Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Talmadge (Tab) Smith was born in Kinston, North Carolina on January 11, 1909. He joined his first professional band, the Carolina Stompers, in 1929 and in the 1930s and 1940s he spent several years in the bands of Lucky Millinder and Count Basie as well as spending long periods freelancing both as a player and as an arranger. After WWII he led his own groups, which concentrated on rhythm and blues as jazz turned from swing to bop.
His biggest R & B hit was “Because of You”, recorded for United Records reached #1 on the R & B charts and number 20 on the pop charts, in 1951. His association with United lasted until 1957, put ting out 24 singles and a 10-inch LP for the company sometimes alternating on tenor saxophone.
During the 1950s, Smith was a significant rival to alto saxophone-playing bandleader Earl Bostic, and was also in competition with his own formative influence Johnny Hodges, until Hodges returned to Duke Ellington’s band.
His career never recovered from the closure of United Records. After brief stays at Checker and King Labels, Tab retired from the music business in the early 1960s. He sold real estate, and played piano part-time in a steakhouse.
Alto saxophonist Tab Smith, who concentrated on swing and R&B genres, passed away in St. Louis, Missouri on August 17, 1971.
More Posts: saxophone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bobby Tucker was born Robert Nathaniel Tucker on January 8, 1923 in Morristown, New Jersey. His rise to recognition came On November 12, 1946 when during Billie Holiday’s stay at the Down Beat Club he was drafted to accompany Holiday because Eddie Heywood refused his opportunity. Billie’s stay at the Down Beat was so successful due to Tucker’s playing that she decided to keep him as her accompanist. The partnership lasted until 1949, where Tucker quit due to Holiday’s abusive lover, John Levy (not the bassist) threatening him.
After leaving Holiday, Tucker began playing with Billy Eckstine, a partnership and friendship that last more than forty years. He recorded on multiple sessions with Billy but was featured on the 1960 album “No Cover, No Minimum”, in which he arranged and conducted the orchestra behind Eckstine. That same year Tucker also released his only known album under his own name “Too Tough”.
Bobby was especially sought out as an accompanist for singers among them Johnny Hartman, Lena Horne and Antonio Carlos Jobim. He was a musician’s musician whose quiet yet prolific career renders little biographical information, yet spanned the jazz age from the 40s to the 60s and beyond with his friend Billy Eckstine.
Pianist, arranger and conductor Bobby Tucker passed away of a heart attack on April 12, 2007 in his hometown of Morristown, New Jersey at the age of 85.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jonah Jones was born Robert Elliott Jones in Louisville, Kentucky on December 31, 1909. He started playing alto sax at the age of 12 in the Booker T. Washington Community Center band in Louisville before quickly transitioning to trumpet where he excelled immediately. Jones began his career in the 1920s playing on a riverboat named “Island Queen” which plied between Kentucky and Ohio.
By 1928 he joined with Horace Henderson, later worked with Jimmie Lunceford, had an early and successful collaboration with Stuff Smith from 1932-1936, and by the Forties he was working in big bands like Benny Carter’s and Fletcher Henderson. He would spend most of the decade with Cab Calloway’s band that later became a combo.
Starting in the 1950s he had his own quartet and began concentrating on a formula that gained him wider appeal for a decade. The quartet consisted of George “River Rider” Rhodes on piano, John “Broken Down” Browne on bass and “Hard Nuts “Harold Austin on drums. The most mentioned accomplishment of this style is perhaps their version of “On The Street Where You Live”. This effort succeeded and he began to be known to a wider audience. This led to his quartet performing on “An Evening With Fred Astaire” in 1958 and winning a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Performance by a group in 1960.
Jonah went on to become a sensation in France, returned to more “core” jazz work with Earl Hines, played in the pit orchestra for the stage play Porgy and Bess starring Cab Calloway, was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1999. Trumpeter Jonah Jones passed away on April 29, 2000.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Raymond Stanley Noble was born on December 17, 1903 in Brighton, England and studied music at the Royal Academy. He became the leader of the HMV Records studio band, known as the New Mayfair Dance Orchestra that featured popular vocalist Al Bowlly and many musicians of the top hotel bands.
The Bowlly/Noble recordings achieved popularity in the United States, however, union bans prevented Noble from bringing British musicians to America so he arranged for Glenn Miller to recruit American musicians. Bowlly returned to England but Noble continued to lead bands in America, moving into an acting career portraying a stereotypical upper-class English idiot in films like Top Hat and Slumming On Park Avenue. He also played the “dense” character in love with Gracie Allen, or with his orchestra in an Edgar Bergen vehicle. Noble also provided music for many radio shows of the times like The Charlie McCarthy Show. His last major success as a bandleader came with Buddy Clark in the late 1940s.
Ray Noble arranged hits in the 1930s such as “Easy to Love”, “Mad About the Boy”, “Paris in the Spring”, wrote both lyrics and music for now jazz standards “Love Is The Sweetest Thing”, “Cherokee”, “The Touch of Your Lips”, “I Hadn’t Anyone Till You” and “The Very Thought Of You” and co-wrote “Goodnight, Sweetheart” and “You’re So Desirable”, recorded by Billie Holiday, Teddy Wilson and in 1990 by Robert Palmer.
Ray Noble, bandleader, composer, arranger, pianist, singer and actor passed away on April 3, 1978 at the age of 74.
More Posts: arranger,bandleader,composer
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ray Willis Nance was born on December 10, 1913 in Chicago, Illinois and as a child he studied piano, took violin lessons and was self-taught on trumpet. He led small groups from 1932-1937, then spent periods with the orchestras of Earl Hines and Horace Henderson through to 1940, however, he is best known for his long association with Duke Ellington through most of the 1940s and 1950s, after he was hired to replace Cootie Williams.
Shortly after joining the band, Nance was given the trumpet solo on the first recorded version of “Take The “A” Train” which became the Ellington theme, a major hit and jazz standard. Nance’s “A Train” solo is one of the most copied and admired trumpet solos in jazz history that even Williams upon his return to the some twenty years later would play Nance’s solo almost exactly as the original.
Ray was often featured on violin and was the only violin soloist ever featured in Ellington’s orchestra. He is also one of the well-known vocalists from the Ellington orchestra, having sung arguably the definitive version of “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing). It was Nance’s contribution to take the previously instrumental horn riff into the lead vocal, which constitute the now infamous, “Doo wha, doo wha, doo wha, doo wha, yeah!” The multi-talented trumpeter, violinist, vocalist and dancer earned him the nickname “Floorshow”.
He left the Ellington band in 1963 after having switched to and playing cornet alongside his predecessor Cootie Williams for a year. Over the course of his career he recorded a few albums as a leader and with Earl Hines, Rosemary Clooney and others. Ray Nance passed away on January 28, 1976 in New York City.