Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William Overton Smith was born on September 22, 1926 in Sacramento, California and grew up in Oakland, California where he began playing clarinet at the age of ten. Putting together a jazz group to play for dances at 13, by 15 he joined the Oakland Symphony. Idolizing Benny Goodman, after high school and a brief cross-country tour with a dance band, he ended his romance for the road. Giving notice when the band reached Washington, D.C., he was encouraged by an older band member to get the best education he could, so he headed to New York.
He started his formal music studies at the Juilliard School of Music, playing in New York jazz clubs at night. Uninspired at Juilliard, he returned to California after hearing the music of Darius Milhaud, who was then teaching at Mills College in Oakland. At Mills, Smith met pianist Dave Brubeck, with whom he often played, was a member of the Dave Brubeck Octet, and later occasionally subbed for saxophonist Paul Desmond in the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Brubeck’s 1960 album Brubeck à la mode that featured ten of his own compositions. Rejoining Brubeck’s group in the 1990s.
Bill went on to study composition with Roger Sessions at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was graduated with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. He won the Prix de Paris, study at the Paris Conservatory, was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1957, and spent six years in Italy. After a teaching stint at the University of Southern California, he went on to a thirty-year career at the University of Washington School of Music in Seattle, Washington. He co-led the forward-thinking Contemporary Group, first with Robert Suderburg, and then with trombonist Stuart Dempster, from 1966 to 1997.
Clarinetist and composer Bill Smith, who recorded in jazz, classical and third stream genres, passed away at age 93 in his home from complications of prostate cancer on February 29, 2020.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bill Barber was born John William Barber on May 21, 1920 in Hornell, New York. He started playing tuba in high school and studied at the Juilliard School of Music. After graduating, he traveled west to Kansas City, Missouri, where he played with the Kansas City Philharmonic and various ballet and theatre orchestras.
Joining the United States Army in 1942, he played in Patton’s 7th army band for three years. After the war, he started playing jazz, joining Claude Thornhill’s big band where he became friends with trombonist Al Langstaff, pianist Gil Evans and saxophone player Gerry Mulligan in 1947. Barber was one of the first tuba players to play in a modern jazz style, playing solos and participating in intricate ensemble pieces.
Barber became a founding member of Miles Davis’s nonet in 1949 in what became known as the Birth of the Cool recording sessions. He then worked in the theatre pit orchestras of The King and I, Paradiso, and the City Center Ballet. He joined up with Davis and Gil Evans in the late 1950s to record the albums Sketches of Spain, Miles Ahead and Porgy and Bess. Barber also played tuba on John Coltrane’s album Africa/Brass released in 1961.
Completing a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music and became an elementary school music teacher at Copiague, New York. He continued to play where possible including with the Goldman Band. In 1992, he recorded and toured with a nonet led by Gerry Mulligan, reworking material from Birth of the Cool.
From 1998 to 2004 he was part of The Seatbelts, New York musicians who played the music of the Japanese anime Cowboy Bebop. Over the course of his career, he recorded with Art Blakey, Bob Brookmeyer, Kenny Burrell, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Urbie Green, Gigi Gryce, Slide Hampton, and Pete Rugolo. Tubist Bill Barber, who was also known as Billy Barber, passed away from heart failure on June 18, 2007 in Bronxville, New York.
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