Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charlie Irvis was born May 6, 1899 in New York City. He first played trombone professionally with Bubber Miley in his youth and then with blues singer Lucille Hegamin in the “Blue Flame Syncopators” from 1920 to 1921. Following this stint, Charlie played with Willie “The Lion” Smith and with Duke Ellington’s Washingtonians and later with his orchestra from 1924 to 1926. During the years 1923 to 1927 he also recorded occasionally with Clarence Williams.
Irvis, along with friends Miley and Tricky Sam Nanton contributed to the development of “jungle sounds” or “growl effects” in trombone playing. After leaving Ellington’s band, for the rest of the decade and into the early 1930s he recorded with Fats Waller, played with Charlie Johnson and Jelly Roll Morton. Some of his final recordings were in 1931 with Miley again, and shortly thereafter with Elmer Snowden.
After the early 1930s, Charlie Irvis, best known for his work with Duke Ellington’s band, stopped playing and passed away in New York City sometime around 1939 in obscurity. He is pictured 2nd from left in the photograph.
More Posts: trombone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hayes Pillars was born on April 30, 1906 in North Little Rock, Arkansas and began playing tenor saxophone as a teenager. Playing locally around Little Rock and Jackson, Tennessee initially, Hayes joined the territory band of Alphonse Trent in 1927. A year later he was back freelancing until he united with his boyhood friend James Jeter and organized the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra in Cleveland, Ohio.
Pillars secured a six-week engagement in 1934 at the Club Plantation in St. Louis, becoming so popular that they stayed for eleven years. The band was so influential that some of its players who held tenure were Walter Page, Sid Catlett, Jo Jones, Kenny Clarke, Jimmy Forrest, Charlie Christian, Jimmy Blanton and an 18 year old Harry “Sweets” Edison, who all went on to make names for themselves.
The orchestra would play New York and Chicago prior to Pillars leaving the orchestra. He then became a mainstay on the St. Louis scene for nearly three decades from the 1950s till his retirement in the Eighties. He was honored for his contributions to jazz by the Institute for Jazz Studies at Rutgers University and the Smithsonian Institute in 1981. Tenor saxophonist and bandleader Hayes Pillars passed away on August 11, 1992 in Richmond Heights, Missouri.
More Posts: saxophone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jimmie Noone or Jimmy Noone was born on April 23, 1895 in Cut Off, Louisiana and started playing guitar. By 15 he switched to the clarinet, moved to New Orleans, studied with Lorenzo Tio and thirteen year old Sidney Bechet.
1912 found Jimmie playing professionally with Freddie Keppard in Storyville and over the next five years he performed with Buddy Petit, Kid Ory, Papa Celestin, the Eagle Band, and the Young Olympia Band, before moving to Chicago, Illinois and joining the Original Creole Orchestra. The following year, he joined King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, then in 1920 reunited with Keppard in Doc Cook’s band, which he would remain and make early recordings for six years.
Noone started leading the band at Chicago’s Apex Club in 1926. This band, Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra, included alto saxophonist and clarinetist Joe Poston and pianist Earl Hines. Signing with Brunswick on their Vocalion label her recorded prolifically from 1928 to 1935, then moved to Decca the following year followed with a year at Bluebird.
A move to New York City in 1935 produced a short-lived band and club with Wellman Braud and Noone returned to Chicago. He continued to play at various clubs until 1943, moved to Los Angeles, California, joined Kid Ory’s band, which was featured for a time on a radio program hosted by Orson Welles. After playing only a few broadcasts with the band, the lyrical and sophisticated clarinetist, who would influence later clarinet players such as Artie Shaw, Irving Fazola and Benny Goodman, died suddenly of a heart attack at 48, in Los Angeles, California on April 19, 1944.
More Posts: clarinet
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Herb Pomeroy was born Irving Herbert Pomeroy, III on April 15, 1930 in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He began playing trumpet at an early age, and in his early teens started gigging in the greater Boston area, claiming inspiration from the music of Louis Armstrong. By age 16, he became a member of the Musicians Union and after high school, went on to study music at the Schillinger House that is now the Berklee College of Music in Boston. It was here he developed his interest in bebop.
Herb Pomeroy studied dentistry at Harvard University for a year but dropped out to pursue his jazz career. Charlie Parker liked Pomeroy’s playing and hired him frequently when the alto saxophonist performed at Boston’s Hi-Hat and Storyville clubs. Pomeroy also played with Lionel Hampton, Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton and Serge Chaloff among other jazz musicians.
He led his own 13-piece big band in the early 1950s and another that gained national acclaim later in the decade. He would back up singers like Mel Torme, Tony Bennett, Irene Kral, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. By the mid Sixties he began abandoning the big band sound for small combos and switched from trumpet to flugelhorn.
Although his first love was performing, Pomeroy was a respected educator. He helped found the Jazz Workshop on Stuart Street, joined the faculties of the Berklee School of Music where he taught for 41 years, the Lenox School of Music, Music at MIT and was the director Festival Jazz Ensemble for 22 years. He was inducted into the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE) Hall of Fame and the Down Beat Jazz Education Hall of Fame. On August 11, 2007, Herb Pomeroy, trumpeter and flugelhornist in the swing and bebop tradition passed away.
More Posts: trumpet
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Dixon was born on April 8, 1909 in New Orleans, Louisiana but grew up throughout the South traveling with his father as he ministered. He began playing trumpet as a child, then while living in Natchez, Mississippi at age thirteen he began playing the violin. He would go on to study the instrument at Arkansas State College, where he picked up the alto saxophone.
Dixon’s move to Chicago in 1926 would have him playing with Sammy Stewart from 1928, including a tour of New York City in 1930. His longest and most important residency was with Earl Hines and for nearly twelve years he would play trumpet, saxophone and arrange for the band.
During World War II George led a Navy band in Memphis, Tennessee, then returned to Chicago playing with Floyd Campbell, Ted Eggleston and others. During the Forties into the next decade he led his own band at the Circle Inn. Never recording as a leader, from about the mid-1950s trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist George Dixon stopped playing full-time, though he continued to play occasionally up until his death on August 1, 1994.
More Posts: saxophone