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in New Jersey, with Tommy Flanagan, Doug Watkins and Max Roach. This seminal work led to “Tenor Madness” with Garland, Chambers, Jones and Coltrane, and Sonny Rollins volume One & Two.
By 1959, Rollins was frustrated with what he perceived as his own musical limitations and took the first – and most famous – of his musical sabbaticals. To spare a neighboring expectant mother the sound of his practice routine, Rollins ventured to the Williamsburg Bridge to practice. Upon his return to the jazz scene in 1962 he named his “comeback” album “The Bridge” at the start of a contract with RCA Records, recorded with a quartet featuring guitarist Jim Hall, drummer Ben Riley and bassist Bob Cranshaw. This became one of Rollins’ best-selling records.
Over a very lengthy career spanning more than six decades, the Grammy winning saxophonist, Sonny Rollins, has recorded some 50 albums as a leader and two dozen albums as a sideman. He continues to record, perform and tour today.
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