Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lammar Wright Sr. was born on June 20, 1907 in Texarkana, Texas but grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. He began his musical career playing and recording with Bennie Moten’s band in 1923. Relocating to New York City in 1927 Lammar played with The Missourians, staying with the group after Cab Calloway became its leader. Wright remained Calloway’s lead trumpeter until 1942.
Playing sporadically with Calloway through the rest of the decade, Wright would also played with Don Redman, Claude Hopkins, Cootie Williams, Lucky Millinder, Sy Oliver and Louis Armstrong.
In the 1950s and 1960s he taught music and worked as a studio musician, in addition to recording with Arnett Cobb, Count Basie, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra and George Shearing.
Wright led his own groups from time to time, had a role in the 1968 film The Night They Raided Minksy’s. Trumpeter Lammar Wright passed away on April 13, 1973 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
David Alden Lambert was born on June 19, 1917 in Boston, Massachusetts. His band debut was with Johnny Long’s Orchestra in the early 1940s and along with early partner Buddy Stewart; he successfully brought singing into modern jazz, concurrently with Ella Fitzgerald.
In the late 1950s Lambert teamed with wordsmith and vocalese pioneer Jon Hendricks. Annie Ross later joined the two vocalists and the trio lineup was a hit. After Ross left the group in 1962, Lambert and Hendricks went on without her by using various replacements, but the partnership ended in 1964.
Dave formed a quintet called “Lambert & Co.” which included the multiple voices of Mary Vonnie, Leslie Dorsey, David Lucas and Sarah Boatner. The group auditioned for RCA and was documented in a 15-minute documentary entitled Audition at RCA, and the Charlie Parker with Voices. It was one of the last images recorded of Lambert.
Lyricist and jazz singer Dave Lambert, an originator of vocalese best known for his work in Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, and who spent a lifetime experimenting with the human voice and expanding the possibilities of its use in jazz, was struck and killed by a truck on the Connecticut Turnpike while changing a flat tire, passed away on October 3, 1966.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sam Wooding, born on June 17, 1895 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania learned to play piano as a child, eventually becoming a bandleader who led several big bands in both the United States and abroad. In 1925 while performing at Small’s Paradise in Harlem, a Russian impresario hired him to be the pit band for the Chocolate Dandies in Berlin. That date led him to a record date for Vox Records with Doc Cheatham, Herb Fleming in the band.
In 1929, with a change in personnel, Wooding’s orchestra made more recordings in Barcelona and Paris for the Parlaphone and Pathé labels. He would remain in Europe, performing on the Continent, in Russia and England through most of the 1930s. He became an expatriate and his overseas stays made him virtually unknown in the States, building staunch jazz fans that liked what his orchestra offered.
Returning home in the late 1930s, when World War II seemed a certainty, Wooding began formal studies of music, attained a degree, and began teaching full-time, counting among his students trumpeter Clifford Brown. During this period he would lead and tour with the Southland Spiritual Choir. By the early 1970s, he formed another big band and took it to Switzerland for a successful concert, but this venture was short-lived. Pianist, arranger and bandleader Sam Wooding passed away on August 1, 1985 at age 89.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Turk Mauro was born Mauro Turso on June 11, 1944 in New York City into a family of first-generation Italian-Americans and he first experienced jazz when his father who played in local swing bands and began playing alto saxophone at 14. He soon met his mentor, trumpeter Henry Allen, who started getting him gigs around the city until he graduated from high school in 1962.
Mauro worked in a mailroom while playing jazz, got married, had two children, hit the road and his marriage fell apart by the mid-70s. While touring he met Billy Mitchell, a member of Dizzy Gillespie’s band, that led to a few hits with Gillespie but a permanent spot in Buddy Rich’s band. His reputation as a perfectionist made him a popular sideman in the New York area, and in 1977 he release his debut album, The Underdog.
He would go on to play the Blue Note, release his sophomore project The Heavyweight, which unfortunately flopped. This began a dry period for Turk through the ’80s and he abandoned jazz for taxi and limo driving. However, in 1987 after running into Sonny Rollins who suggested Europe, Mauro packed up and moved to France. He found work as a sideman and renewed success in Paris. But success was fleeting and with work drying up in Paris and another failed marriage, his second dry spell ensued by the Nineties.
By 1994 Mauro was back in the States with his new wife taking care of his father in Florida. He managed to play at the few jazz clubs in South Florida at the time but also began to gamble in attempt to regain the good times of Paris. Health problems came by the end of the decade and a burst colon hospitalized the saxophonist. An physical altercation in which he punched local singer Beverly Barkley in the early 2000s sidelined the musician after being arrested for battery. This incident put a halt to his career and with a year probation and 50 hours of community service, since the turn of the century the hard bop saxophonist Turk Mauro has only been able to get the occasional gig around the Florida area.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Beryl Booker was born on June 7, 1922 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and studied piano as a child. She played with Slam Stewart’s trio in 1946, playing off and on with him until 1951 and accompanied Dinah Washington.
In early 1952, Booker led a quintet that featured Don Elliot, Chuck Wayne, Clyde Lombard and Connie Kay. She recorded several sessions with Miles Davis and by 1953 had formed a trio with two female musicians – Bonnie Wetzel and Elaine Leighton. This group toured Europe in 1954 as part of the show “Jazz Club USA”, which featured Billie Holiday.
After another stint with Dinah Washington in 1959, she slipped into obscurity, however, in the 1970s she re-emerged to play and record with small groups.
On September 30, 1978, swing pianist Beryl Booker passed away at age 56.
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