Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Danny Barcelona was born on July 23, 1929 in Waipahu, a community of Honolulu, Hawaii. A self taught percussionist, by the age of 18 in his final year in high school, he was already playing music with trombonist, singer, and bandleader Trummy Young, joining his Hawaii All-Stars in the early Fifties. When Young left to join Louis Armstrong’s combo in 1952, he assumed leadership of the band, a sextet known as the Hawaiian Dixieland All-Stars. They would tour the Hawaiian Islands, Japan and the rest of the Far East.
Danny was introduced to Louis Armstrong by Young in 1956 and upon his recommendation, in 1958 at the age of 27 became Armstrong’s drummer for 15 years. As a Filipino-American, Armstrong would frequently introduce him to audiences as The Little Filipino Boy, then follow up by calling himself the Little Arabian Boy.
He appears on more than 130 of Armstrong’s recordings including Hello, Dolly! and What a Wonderful World. He toured with Armstrong and Young around the world until illness took Armstrong and he returned to Hawaii. There he became a longtime performer at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel, and worked for many years at Harry’s Music Store and the Easy Music Center.
In 1979, he returned to the mainland and settled with his family in Monterey Park, California. Drummer Danny Barcelona transitioned in Monterey Park on April 1, 2007, due to complications from cancer at the age of 77.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lou McGarity was born Robert Louis McGarity on July 22, 1917 in Athens, Georgia. He started out playing violin when he was seven and didn’t switch to trombone until he was 17. He studied at the University of Georgia from 1934-36, gigged locally around the South and toured with Ben Bernie from 1938-40
He hit the big time with Benny Goodman from 1940-42, becoming the first trombonist to play both with the big band and his smaller groups. During the war years 1942-44 he worked with Raymond Scott’s Orchestra at CBS, and after military service teamed up with his friend and fellow trombonist Cutty Cutshall and rejoined Goodman in ‘46.
Lou was a busy studio musician in New York City beginning in 1947 while performing in clubs at night with Eddie Condon and playing Dixieland with the Lawson/Haggard band. He worked with Bob Crosby in the mid-’60s andwas a member of the World’s Greatest Jazz Band at the end of the 1960s. He recorded with Urbie Green, J.J. Johnson, Kenny Davern, Jimmy McPartland, Charlie Parker, Cootie Williams and Bobby Hackett among others.
Trombonist Lou McGarity, who recorded as a leader and played in the big band, swing and Dixieland genres until bad health shortened his life, transitioned on August 28, 1971 in Alexandria, Virginia.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Barbara Jordan was born on July 13, 1951 in Montreal, Canada and when she was in her last year of high school she realized her singing ability. Her high school music teacher, Iwan Edwards, encouraged her to audition for the lead role of Laurie in the musical Oklahoma. Getting the part she received her first lessons in stage presence and delivering a song. She joined the high school choir, and took a vocal music class in her last year of high school.
Joining an acapella choir outside of school, she also spent five years in this choir performing around Montreal and touring Western Canada and competed in the Eisteddfod in Wales. Her professional musical career began as a folk singer prior to becoming a multi-lingual vocalist with several leading disco, pop and country/western bands in and around the Montreal area.
Settling in Toronto, Canada she has acquired a reputation over the years singing traditional and swing. She has continuously performed in clubs around the Toronto area, New York, and New Orleans, as well as at various jazz festivals in Ontario, Montana, St. Petersburg and Sarasota, Florida; Newcastle, England and Paris, France.
Trad jazz, dixieland and swing vocalist Barbara Jordan, whose influences were Mildred Bailey, Peggy Lee and Lee Wiley, continues to lead her quartet and appear regularly.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lyle “Rusty” Dedrick was born on July 12, 1918 in Delevan, New York. His first call to jazz came when he was in a music store in Buffalo, New York and heard a Louis Armstrong record. So taken was he that he bought the record, then returned home to save money for a record player. After brief studies at Fredonia State Teachers College, he spent a two-year jazz apprenticeship working with the band known as “Mr. And Mrs. Swing,” the Red Norvo/Mildred Bailey Orchestra, featuring the arrangements of a young Eddie Sauter.
He followed this with two stints with Claude Thornhill (1941-42 and 1946-47) and the chance to play a book by Gil Evans. This experience, plus private studies with Paul Creston and Stefan Wolpe, were good preparation for a long career in the New York City jazz commercial music field.
His credits included writing and/or playing with Maxine Sullivan, Lee Wiley, Lionel Hampton and others, along with radio and television studio work with Arthur Godfrey, Ed Sullivan, Sid Ceasar and more. At the same time, Rusty was recording his own LPs.
In 1971 Dedrick joined the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music as Director of Jazz Studies. He guest conducted many all-county high school jazz bands, as well as the prestigious American Jazz Orchestra. Swing and bebop jazz trumpeter, arranger, composer and educator Rusty Dedrick, who recorded three albums as a leader, transitioned on December 25, 2009 in Summitville, New York
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Louis Thomas Jordan was born on July 8, 1908 in Brinkley, Arkansas. His father, James Aaron Jordan, was a music teacher and bandleader for the Brinkley Brass Band and the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. His mother died when he was young and his grandmother Maggie Jordan and his aunt Lizzie Reid raised him. At an early age he studied clarinet and saxophone with his father and by his teens he was a member of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and was playing professionally in the late 1920s.
In the early Thirties he was performing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and New York City with Charlie Gaines. He recorded with Clarence Williams and was a brief member of the Stuff Smith Orchestra. Joining the Chick Webb Orchestra he sang and played alto saxophone, however, in 1938 he started a band that recorded a year later as the Tympany Five.
In 1942, Jordan and his band moved to Los Angeles, California where he began making soundies, the precursors of music video. He appeared on many Jubilee radio shows and a series of programs for the Armed Forces Radio for distribution to American troops overseas. Though a hernia condition kept him out of the war his recordings made him very popular with both black and white soldiers.
During the 1940s Jordan and the band became popular with such hits as Choo Choo Ch’Boogie, Knock Me a Kiss, Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby, and Five Guys Named Moe. Within a year of his breakthrough, the Tympany Five’s appearance fee rose from $350 to $2,000 per night. But the breadth of Jordan’s success and the size of his combo had larger implications for the music industry. His raucous recordings were notable for the use of fantastical narrative, best exemplified on Saturday Night Fish Fry, a two-part 1950 hit that was split across both sides of a 78-rpm record. It was one of the first popular songs to use the word “rocking” in the chorus and to feature a distorted electric guitar.
From July 1946 through May 1947, Jordan had five consecutive number one songs, holding the top slot for 44 consecutive weeks. In 1961, the IRS filed an income tax lien against Jordan and he had to sell property well below its value to pay off his debts. Musician Ike Turner stepped in and contacted and convinced the president of Jordan’s booking agency in Chicago, Illinois. to send Jordan a check for $20,000. He was unaware of this deed.
Over his career he charted dozens of singles, eighteen #1 and fifty-four in the Top Ten. He ranked fifth among the most successful musicians of the period 1942~1995, however, many he did not own the rights to, hence no financial benefit. Saxophonist, multi~instrumentalist, songwriter and bandleader Louis Jordan suffered a heart attack and transitioned on February 4, 1975, in Los Angeles.
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