Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edward L. Gibbs was born on December 25, 1908 in New Haven, Connecticut. A student of the great banjoist and bandleader Elmer Snowden, he went back and forth among three different stringed instruments during his career.
Gibbs began his career late in the 1920s, playing with Wilbur Sweatman, Eubie Blake, and Billy Fowler. He played with Edgar Hayes from 1937 and played with him on a tour of Europe in 1938. After a short stint with Teddy Wilson, he joined Eddie South’s ensemble in 1940, and worked later in the decade with Dave Martin, Luis Russell, and Claude Hopkins.
As a bassist, he led his own trio at the Village Vanguard and played in a trio with Cedric Wallace, but returned to banjo in the 1950s during the Dixieland jazz revival. He played and recorded with Wilbur de Paris among others during this time.
After studying with Ernest Hill, he returned to bass in the middle of the 1950s, but played banjo once again in the 1960s during another surge in interest in the Dixieland groups. He played at the World’s Fair in 1965 and in 1969 he played bass and occasionally banjo as a member of Buzzy Drootin’s Jazz Family, which included Herman Autrey, Benny Morton, Herb Hall, Sonny Drootin on piano and Buzzy on drums. Also, in the late ’60s he was part of a group called The Happy Family who featured him on both banjo and bass.
Banjoist, guitarist, and bassist Eddie Gibbs, who retired from active performance in the 1970s, passed away on November 12, 1994.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Baptiste “Bat” Mosley was born on December 22, 1893 in Algiers, Louisiana, and was the brother of drummer Edgar Mosley. His father played guitar but began the youngster playing drums at age nine when he gave him a snare drum. He and his father would make money playing around town together.
Bat, however, did not work professionally until about 1923, and started with Tom Albert, then Joe Harris’ Royal Jazz Band, and later with Kid Howard. Throughout his career he also performed regularly with brass bands, including Kid Rena’s, Henry Allen’s, and the Eureka.
Drummer Bat Mosley passed away on July 28, 1965 in Algiers.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lucius Carl Watters was born on December 19, 1911 in Santa Cruz, California and raised in Rio Vista, California. At St. Joseph’s military academy he belonged to the drum and bugle corps. In 1925, he moved with his family to San Francisco, California where he started a jazz band. Teaching himself how to arrange music, he found work playing trumpet on a cruise ship. He studied music at the University of San Francisco with help from a scholarship, but he dropped out of school to pursue a career.
During the Thirties, he went on tour across America with the Carol Lofner Big Band. While in New Orleans, Louisiana he became interested in traditional jazz. Back in California, he assembled jam sessions with Bill Dart, Clancy Hayes, Bob Helm, Dick Lammi, Turk Murphy, and Wally Rose. In 1938, he formed a band that included Hayes, Helm, Squire Gersh, Bob Scobey, and Russell Bennett. The band found steady work at Sweet’s Ballroom in Oakland, California and slipped in pieces of traditional New Orleans jazz into the repertoire until Watters was fired.
1939 saw Lu established the Yerba Buena Jazz Band to revive the New Orleans jazz style of King Oliver. He brought in pianist Forrest Browne, who taught the band music by Jelly Roll Morton. He wrote music and arrangements to add to the traditional repertoire. World War II interrupted their performing and he joined the Navy. After the war they reunited and started playing at different clubs and backing visiting musicians Kid Ory, James P. Johnson, and Mutt Carey.
In 1950 the band broke up and Watters left music. He became a carpenter, cook, and a student of geology. Coming out of retirement in 1963 he performed with Murphy at an anti-nuclear protest in California to prevent a nuclear plant from being constructed at Bodega Bay. He recorded an album for Fantasy with Rose, Helm, Bob Mielke, and Barbara Dane. It included the title track and another song named for the San Andreas Fault, which was consistent with his interest in geology.
Trumpeter and bandleader Lu Watters, who had a mineral from California named wattersite in his honor, passed away on November 5, 1989 in Santa Rosa, California at age 77.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Robert Alexander Scobey Jr. was born on December 9, 1916 in Tucumcari, New Mexico and began his career playing in dance orchestras and nightclubs in the 1930s. By 1938 he was working as second trumpeter for Lu Watters in the Yerba Buena Jazz Band. By 1949, he was leading his own band under the name Bob Scobey’s Frisco Band.
In the Fifties the group continued to play a three-year residency at the Victor & Roxie’s, growing their popularity. Clancy Hayes joined the band to sing, play banjo and contributed his own compositions such as Huggin’ and a Chalkin’. The collaboration recorded over two hundred tracks until he left in 1959 to follow a solo career.
The Frisco Band broadcasted in 1952 and 1953 on Rusty Draper’s television show. In 1953, Louis Armstrong sang with them at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. From 1954-57, blues singer Lizzie Miles recorded and toured with the band.
In 1955, Scobey and his band played dates at San Quentin Prison and at the Rancho Grande in Lafayette, California. Two years later he recorded for Verve Records and RCA Victor, and on the latter Bing with a Beat recorded with Bing Crosby in 1957. From early in 1956, he toured colleges and universities and, in 1958, he recorded many of the student favorites and released the album College Classics.
While touring in 1960, he was reportedly drinking half and half or heavy cream to ease the pain in his stomach. Trumpeter Bob Scobey passed away from cancer on June 12, 1963 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His wife Jan posthumously produced a biography titled He Rambled!.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Born in Boggs, Oklahoma on December 7, 1906, George James began his career late in the 1920s, in the bands of Charlie Creath and Johnny Neal. Moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1928, he played with Jimmie Noone, Sammy Stewart, Ida Marples, Jabbo Smith, and Bert Hall.
In 1931 on into 1932 he toured with Louis Armstrong, then remained in New York City at the end of the tour. He went on to join the Savoy Bearcats and, later, Charlie Turner’s Arcadians. Fats Waller assumed leadership of the Arcadians in the middle of the decade, and James played under him until 1937.
Finishing the Thirties decade playing in the Blackbirds Revue, in the early 1940s George worked with James P. Johnson, Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson, and Lucky Millinder. He led his own band in 1943-44 and later in the decade he played with Claude Hopkins and Noble Sissle.
He was active both as a leader and a sideman into the 1970s, playing with Clyde Bernhardt and the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band in that decade. Saxophonist, clarinetist, and flautist George James passed away on January 30, 1995 in Columbus, Ohio.
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