Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Neal Hefti was born on October 29, 1922 in Hastings, Nebraska, outside Omaha and was a child of the jazz age. His mother, a music teacher, started piano lessons at the age of 3, becoming well versed in theory and harmony by the time he took up the trumpet at 11. He was already writing arrangements, having taught himself by trial and error in high school and was supplying local dance bands with music well before he graduated. After winning several school prizes, he was to start making a living as a jazz trumpeter in the big bands of Charlie Barnet and Charlie Spivak.
After travelling to California with Spivak to make a film, Hefti stayed on the West Coast, joined Woody Herman’s band as a trumpeter in 1944 and his arranging began to take precedence over his playing. Hefti married, moved back to New York and began writing in every genre and for all sizes of ensembles, becoming adept at using small forces to create a big sound. He arranged for Count Basie both in octet and big band configurations making Neal became one of his principal writers. He went on to write numerous compositions for Harry James in the late 40s and 50s designed to feature the leader’s trumpet and the band’s star drummer Buddy Rich.
Hefti fronted his own band in the Fifties, contributed to some of Frank Sinatra’s most popular albums, including “Frank Sinatra and Swinging Brass”, which he also produced. From the early 1960s onwards, he was increasingly involved in the world of films and television, winning a Grammy award for his Batman theme. Hefti was a brilliant composer and arranger who created the scores for many other television shows and films, notably the two Neil Simon movies The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park. His score for Harlow included the song “Girl Talk” that has become a jazz standard.
However, in 1978 after his wife’s passing, he ceased to write and record new music. Nevertheless, because Basie continued to commission other writers to replicate his style, his effect on big band arranging and on film scores remained extremely influential. Trumpeter, composer, songwriter and arranger Neal Hefti, who contributed to the genres of swing and big band along with scores for the film and television industries, passed away in Toluca Lake, California on October 11, 2008.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Don Byas was born Carlos Wesley Byas October 21, 1912 in Muskogee, Oklahoma into a musical family, his mother a pianist and father playing clarinet. He started training in classical music, first on the violin, then clarinet and finally the alto saxophone, which he played until the end of the 1920s. He started playing in local orchestras at the age of 17, with the likes of Bennie Moten, Terrence Holder and Walter Page’s Blue Devils.
In 1931 while at Langston College in Oklahoma he founded and led his own college band, “Don Carlos and His Collegiate Ramblers”. Switching to the tenor saxophone when he moved to West Coast, through the Thirties he played with various Los Angeles bands such as Bert Johnson’s Sharps and Flats, Lionel Hampton, Eddie Barefield, Buck Clayton, Lorenzo Flennoy and Charlie Echols bands.
By 1937 Byas moved to New York working with Eddie Mallory and his wife Ethel Waters, went on to work with Don Redman, recorded his first solo in 1939, played with the bands of lucky Millinder, Andy Kirk, Edgar Hayes and his childhood idol Benny Carter. He played and recorded with Billie Holiday, Pete Johnson, Hot Lips Page, Big Joe Turner, Charlie Christian, Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke in after hour sessions.
However Byas’ big break came in early 1941 when Count Basie selected him to fill the seat vacated by Lester Young. Through the forties he played the best New York nightspots, had some success with a few hits, collaborated with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, George Wallington, Oscar Pettiford and Max Roach. Despite his bebop associations, Byas always remained deeply rooted in the sounds of swing. He started out by emulating Coleman Hawkins, but always cited Art Tatum as his greater influence: “I haven’t got any style, I just blow like Art”.
In 1946 Byas went to Europe and forgot to return to America. A bon vivant in the true sense he was seen on the Riviera, St. Tropez often sporting mask and flippers, sport fishing, shooting pool or dishing up Louisiana style menus for his female admirers all while recording and playing regularly throughout Europe.
Settling in Amsterdam he continued to tour and play with the likes of Art Blakey, Kenny Clarke, Bud Powell, Jazz At The Philharmonic and Ben Webster to name a few. He returned once to the U.S. to appear at the Newport Jazz Festival. Tenor saxophonist Don Byas died on August 24, 1972 from lung cancer in Amsterdam, Netherlands at the age 59.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cozy Cole was born William Randolph Cole on October 17, 1909 in East Orange, New Jersey. His first music job was with Wilbur Sweatman in 1928 and two years later he was playing with Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers. He had his first drum solo on the recording of “Load of Cole”. In 1931 Cozy went on to spend two years with Blanche Calloway, followed by a year with Benny Carter, then a year with Willie Bryant, two with Stuff Smith’s small combo.
For four years from1938-42 he played with Cab Calloway. In 1942, CBS Radio music director Raymond Scott hired Cozy as part of the network radio’s first mixed-race orchestra. After his stint with CBS, he played with Louis Armstrong’s All Stars.
Cole scored a #1 Cashbox magazine hit with the “Topsy Part 2” that also peaked at number three on Billboard’s Hot 100 in 1958and at number one on the R&B chart. It sold over one million copies garnering it a gold disc. The recording contained a lengthy drum solo and was one of the few drum solo recordings that ever made the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Cole continued to perform in a variety of settings. Cole and Gene Krupa often played duets at the Metropole in New York City during the 1950s and 1960s. Cole appeared in music-related films, including a brief cameo in “Don’t Knock The Rock” and has been cited as an influence by many contemporary jazz and rock drummers including Cozy Powell, who took his nickname from Cole.
Cozy Cole passed away from cancer on January 31, 1981 in Columbus, Ohio.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Buddy Rich was born Bernard Rich on September 30, 1917 in New York City to vaudevillians. His father first noticed his musical talent to keep a steady beat with spoons at the age of one. He began playing drums at eighteen months in vaudeville billed as “Traps the Drum Wonder”. At the height of his childhood career he was reportedly the second-highest paid child entertainer in the world, after Jackie Coogan.
By age 11 he became a bandleader without any formal drum instruction, claiming that instruction would only degrade his musical talent; never admitted to practicing, played drums only during performance, and was not known to read music. Buddy’s first major jazz gig was in 1937 with Joe Marsala and guitarist Jack Lemaire was followed with Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw, Vic Schoen Orchestra, Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra.
In 1942 he enlisted in the Marines and two years later was back with Dorsey. With financial backing from Sinatra in ’46 he formed his own band and continued to lead different groups into the early fifties. In addition he performed with Benny Carter, Harry James, Les Brown, Charlie Ventura, Jazz at the Philharmonic and led several successful big bands in an era that didn’t popularize them, played on sessions with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong for their late-career comeback recordings, Oscar Peterson and his famous trio with Ray Brown and Herb Ellis.
Rich always have a drummer there during rehearsals to read and play the parts initially on new arrangements. He’d listen to a chart once, have it memorized, run through it and he’d know exactly how it went, how many measures it ran and what he’d have to do to drive it.
Buddy, once billed as “The World’s Greatest Drummer”, was known for his virtuosic technique, power, groove and speed and remained an active performer until the end of his life. On April 2, 1987 in Los Angeles, California drummer, bandleader and songwriter Buddy Rich succumbed to heart failure following surgery for a malignant brain tumor. He was 69.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Biréli Lagrène was born September 4, 1966 in Soufflenheim, Bas-Rhin Alsace, France in a traditional manouche-Gypsy family and community. He started playing the guitar at the age of four. He grew up in the loving but tough environment of the “tzigane” or Romani Gypsies. His biggest influences came from family with a gifted violinist father. At age eight, he covered Django Reinhardt’s repertoire, at twelve won a Gypsy music festival in Strasbourg and later recorded his live performance on the double LP, “Route to Django”.
Offered the chance to leave for the U.S., Biréli met the greatest jazz musicians of the international scene such as Stephane Grappelli, Benny Goodman and Benny Carter. In 1984, he met Larry Coryell in New York, then later introduced to bassist Jaco Pastorious and ventured with him into jazz-fusion. Together, they toured Europe, which contributed a great deal to Lagrène’s musical emancipation.
Lagrène, a guitarist and bassist, came to prominence in the 1980s for his Django Reinhardt influenced style. He often performs within the swing; jazz-fusion and post bop mediums. He has also performed live with guitarist Al Di Meola, recorded “Gipsy Project” and “Gipsy Project & Friends” in 2002. He has thirty-seven albums and four film scores to date and continues to record, perform and tour.