Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Arthur Shapiro was born on January 15, 1916 in Denver, Colorado, and began on trumpet at age 13, ultimately picking up bass as his prominent instrument at 18. By the late 1930s he was playing with Wingy Manone, Joe Marsala, Eddie Condon, and Chu Berry. From 1938 to 1940 he played with Paul Whiteman, then returned to play with Marsala in addition to working with Bobby Hackett.
Moving to Hollywood, California in the early 1940s, Artie started playing with Jack Teagarden and Joe Sullivan before serving in the United States Army. In 1947 he returned to music, playing with Benny Goodman.
As an accompanist, he worked with, among others, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Anita O’Day, Doris Day, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. His list of recording credits runs to more than 100 during his period of activity, stretching into the late 1960s. Bassist Artie Shapiro transitioned in Los Angeles, California on March 24, 2003.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bud Scott was born Arthur Budd Scott on January 11, 1890 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He played guitar and violin as a child and performed professionally from an early age. His first job was with New Orleans dance band leader John Robichaux in 1904 and as a teenager he played with Buddy Bolden. In 1911 he was playing guitar with Freddie Keppard’s Olympia Orchestra. In 1912 he left New Orleans with a large travelling show.
As a violinist he performed with James Reese Europe’s Clef Club Orchestra at a historic 1912 concert at Carnegie Hall, and the following year worked with Europe’s ensemble on the first jazz recordings on the Victor label.He would go on to play on a number of Victor Talking Machine Company ragtime recordings with James Reese Europe’s Society Orchestra in 1913.
A graduate of the Peabody School of Music, he was a notable rhythm guitarist in Chicago, Illinois’s Jazz Age nightclubs of the 1920s. Moving there in 1923, he became a member of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, originating the now traditional shout, Oh, play that thing!, on Oliver’s recording of Dippermouth Blues. He also worked with Johnny Dodds and Jimmy Blythe, Erskine Tate, Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers and Richard M. Jones’ Jazz Wizards.
Scott was the first person to use a guitar in a modern dance orchestra, in Dave Peyton’s group accompanying Ethel Waters at Chicago’s Cafe de Paris. After performing and recording with Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra in 1928 he moved to California. Making a living as a professional musician through the 1930s, when traditional jazz was eclipsed by big-band swing music, he formed his own trio. In 1944 Scott joined an all-star combination that evolved into Kid Ory’s Creole Jazz Band. This was an important force in reviving interest in New Orleans-style jazz in the 1940s, and he wrote the majority of the band’s arrangements.
In 1944 Bud joined an all-star traditional New Orleans band that was a leader of the West Coast revival, put together for the CBS Radio series The Orson Welles Almanac. He arranged most of the songs for Kid Ory’s band, of which he was a part. His talent for arranging earned him the title of The Master.
A stroke in 1948 forced his retireent from music. Guitarist, banjoist, violinist and vocalist Bud Scott, whose obituary ran on the front page of the Los Angeles Sentinel, transitioned in Los Angeles, California on July 2, 1949, aged 59.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Abbey “Chinee Bébé” Foster was born on January 9, 1902 in New Orleans, Louisiana. A self-taught jazz drummer, he played in Storyville with William Ridgley’s Tuxedo Orchestra, and with Buddie Petit in the Eagle Band.
He recorded with Celestin’s Original Tuxedo Jazz Orchestra in 1927. After years of retirement, he made a comeback with Punch Miller’s Band at Preservation Hall in 1961.
On September 12, 1962 drummer Abbey Foster transitioned in his hometown.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charles Cyril Creath was born on December 30, 1890 in Ironton, Missouri and at an early age was playing in traveling circuses and in theater bands in the decade of the 1900s. He moved back to St. Louis, Missouri around 1919 and there he led bands playing on the Streckfus company’s riverboats traveling on the Mississippi River between New Orleans, Louisiana and St. Louis.
His ensembles became so popular that he had several bands under his own name at one time in the 1920s. A young Gene Sedric, later a mainstay of Fats Waller’s combo and orchestra, played with Creath on riverboats in the 1920s, and perhaps early 1930s. He co-led a group on the SS Capitol in 1927 with Fate Marable.
Late in the 1920s Charlie suffered from an extended illness, and primarily played saxophone and accordion instead of trumpet afterwards. He and Marable played together again from 1935 to 1938, and toward the end of the decade he opened a nightclub in Chicago, Illinois. He worked in an airplane manufacturing plant during World War II and retired in 1945. His last years were plagued with illness.
Aside from his brother-in-law, Zutty Singleton, members of Creath’s bands included Ed Allen, Pops Foster, Jerome Don Pasquall, Leonard Davis, and Lonnie Johnson. He recorded as a leader for Okeh Records between 1924 and 1927 billed as Chas. Creath’s Jazz-O-Maniacs, which were some of the hottest and most collectable jazz items recorded for OKeh’s race 8000 series.
Trumpeter, saxophonist, accordionist and bandleader Charlie Creath passed away on October 23, 1951, in Chicago.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Willie James Humphrey was born on December 29, 1900 in New Orleans, Louisiana into a musical family, the son of prominent local clarinetist and music teacher Willie Eli Humphrey. His brothers Earl and Percy also became well known professional musicians.
After establishing himself with such New Orleans bands as the Excelsior and George McCullum’s band, Humphrey traveled north, playing with Lawrence Duhé, and King Oliver in Chicago, Illinois. In the 1920s he made his first recordings in St. Louis, Missouri.
Returning to New Orleans, he played for many years with the Eureka and Young Tuxedo Brass bands, the bands of Paul Barbarin and Sweet Emma Barrett, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
Clarinetist Willie Humphrey, whose playing remained vigorous and continued to grow more inventive in his old age, passed away at 93 on June 7, 1994.
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