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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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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