Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Don Barrigo was born on June 12, 1906 in London, England. A competent tenor saxophonist, he was active in his hometown and New York City, New York in the 1920s and 30s.
Among the artists with whom Don played and sometimes recorded were Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang. In the UK he played with Nat Gonella, Harry and Sid Roy, Billy Mayerl, Al Bowlly, Percival Mackey, Bert Bowen, Howard Jacobs and the Freddy Schweitzer Band. In the States he played with Don Parker and Louis Armstrong, and in France with Serge Glykson.
By 1940 he was a member of Maurice Winnick’s dance band alongside fellow sideman Ted Heath. Tenor saxophonist Don Barrigo transitioned on May 4, 1977.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Karl Drewo was born May 17, 1929 in Vienna, Austria and as a child studied piano and accordion, but switched to tenor saxophone in his teens. In the late 1940s he worked with Charlie Gaudriot and Paul Reischman, followed by performing with Gert Steffens and Horst Winter in the early Fifties. He was a member of the Austrian All Stars in the mid-1950s and from 1956 to 1958 he worked with Fatty George.
He continued on by becoming a member of Kurt Edelhagen’s orchestra, where he played into the early 1970s. In the 1960s he recorded with Francy Boland, Kenny Clarke, Zoot Sims, and Jimmy Woode, among others.
After leaving Edelhagen’s group, he played with the Österreichischer Rundfunk band, and in the 1980s was a member of Peter Herbolzheimer’s ensemble. Later that decade he took a position as a lecturer at an arts school in Graz, Austria. In the Nineties he played with the Lungau Big Band, Rudolf Josel, and Rudi Wilfer.
Saxophonist Karl Drewo, often spelled Carl Drewo or Drevo, transitioned on May 10, 1995 in Wels, Austria.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Friedrich Gulda was born on May 16, 1930 in Vienna, Austria and as the son of a teacher began learning to play the piano at age 7 with Felix Pazofsky at the Wiener Volkskonservatorium. In 1942, he entered the Vienna Music Academy, where he studied piano and musical theory under Bruno Seidlhofer and Joseph Marx.
During World War II as teenagers, Gulda and his friend Joe Zawinul were rebellious and would perform forbidden music, including jazz, in violation of the government’s prohibition of playing such music. Winning first prize at the Geneva International Music Competition in 1946, he began to play concerts worldwide, making his Carnegie Hall debut in 1950, and with Jörg Demus and Paul Badura-Skoda, formed what became known as the “Viennese troika”. Friedrich enjoyed a renowned classical career for years before his 1956 engagement at Birdland in New York City and at the Newport Jazz Festival.
In 1966 he organized the International Competition for Modern Jazz in 1966, and established the International Musikforum, a school in Ossiach, Austria two years later, for students who wanted to learn improvisation. From the 1950s on Gulda cultivated a professional interest in jazz, writing songs and free improvisation or open music improvisations. He also recorded as a vocalist under the pseudonym “Albert Golowin”, fooling music critics for years until it was realized that Gulda and Golowin were the same person.
In jazz, he found “the rhythmic drive, the risk, the absolute contrast to the pale, academic approach I had been taught. He also took up playing the baritone saxophone. His 1970 album, As You Like It, includes the standards Round Midnight and What Is This Thing Called Love?, as well as his own classic Blues For H.G. that is dedicated to Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer.
From the late 1960s through the 1980s he continued his straight-ahead swing and bop-based jazz often in European Jazz big bands, which he often organized yearly performances and recordings. He performed and recorded playing clavichord, percussion instruments, and a bass recorder wooden flute with musicians involved in free improvisation, including Cecil Taylor, Barre Phillips, Ursula Anders, John Surman, Albert Mangelsdorff, Stu Martin, and Fritz Pauer. He would go on to collaborate in the coming decades with Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul, and Chick Corea.
When the Vienna Music Academy awarded him its Beethoven Ring in recognition of his performances, he accepted it but then later reconsidered and returned it. To promote a concert in 1999, he announced his own death in a press release so that the concert at the Vienna Konzerthaus could serve as a resurrection party.
Pianist and composer Friedrich Gulda, who worked in both the classical and jazz fields, transitioned from heart failure at the age of 69 on January 27, 2000 at his home in Weissenbach, Austria.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bobby Martin was born on May 15, 1903. He played trumpet as a child with June Clark and Sonny Greer. By 1925 at the age of 22 he was in New York City playing and recording with Sam Wooding, as well as touring Europe through 1931.
From 1932 to 1936 he played abroad with Willie Lewis, and formed his own band after returning home in 1937. His quartet held an extended gig at the Palace in Greenwich VillageYork with pianist Richard Edwards, drummer Ural Dean, and guitarist Samuel Steede. This era of Martin’s life, as is much of his life, is poorly documented, however, because during a tour of The Netherlands at the Mephisto Club in Rotterdam, his entire book of arrangements was burned in a club fire.
Bobby continued to tour Europe into the early Forties, then held residencies in New York City and New Jersey. He opened his own club briefly in the decade as well.
He married vocalist Thelma Minor, but then left the music industry in 1944. Not much is known of him after this time, however, he never recorded as a leader and transitioned in March 1983.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Oleg Leonidovich Lundstrem was born April 2, 1916 into a family of musicians in Chita, Transbaikal Oblast. His family moved to Harbin, China when he was five. By 1935, inspired by Duke Ellington’s Dear Old Southland record which he purchased, he joined forces with eight other young Russian amateur musicians and formed the Oleg Lundstrem Orchestra. The following year the band moved to Shanghai, China where they immediately became popular among the public. The band was an important part of Shanghai’s jazz scene until 1947, along with Buck Clayton Orchestra.
After World War II, in 1947 Oleg returned to the Soviet Union and settled in Kazan, where he worked as a violinist in the opera and ballet theatre, while keeping his jazz orchestra as a side act. 1956 saw the Oleg Lundstrem Orchestra moving to Moscow where he was appointed by the Soviet cultural authorities as the orchestra’s art director and conductor.
His orchestra was recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest continuously existing jazz band in the world, the official name being The State Oleg Lundstrem Chamber Orchestra of Jazz Music.
Composer and conductor Oleg Lundstrem, also spelled Lundstroem or Lundström, transitioned from natural causes at his home on October 14, 2005 in Korolyov, Moscow Oblast at the age of 89.
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