Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Fritz “Freddie” Brocksieper was born in Istanbul, Turkey on August 24, 1912, the son of a Greek-speaking Jewish woman and a German engineer, who was able to get through National-Socialism as an essential swing musician. His playing style on the drums was influenced above all by Gene Krupa and by 1930, he was playing professionally in Germany working in Nuremberg and Berlin throughout the decade. During World War II he played with the Golden Seven, Benny De Weille, Willy Berking, and the radio orchestra of Lutz Templin.
He recorded with his own ensembles, both large and small, in the later 1940s, and performed for American GIs in Stuttgart, Munich, and Berlin. An essential swing musician, Freddie was considered a leading figure of early European big-band jazz. With his bands, he made it to the front page of Stars and Stripes. Beginning in 1957 Bavarian radio regularly broadcast live concerts from his studio in Munich.
He continued performing in the 1960s and 1970s and was awarded a Deutscher Schallplattenpreis in 1980. From 1964 he played mainly in trios, and often with American soloists in Europe. Drummer Freddie Brocksieper passed away on January 17, 1990.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lou Colombo was born in Brockton, Massachusetts on August 22, 1927 and started playing the trumpet when he was twelve. At seventeen he turned his attention to professional baseball and was signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers for seven years until a knee injury ended his career at 24.
Turning his attention to music Lou dove in full-time, mostly as an ensemble player and studio musician, playing and recording in the big bands of Dizzy Gillespie, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Buddy Morrow, and Pérez Prado. He also worked sessions with Meredith D’Ambrosio on the 1989 recording South to a Warmer Place, George Masso on That Old Gang of Mine, 1996) and Jerry Jerome’s Something Borrowed, Something Blue.
Under his own name, Colombo recorded some albums one, including 1,990 at Concord Records, a tribute album for Bobby Hackett, one with Dave McKenna and Keith Copeland. Active on the Cape Cod jazz scene for five decades, trumpeter Lou Colombo passed away due to a traffic accident on March 3, 2012 at the age of 84.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Charles Heard, known as J. C. Heard was born on August 10, 1917 in Dayton, Ohio and grew up in Detroit, Michigan. As a young child, he performed as a tap dancer in amateur contests and vaudeville shows. He began to switch his focus to drumming around age 11 and started out teaching himself to play, then took lessons as a student at Cass Technical High School. Supporting his interest, his parents brought him to see major performers who toured to Detroit’s famous music venues, however, it was Chick Webb play in 1937 as a formative experience.
Becoming a protege of the drummer Jo Jones, through him he met and sat in with Count Basie. With Jones’s help, Heard got his first professional job with Teddy Wilson’s band in 1939. They played the Golden Gate Ballroom in Harlem and the Roseland Ballroom and recorded for Columbia Records. After the Wilson band’s breakup, he went on to perform in bands led by Benny Carter, Louis Jordan, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, and Dizzy Gillespie. He also performed at major jazz festivals and played alongside Roy Eldridge and Charlier Parker.
Heard’s style was a hybrid of swing and bop and was known for his innovative techniques and the hard swing he would bring to both large and small bands. He recorded with Charles Mingus, Ray Brown, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington, Lena Horne, and Sarah Vaughan. He also led his own bands, including a quintet that played at Cafe Society and a trio with Erroll Garner and Oscar Pettiford. Performing as a featured member of Cab Calloway’s band from 1942-1945, he appeared in several Hollywood films, including Stormy Weather.
During the Fifties Heard toured with Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic in the 1950s and after a successful engagement in Japan in 1953, stayed for many years performing and teaching. Returning to New York in 1957, J.C. played with the Coleman Hawkins-Roy Eldridge Quintet and with Teddy Wilson’s trio. In 1966 he moved back to Detroit where he was influential as a bandleader and a mentor to younger musicians. In 1983, he again recorded an album as a leader, accompanied by saxophonist George Benson, pianist Claude Black, and Dave Young on bass. In 1981, Heard started a 13 piece big band which played around the state and at festivals, often featuring Dizzy Gillespie and other colleagues. This group recorded in 1986 and continued performing regularly until his death.
Drummer J. C. Heard passed away from a heart attack on September 27, 1988 at the age of 71 in Royal Oak, Michigan. His legacy is honored with a yearly jazz drumming competition held as part of the Detroit Jazz Festival.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William Marcel “Buddy” Collette was born in Los Angeles, California on August 6, 1921. Raised in the Central Gardens area of Watts in a house his father built, he was surrounded by people of all different ethnicities. His father played piano, his mother sang and the melting pot of Watts framed the way he saw his position as a black man in the future.
He began playing piano at age ten, in middle school, the saxophone. That same year, he formed his first band with Charlie Martin, Vernon Slater, Crosby Lewis, and Minor Robinson. The following year, Collette started a band with Ralph Bledsoe and Raleigh Bledsoe, then started a third group which eventually included bassist Charles Mingus. Becoming very good friends, Collette helped Mingus find his less wild, more reserved side. When he was fifteen, Collette became a part of the Woodman brothers’ band, along with Joe Comfort, George Reed, and Jessie Sailes.
While in high school, Buddy began traveling to Los Angeles, competed in a battle of the band and lost to a band that included Jackie Kelson, Chico Hamilton, and Al Adams. However, afterward, he was asked to join the winning band, and later, Charles Mingus joined this band. By 19, he started taking music lessons from Lloyd Reese, who taught him and the other musicians how to manage themselves in the music world.
After serving as a U.S. Navy band leader, he played with the Stars of Swing with Woodman, Mingus, Lucky Thompson, Louis Jordan, and Benny Carter. In 1949, he was the only black member of the band for You Bet Your Life, a TV and radio show hosted by Groucho Marx. In the 1950s, he worked as a studio musician with Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, and Nelson Riddle.
In 1955 he was a founding member of the Chico Hamilton Quintet, playing chamber jazz flute with guitarist Jim Hall, cellist Fred Katz, and bassist Carson Smith. He was also an educator teaching Mingus, James Newton, Eric Dolphy, Charles Lloyd, and Frank Morgan. He helped merge an all-black musicians’ union with an all-white musicians’ union.
Flutist, saxophonist, and clarinetist Buddy Collette, 1994 co-founder of the JazzAmerica program, a non-profit organization that aims at bringing jazz into classrooms in middle school and high schools in the greater Los Angeles area tuition-free, passed away in his beloved hometown on September 19, 2010.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Peter Oelrichs Duchin was born in New York City on July 28, 1937, the son of pianist and bandleader Eddy Duchin and Newport, Rhode Island, and New York City socialite Marjorie Oelrichs, who died unexpectedly when he was just five days old. After the death of both of his parents, he was raised by close family friends, statesman W. Averell Harriman and his wife, Marie Norton Harriman.
Educated at Eaglebrook School, he studied piano with Carrie Barbour Swift and The Hotchkiss School prep schools in New England. He spent time in Paris, France, studied at the Sorbonne, then returned home and graduated from Yale University.
Duchin formed his first professional band, played the St. Regis Hotel in New York City in 1962 thanks in part to his family name and the networking it had made possible. His music was heard on the radio in the late 1960s and early ’70s from albums and singles released on the Decca, Bell, and Capitol labels.
From 1985 to 1989, Peter had a professional partnership with Jimmy Maxwell, leader of the traditional society jazz band in New Orleans, Louisiana. By 2009, his band had played at an estimated 6,000 performances. Duchin has served on a variety of arts boards not limited to Carnegie Hall, Spoleto Festival and the National Jazz Service Organization, the World Policy Institute, and The Center for Arts Education.
In 1996 he published his memoir, Ghost of a Chance. Pianist and bandleader Peter Duchin continues to perform and record at 82.
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