Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roy Williams was born on March 7, 1937 in Salford, England and learned piano as a youth, He did not play the trombone until he was 18. After serving his National Service in the military in the late 1950s, he joined the trad jazz group of trumpeter Mike Peters and worked with Terry Lightfoot in the early 1960s.
In 1965 he became a member of Alex Welsh’s band, which accompanied Ruby Braff, Wild Bill Davison, and Bud Freeman. Roy remained with Welsh until 1978, while also collaborating with bandmate John Barnes in a side ensemble. He went on to work with Humphrey Lyttelton from 1978 to 1983), and in 1980 played with the Pizza Express All Stars and Benny Waters.
Leaving Lyttelton’s ensemble in 1983 gave him the opportunity to work as a regular performer at festivals during the 1980s and 1990s. He was a sideman for Doc Cheatham, Jim Galloway, Buddy Tate, the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band, the World’s Greatest Jazz Band, Peanuts Hucko, Bent Persson, Bob Rosengarden, Stan Barker, Bob Wilber, Digby Fairweather, Pete Strange, and Keith Smith.
He co-led a swing-oriented quintet in 1998 with saxophonist Danny Moss. Their musical collaboration produced Steamers! for the Nagel-Heyer Records label.
Trombonist Roy Williams was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to jazz and continues to perform to this day.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ade Monsbourgh was born on Febrauary 17, 1917 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He studied piano first before taking up reeds, valve trombone, trumpet and even recorder. He met pianist Graeme Bell early on and was part of his band regularly during 1944 to 1952. During his tenure with the band he recorded several times with Bell’s freewheeling band and toured Europe and Czechoslovakia.
He had occasional opportunities to lead his own dates, in addition to playing with groups led by Roger Bell, Dave Dallwitz, Len Barnard and Frank Traynor. His band, the Late Hour Boys, recorded prolifically for Swaggie through 1971.
During the 1992 Australia Day Honours, Monsbourgh was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for service to music, particularly jazz as a performer and composer.
Retiring from fulltime playing in the 1970’s, clarinetist Ade Monsbourgh, known as Lazy Ade or Father Ade, and who also played alto and tenor saxophone, trumpet, trombone and recorder, passed away on July 19, 2006 in Nathalia, Victoria, Australia.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Arthur Crawford Wethington was born on January 26, 1904 in Chicago, Illinois and graduated from the Chicago College of Music. Working under pianist Lottie Hightower in the mid-1920s, he then took a position in Carroll Dickerson’s band in 1928. 1929 saw this ensemble playing with Louis Armstrong in New York City.
Between 1930 and 1936 Crawford played with the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, recording several times with the group. He recorded with Edgar Hayes in 1937 and also worked with Cab Calloway, Red Allen, and Adelaide Hall.
After 1937 Wethington quit performing full-time but was active as a music teacher, and in the 1960s he took work in New York City as a supervisor for a transit line power plant.
Saxophonist and educator Crawford Wethington, who was never recorded as a leader, passed away on September 11, 1994 in White Plains, New York.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Daniel Moses Barker was born on January 13, 1909 in New Orleans, Louisiana to a family of musicians, the grandson of bandleader Isidore Barbarin and nephew of drummers Paul Barbarin and Louis Barbarin. He took up the clarinet and drums before switching to a ukulele that his aunt got him, and then to banjo. One of Barker’s earliest teachers in New Orleans was fellow banjoist Emanuel Sayles, with whom he would record.
Barker began his career as a musician in his youth with his streetband, the Boozan Kings, and toured Mississippi with Little Brother Montgomery. 1930 saw him moving to New York City where he switched to the guitar. Through the decade he played with Fess Williams, Billy Fowler and the White Brothers, Buddy Harris, Albert Nicholas, Lucky Millinder, and Benny Carter in 1938. During his time in New York, he frequently played with West Indian musicians, who often mistook him for one of them due to his Creole style of playing.
From 1939 to 1946 he frequently recorded with Cab Calloway, and started his own group featuring his wife Blue Lu Barker after leaving Calloway. In 1945 he recorded with pianist Sir Charles Thompson, and saxophonists Dexter Gordon and Charlie Parker. In 1947 he was back with Lucky Millinder and Bunk Johnson. He returned to working with Al Nicholas in 1948 and in 1949 rejoined efforts with his wife in a group.
During the 1950s Danny was primarily a freelance musician, but did work with his uncle Paul Barbarin from 1954 to 1955. In the mid-1950s he went to California to record again with Albert Nicholas; performed at the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival with Eubie Blake. In 1963 he was working with Cliff Jackson, and then in 1964 appeared at the World Fair leading his own group. Sometime in the early 1960s he formed a group he called Cinderella. The following year he returned to New Orleans and took up a position as assistant to the curator of the New Orleans Jazz Museum.
In 1970 he founded and led a church-sponsored brass band for young people ~ the Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band. The Fairview band launched the careers of a number of professional musicians who went on to perform in brass band and mainstream jazz contexts, including Leroy Jones, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Kirk Joseph, Nicholas Payton, Shannon Powell, Lucien Barbarin, Dr. Michael White and others. In later years the band became known as the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.
He played regularly at many New Orleans venues from the late 1960s through the early 1990s, in addition to touring. Beyond overcoming the obstacles of segregation, banjoist Danny Barker, who also sang and played guitar and ukulele, authored two books and was an amateur landscape artist; and who suffered from diabetes throughout most of his adult life, passed away from cancer in New Orleans on March 13, 1994 at age 85.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harry Roy was born Harry Lipman on January 12, 1900 in Stamford Hill, London, England, and began to study clarinet and alto saxophone at the age of 16. He and his brother Sidney formed a band which they called the Darnswells, with Harry on saxophone and clarinet and Sidney on piano. During the 1920s they performed in several prestigious venues such as the Alhambra and the London Coliseum, under names such as the Original Lyrical Five and the Original Crichton Lyricals. They spent three years at the Café de Paris, and toured South Africa, Australia, and Germany.
By the early 1930s, Harry was fronting the band under his own name, and broadcasting from the Café Anglais and the Mayfair Hotel. In 1935 he married Elizabeth Brooke, daughter of the white Rajah of Sarawak, with whom he appeared in two musical films, Rhythm Racketeer and Everything Is Rhythm.
During World War II, he toured with his band, Harry Roy’s Tiger Ragamuffins. He was at the Embassy Club in 1942, and a little later, toured the Middle East, entertaining troops. In 1948, Roy traveled to the United States but was refused a work permit, so returning to Britain, he reformed his band and scored a hit with his recording of Leicester Square Rag.
By the early 1950s the big band era had come to an end and his band split up, sending him drifting in and out of the music scene. That decade he ran his own restaurant, the Diners’ Club until it was destroyed by fire. By 1969 Harry returned to music, led a quartet in London’s Lyric Theatre’s show Oh Clarence and his own Dixieland Jazz Band residency during the summer at Sherry’s Dixieland Showbar in Brighton, but by then he was in failing health. Clarinetist and dance band leader Harry Roy passed away in London on February 1, 1971.
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