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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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Tony Lee, born Anthony Leedham Lee on July 23, 1934 in Whitechapel, London, England. He learned the rudiments of the piano from his elder brother, Arthur, who was self-taught and preferred to use the black keys rather than the white. As a consequence, he became fluent in keys such as G flat and B natural, before moving on to more standard keys, leaving him with the ability to transpose effortlessly his entire repertoire into any key.

He played as a regular for many years with his trio comprising bassist Tony Archer and drummer Martin Drew or Terry Jenkins at The Bull’s Head in Barnes, South West London, a few miles from his home in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey.

During a visit by tenor saxophonist Billy Mitchell who came to play at the Bull’s Head, both Mitchell and Lee got on so well together that the Bull’s Dan Fleming organized for both of them a 1984 U.S. tour. Despite his sketchy knowledge of musical theory, he was a complete master of his instrument, and blessed with large hands, stretching an 11th with ease, all played in a lyrical style, and swinging like a garden gate. He was arguably the greatest British exponent of the Erroll Garner piano style, though his playing embraced a much wider compass.

He appeared on at least two recordings with Phil Seamen, a live recording featuring U.S. bassist Eddie Gómez, and a solo debut, Electric Piano, earned many comparisons to the works of Burt Bacharach. Lee led at least four other album sessions, including Tony Lee Trio, probably the quintessential album of his career.

His 40-year association with bassist Tony Archer in the Tony Lee Trio, also had them playing together in the sextet The Best of British Jazz formed in the early 1970s with drummer Jack Parnell, trumpeter Kenny Baker, trombonist Don Lusher and tenor saxophonist Betty Smith.

Pianist Tony Lee, influenced by Errol Garner, Oscar Peterson, and Art Tatum, passed away on March 2, 2004 in Esher, Surrey, England.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Arnold Fishkind, sometimes credited as Arnold Fishkin was born July 20, 1919 in Bayonne, New Jersey. Growing up in Freeport, Long Island, he met and began a lifelong friendship with Chubby Jackson. At age 7, he began learning the violin, and played in The Musical Aces, a local band of budding musicians. By age 14 he was playing bass.

His first professional gig with Bunny Berigan in 1937. In the early Forties, he played with Jack Teagarden, Van Alexander, and Les Brown, however, his career was interrupted by three years of military service during World War II.

The mid-1946 saw Arnold meeting and playing with pianist Lennie Tristano in New York City, but by the fall he left to go to Hollywood to play with Charlie Barnet. During this experience, he played alongside Stan Getz. In 1947 he returned to New York City, where for the next two years he again played with Tristano, and from 1949 to 1951 he recorded with Lee Konitz and on Johnny Smith’s Moonlight in Vermont. He also continued to play with Barnet and played with Benny Goodman.

In the 1950s he became a successful session musician, for radio on Across the Board, television on The Steve Allen Show, and pop musicians including Frankie Laine. His career at ABC lasted fifteen years and included appearances in the Andy Williams Show in 1961. Fishkind became well known enough during this time to be mentioned by Jack Kerouac in his novel Visions of Cody.

With rock and roll decimating the market for jazz musicians in New York City, he moved from New York City back to California, where he found work with Dean Martin and Bob Hope television shows. He also had a few jobs substituting on the Tonight and Merv Griffin television shows, as well as some recording and film work. He toured with Les Brown and Lena Horne. He continued to record into the 1980s, playing with, among others, Frank Scott.

During his career, he performed swing and bebop jazz, television, jingles, and even western-themed music, working with Eartha Kitt, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Hasselgard, Peanuts Hucko, Charlie Parker, Shorty Rogers, Coleman Hawkins, Hank Jones, Howard McGhee, Miles Davis, Butch Stone, and Jerry Wald. Although there is no mention in the record from whom he learned bass, he gave as his primary influence Jimmy Blanton. Bassist Arnold Fishkind, who never recorded as a leader, passed away on September 6, 1999 in Palm Desert, California.

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Daily Dose of Jazz…

George Warren Barnes was born on July 17, 1921 in South Chicago Heights, Illinois. His father being a guitarist taught him to play the acoustic guitar at the age of nine. A year later, in 1931, Barnes’s brother made a pickup and amplifier for him. Barnes said he was the first person to play electric guitar.

From 1935~1937 he led a band that performed in the Midwest, 1938 he recorded the songs Sweetheart Land and It’s a Lowdown Dirty Shame with blues guitarist Big Bill Broonzy.

In doing so, it has been claimed that he became the first person to make a record on electric guitar, fifteen days before Eddie Durham recorded on electric guitar with the Kansas City Five, though the claim has been contested. In 1938, when he was seventeen, Barnes was hired as a staff guitarist for the NBC Orchestra, staff guitarist and arranger for Decca and recorded with Blind John Davis, Jazz Gillum, Merline Johnson, Curtis Jones, and Washboard Sam.

In 1940, Barnes released his first solo recording, I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles and I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love with Me on Okeh Records. Drafted in 1942 and serving in the Pentagon, after his discharge in 1946, he formed the George Barnes Octet and was given a fifteen-minute radio program on the ABC network.

In 1951, he was signed to Decca by Milt Gabler and moved from Chicago to New York City. In 1953, he joined the television orchestra on the show Your Hit Parade that was conducted by Raymond Scott and featured Barnes as a featured soloist. Working as a studio musician in New York City, playing on hundreds of albums and jingles from the early 1950s through the late 1960s. He played guitar on Patsy Cline’s New York sessions in April 1957.

In the Sixties, he recorded three albums for Mercury: Movin’ Easy (1960) with his Jazz Renaissance Quintet, Guitar Galaxies (1960), and Guitars Galore (1961). The latter two contained his orchestrations for ten guitars, known as his guitar choir, which used guitars in place of a horn section. The two albums employed a recording technique known as Perfect Presence Sound.

Barnes received the most attention as a jazz guitarist when he recorded as a duo with Carl Kress from 1961–1965. In 1969 Barnes formed a duo with jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli that lasted until 1972. In 1973, he and cornetist Ruby Braff formed the Ruby Braff–George Barnes Quartet and recorded several albums.

He recorded seventeen albums as a leader and as a sideman, Barnes recorded another thirty-nine not limited to Louis Armstrong, Steve Allen, Tony Bennett, Jackie Cooper, Bob Dylan, Bud Freeman, Johnny Guarnieri, Dick Hyman, Betty Madigan, Wingy Manone, Carmen McRae, Jimmy McPartland, Sy Oliver, Don Redman, Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, Jimmy Scott, Cootie Williams, and Joe Venuti.

As a studio musician, he also participated in hundreds of pop, rock, and R&B recording sessions. He played on many hit songs by the Coasters, on This Magic Moment by the Drifters, and on Jackie Wilson’s Lonely Teardrops. His electric guitar can be heard in the movie A Face in the Crowd.

He left New York City after his last European tour in 1975 to live and work in the San Francisco Bay area. Guitarist George Barnes, who was primarily a swing guitarist, passed away from a heart attack in Concord, California on September 5, 1977 at the age of 56.

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