Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Red Wooten was born Lawrence Bernard Wooten on November 5, 1921 in Social Circle, Georgia and started his career playing country & western before moving to big band jazz. While still in his teens, he landed a six-dollar-a-week gig on Archie “Grandpappy” Campbell’s C&W show on radio station WDOD in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The band included future Sons of the Pioneers guitarist Roy Lanham. Texas crooner Gene Austin hired the band and dubbed them the Whippoorwills. He toured with Austin for a time, then quit the band due to exhaustion.
Red went on to play with several successful big bands of the ’40s, including those led by Jan Savitt and Tony Pastor. Beginning in 1949, he played with a succession of prominent swing bandleaders, including Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, and Charlie Barnet. In 1957, he recorded with Harry Babasin’s Jazzpickers in a rhythm section that also included Red Norvo. He hooked up with Norvo and recorded and toured with the vibist in 1957-1958.
He recorded The Most Exciting Guitar with Lanham in 1959. That year, Wootten also toured with Benny Goodman and Frank Sinatra. With Sinatra, he did movies, TV, and worked the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. In the ’60s and ’70s, he worked mostly in the studios, composed and arranged for film, and authored a book of musical exercises for bass instruments.
In addition to the aforementioned, Wootten played with Merle Travis, Glen Campbell, Eddie Dean, Mary Ford, Tex Williams, Jimmy Bryant, Joe Maphis, and Roy Rogers, among many others. He also worked on Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch radio show. Returning to country and won an Academy of Country Music Award as Best Bassist in 1982.
By the start of the Seventies, he was less active as a jazz musician and concentrated more on studio work. He also composed and arranged film scores. In the mid-1970s he recorded with Anita O’Day. Double bassist Red Wooten, whose name was sometimes spelled Wootten, at present no date of his transition is available.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Thore Jederby was born on October 15, 1913 in Stockholm, Sweden, receiving formal training in music at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. He began playing jazz in the mid-1930s, playing with Arne Hülphers’s band from 1934 to 1938, and then with Thore Ehrling’s ensemble from 1938 through the end of World War II.
He led his own group, the Swing Swingers, for studio recordings in the mid-1930s, and led smaller ensembles for recording sessions well into the 1940s. Later in his life, Thore went on to become active in the capturing of the history of Swedish jazz. He was involved in reissues of early Swedish recordings, curated radio shows devoted to Swedish jazz, and participated in a national commission on the history of jazz in Sweden.
Double bassist Thore Jederby, who was also a record producer and radio broadcaster, passed away on January 10, 1984 in Stockholm.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jimmy Archey was born on October 12, 1902 in Norfolk, Virginia. He began playing when he was twelve and was getting professional gigs a year later. He studied at Hampton Institute from 1915 to 1919, played in Atlantic City, New Jersey for a while before moving to New York City in 1923.
During the Roaring Twenties, he played with Edgar Hayes, Most noteworthy for his work was in several prominent jazz orchestras and big bands of his time, including leading one of his own. He performed and recorded with the James P. Johnson Orchestra, King Oliver, Fats Waller, and the Luis Russell Orchestra, among others.
The late 1930s saw Archey participating in big bands that simultaneously featured musicians such as Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Claude Hopkins. In the 1940s he toured France with Mezz Mezzrow and in the 1950s, he spent much of his time working with New Orleans revivalist bands with artists such as Bob Wilber and Earl Hines.
Becoming a bandleader, during the next few years, he headed a sextet, which in 1952 had trumpeter Henry Goodwin, Benny Waters on clarinet and pianist Dick Wellstood. A major yet underrated musician, his only sessions recorded as a leader were for Nec Plus Ultra, the French Barclay and the 77 label. Trombonist Jimmy Archey passed away on November 16, 1967 in Amityville, New York.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Fred Norman was born on October 5, 1910 in Leesburg, Florida and started out playing trombone when he was 14. After working with local bands in Florida, until moving to Washington, D.C. in 1930. There he worked with Duke Eglin’s Bell Hops, Booker Coleman, and Elmer Calloway (Cab’s younger brother). When he joined Claude Hopkins’ Orchestra in 1932, he doubled as a singer and contributed many arrangements.
Norman was with the Hopkins Big Band during its key years (1932-37), and when he departed, gave up the trombone and stuck exclusively to writing. Norman wrote arrangements for many big bands including those of Benny Goodman (1938), Bunny Berigan, Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton, Jack Teagarden, Glenn Miller, Harry James, Artie Shaw, and Tommy Dorsey.
Landing the position of staff arranger for Krupa from 1940 to 1943, he spent periods writing exclusively for Dorsey and Charlie Spivak. In the 1950s, Fred started working closely with MGM and Carlton record labels, among others, and often as a musical director for singers such as Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, and Brook Benton.
Although his orchestra backed numerous singers, he led his own orchestra record date, producing Norman Plays Novello. Trombonist, vocalist, and arranger Fred Norman, who spent most of the swing era as a busy arranger, passed away on February 19, 1993 in New York City, New York.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sten Åke Henry “Stan” Hasselgård was born on October 4, 1922 in Sundsvall, Sweden. His father, John Levin Johansson changed his name to John Hasselgård. Growing up in Bollnäs, Sweden, he began playing clarinet at age 16, attended the University of Uppsala, and played in the Royal Swingers there.
In 1945 he played in a quintet led by Arthur Österwall, and founded a new Royal Swingers group that same year. In 1946-47 he played with Simon Brehm’s sextet alongside pianist Gösta Eriksson, trumpeter Bror Hansson, guitarist Kurt Wärngren, and drummer Bertil Frylmark.
Having achieved international renown, he moved to New York City in 1947, and played on 52nd Street with Jack Teagarden and Max Roach. Under the stage name Stan Hasselgard he made his acclaimed recording of Swedish Pastry. and in 1948 he joined Benny Goodman’s septet, alongside Wardell Gray, Mary Lou Williams and others.
His last recording session took place on November 18th, because five days later he was killed in a car crash. Clarinetist Stan Hasselgard passed away on November 23, 1948 in Decatur, Illinois. He was 26.
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