Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sidney “Big Sid” Catlett, born January 17, 1910 in Evansville, Indiana, received at an early age instruction in the rudiments of piano and drums under the tutelage of a music teacher hired by his mother. When he and his family relocated to Chicago, Illinois he got his first drum kit, and immersed himself in the diverse styles and techniques of Zutty Singleton, Warren “Baby” Dodds, and Jimmy Bertrand, among others.
By 1928, Sid was playing with violinist and clarinet player Darnell Howard, before joining pianist Sammy Stewart’s Orchestra in New York City and performing at the Savoy Ballroom. After performing for several lesser established musical acts, he began recording and performing with multiple musicians including Benny Carter, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, Fletcher Henderson, and Don Redman throughout the 1930s.
Between 1938 and 1942, he was Louis Armstrong’s drummer of choice as he was regularly featured in Armstrong’s big band, while also periodically joining Benny Goodman’s group. Following a brief stint in collaboration with Duke Ellington in 1945, Catlett led some of his own bands through the remainder of the 1940s while staying involved in Armstrong’s All-Stars between 1947 and 1949.
Catlett was one of the few drummers to successively transition into bebop, appearing on Dizzy Gillespie’s progressive recordings in 1945. In 1950 he performed with Hoagy Carmichael at the Copley Plaza Hotel. In early 1951, he began to suffer from pneumonia. On March 25, 1951 drummer Sid Catlett passed away at the age of 41 after suffering a heart attack while visiting friends backstage at a Hot Lips Page benefit concert in Chicago, Illinois. In 1996, he was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Emanuel Perez was born on December 28, 1871 in New Orleans, Louisiana into a Creole of Color family of Spanish, French and African descent. At the turn of the century, he became a member of the Onward Brass Band, leading it from 1903 to 1930. The Onward Brass Band was one of the most respected of its day that included King Oliver, Peter Bocage, Henry Kimball, Lorenzo Tio, Luis Tio, George Baquet, Isidore Barbarin, and Benny Williams. The Perez and Oliver two cornet, or “trumpet” team, was one of the most renowned in New Orleans.
Manuel started his own brass band, called the Imperial Orchestra, which operated from 1901 to 1908. A move north to Chicago, Illinois in 1915 saw him playing with Charles Elgar’s Creole Orchestra at the Arsonia Cafe and also with the Arthur Sims Band. Returning to the Crescent City in the Twenties, he played in Storyville, on steamboat excursions with Fate Marable and in parades with the Maple Leaf Orchestra.
Suffering a stroke in 1930, he left music during this period to work with his brother, who owned a moving company, while he ran the used furniture store. Cornetist Manuel Perez, who was a sight-reader and highly technical musician, He would go on to suffer a series of strokes that left him disabled and eventually caused his death in 1946 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Quinn Brown Wilson was born on December 26, 1908 in Chicago, Illinois and played violin as a child. Studying composition and arrangement in his youth, he had his first professional experience in the mid-1920s, playing with Tiny Parham, Walter Barnes, Jelly Roll Morton, Erskine Tate, and Richard M. Jones.
The 1930s saw Quinn arranging and playing bass with Earl Hines from 1931 to 1939, in addition to playing bass on record with Jimmie Noone. Not limiting himself to just playing jazz, in the 1940s he began playing electric bass and started recording with R&B and blues musicians, including Lefty Bates and John Lee Hooker.
He continued to play jazz as well, working with Bill Reinhardt in the 1960s and Joe Kelly in the 1970s. Bassist and tubist Quinn Wilson passed away on June 14, 1978 in Evanston, Illinois.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joseph Alison Harris was born on December 23, 1926 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and took lessons at an early age from Pittsburgh native Bill Hammond, an acclaimed master of traditional rudimental drumming. The training gave him the ability to sit in with a band or orchestra and quickly sight-read almost any style of music. While still in his teens he hit the road playing in big-band ensembles for a globe-trotting career as one of the most versatile jazz drummers of his time, one of the last survivors of the golden era of bebop.
A former Pittsburgh band mate, bassist Ray Brown who had joined Dizzy Gillespie’s pioneering bebop band, arranged for Joe to audition for the drum chair, leading to be a member of the group. Fired for demanding overtime pay for a rehearsal, they later reconciled.
Remaining in high demand throughout his career, he married, lived and played in Sweden for five years during the Fifties, welcoming the contrast from the racial prejudices of the United States. Harris toured Europe with a band led by Quincy Jones, joined a state-run band at Radio Free Berlin and accompanied Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, Billie Holiday and many other greats.
He spent his last decades at his Manchester home, teaching jazz history and drums for years at the University of Pittsburgh, tapered back his performing schedule and mentored younger jazz musicians. Drummer and educator Joe Harris passed away on January 27, 2016 at age of 89.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
David Nathaniel Baker Jr. was born on December 21, 1931 in Indianapolis, Indiana and took up the trombone attending Crispus Attucks High School. He went on to matriculate through Indiana University, earning his Bachelor and Master degrees in Music, having studied with J. J. Johnson, János Starker, and George Russell.
His first teaching position was at Lincoln University in Jefferson, Missouri in 1955, a historic black institution, but Baker had to resign his position under threats of violence after he had eloped to Chicago, Illinois to marry white opera singer Eugenia (“Jeanne”) Marie Jones. Thriving in the Indianapolis jazz scene of the time, he was as a mentor of sorts to Indianapolis-born trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. Forced to abandon the trombone due to a jaw injury that left him unable to play, he subsequently learned to play cello.
The shift to cello largely ended his performing career but began his life as a composer and pedagogue. Among the first and most important people to begin to codify the then largely aural tradition of jazz he wrote several seminal books on jazz, including Jazz Improvisation in 1988. Baker taught in the Jazz Studies Department at Indiana University and made the school a highly regarded destination for students of jazz. His students included Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker, Peter Erskine, Jim Beard, Chris Botti, Jeff Hamilton, and Jamey Aebersold.
Baker’s compositions range from Third Stream to traditional to symphonic works. He composed some 2000 compositions, has been commissioned by over 500 individuals and ensembles, nominated for a Pulitzer and a Grammy award, honored three times by Down Beat magazine, and was the third inductee to their jazz Education Hall of Fame, as well as several other jazz awards.
Trombonist, cellist, composer and pedagogue David Baker, who performed with his second wife Lida, a flautist, since the Nineties and has more than 65 recordings, 70 books, and 400 articles to his credit, passed away on March 26, 2016, at age 84 at his Bloomington, Indiana home.