Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jiver Hutchinson was born Leslie George Hutchinson on March 16, 1906 in Kingston, Jamaica. He played in Bertie King’s band in Jamaica in the 1930s, then moved to England, where he played with Happy Blake’s Cuba Club Band. By 1936 he was a part of Leslie Thompson’s Emperors of Jazz and two years later he was performing with Ken “Snakehips” Johnson, before joining Geraldo’s band in 1939.
He led his own ensemble from 1944 to 1950, featuring many of the musicians from Thompson’s band. His ensemble toured throughout the United Kingdom and Europe, and in 1945 played concerts in India.
Recording with his ensemble in 1947, he returned to play with Geraldo after the group’s dissolution, and recorded with Mary Lou Williams in 1952. During the Fifties he worked in television on the Benny Hill Show and Make Mine Music.
Trumpeter and bandleader Jiver Hutchinson was killed in a car crash in Weeting, England while on tour with his band on November 22, 1959.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Robert Sherwood Haggart was born March 13, 1914 in New York City, New York. He became a member of the Bob Crosby Band in 1935 and composed and arranged Big Noise from Winnetka, My Inspiration, What’s New?, and South Rampart Street Parade. He remained with the band until its 1942 dissolution. He went on to work as a session musician, with much of his time spent at Decca Records.
He recorded with Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Ella Fitzgerald and his arrangements can be heard on Fitzgerald’s album Lullabies of Birdland. Haggart also starred in several commercials for L&M cigarettes on the radio program Gunsmoke.
He and Yank Lawson formed the Lawson~Haggart Band, and together led the World’s Greatest Jazz Band from 1968 until 1978. Over the next two decades he appeared at jazz festivals. Double bassist, composer and arranger Bob Haggart, who was associated with dixieland and swing, transitioned on December 2, 1998 in Venice, Florida.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Le Roy Watts Harris Jr. was born on February 12, 1916 in St. Louis, Missouri. He played violin while young, then learned saxophone and clarinet. By age 13 he was playing with pianist Chick Finney.
Relocating to Chicago, Illinois around 1930 he played with Ray Nance from 1931 to 1936. Following this stint he worked with Earl Hines from 1937 to 1943. He joined the United States Navy during World War II and played in a band from 1943 to 1944. After his discharge he played with Bill Doggett, Ben Thigpen, Tadd Dameron, Sarah Vaughan, Singleton Palmer, and Wynonie Harris, then returned to play with Hines once more.
In the early 1950s he led his own band at the Kit Kat club in New York. He resettled in St. Louis again in 1957 and played with Eddie Johnson from 1960 to 1971.
Saxophonist and clarinetist Le Roy Harris Jr., whose father and uncle were both jazz musicians, transitioned on February 16, 2005 in his hometown of St. Louis.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Handy, born George Joseph Hendleman on January 17, 1920 in New York City, where his musical beginnings were fostered under the tutelage of composer Aaron Copland.
He first worked professionally as a swing pianist for Michael Loring in 1938. Soon afterward George was drafted into the United States Army in 1940. Post WWII, from 1944 to 1946 he became a member of the Boyd Raeburn Orchestra, composing and performing on piano. This was during a time when many big bands were transforming their musical tendencies toward bebop. Leaving the orchestra briefly to work for Paramount Studios, he returned to Raeburn quickly. During this period he entered one of his most creative periods, doing arrangements of older standards with a distinctly bebop quality.
A rift between him and Raeburn, just as he was entering his prime, forced him to depart the group. Handy continued to arrange for other musicians in his later career.
Pianist, arranger and composer George Handy, best remembered in retrospect for his bebop arrangements, transitioned in Harris, New York, on January 8, 1997 at the age of 76, from heart disease.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
David Lee, Jr. born January 4, 1941 in New Orleans, Louisiana played professionally from his early teens. While serving in the U. S. Army, he was a member in several bands. In 1969, he co-founded the New Orleans Jazz Workshop.
In 1969 Dizzy Gillespie brought Lee into his band and soon after he was working with Roy Ayers in 1971 and Sonny Rollins for three years beginning in 1972. The Rollins recordings were hard swinging but included the plethora of tempos of the Seventies.
Forming a quartet but never recording as a leader, he continued to work as a sideman. On August 4, 2021, drummer and composer David Lee, who recorded Yoshiaki Masuo, Charlie Rouse, Lonnie Liston Smith and Richard Wyands among others, transitioned at 80 years of age.
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