Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William Russell was born Russell William Wagner on February 26, 1905 in Canton, Missouri. He learned to play the violin and throughout his career contributed to many a performance. When he decided to become a classical music composer he changed his name, transposing first and second and dropping his last.
He was a leading figure in percussion music composition, influenced by his acquaintances John Cage and Henry Cowell. In turn, he also influenced Cage, in his emphasis of percussion. During the 1930s, predating Cage’s main work, Russell’s percussion works called for vernacular textures such as Jack Daniels bottles, suitcases, and Haitian drums, and pianos.
One notable performance of his Fugue For Eight Percussion Instruments took place in 1933 at Carnegie Hall, with the ubiquitous and influential critic-writer-performer Nicholas Slonimsky conducting. These performances took place under the auspices of the Pan-American Association of Composers, an organization that was composed of Cowell, Slonimsky Ruth Crawford Seeger, Edgard Varese and other luminaries of American ultra-modernism.
Bill was also one of the leading authorities on early New Orleans jazz, authoring articles and books, including three essays in the milestone book, Jazzmen and the voluminous 720-page Jelly Roll Morton scrapbook, Oh, Mr. Jelly. He made many recordings of historical interest, founded American Music Records, helping bring many forgotten New Orleans performers, including Bunk Johnson back to public attention and became an important force in the New Orleans jazz revival of the early 1940s.
Moving to the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1956, he opened a small record shop from which he also repaired violins. Russell played violin with the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra, co-founded and became the first curator of The Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University in 1958,
Russell collected a large quantity of material related to the history of New Orleans, early jazz, ragtime, blues, and gospel music, all of which he kept in his French Quarter apartment. During his lifetime he always was willing to share access to the material with serious researchers.
At his death on August 9, 1992, Bill Russell, the single most influential figure in the revival of New Orleans jazz that began in the 1940s, bequeathed his collection to the Historic New Orleans Collection, where it continues to be a valuable resource for researchers in the city that became his last home.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Conrad Janis was born February 11, 1928 in New York City and learned to play trombone as a child. Throughout his life, Janis has striven to keep traditional jazz alive often performing when not in front of a camera. In 1949, Janis put together a band of aging jazz greats comprised of James P. Johnson on piano, trumpeter Henry Goodwin, clarinetist Edmond Hall, Pops Foster on bass and Baby Dodds on the drum, with himself out front on trombone.
He was also a theater, film and television actor who at the age of 19 starred in the film the Brasher Doubloon with George Montgomery and went on to appear in the film Margie with Jeanne Crain.
In 1953, he played eldest son Edward in NBC’s Bonino, guest appeared on Get Smart, The Golden Girls and Quark. He was featured in the movies The Buddy Holly Story, The Duchess and The Dirtwater Fox, and appeared as himself in the bar scene in Tom Hanks/Jackie Gleason film Nothing In Common. Janis is best known for playing Mindy McConnell’s father Frederick on Mork & Mindy.
By the late 1970s, he formed the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band, which appeared multiple times on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and made eight sold-out performances at Carnegie hall. Trombonist and bandleader Conrad Janis continues to play and act whenever possible at the age of 87.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lil Hardin Armstrong was born Lillian Hardin on February 3, 1898 in Memphis, Tennessee and grew up with her grandmother learning hymns, spirituals and classics on the piano, but she was drawn to pop music and later blues. Her initial piano instruction came from her third grade teacher, Miss Violet White, followed by enrollment in Mrs. Hook’s School of Music, but it was while attending Fisk University that she was taught a more acceptable approach to the instrument.
In 1918, Lil moved to Chicago and landed a job as a sheet music demonstrator at Jones Music Store for $3 a week. Shortly afterward bandleader Lawrence Duhé offered her $22.50 she joined him. From cabaret to the De Luxe Café to Dreamland playing behind Alberta Hunter and Ollie Powers. Replace by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, he asked her to stay, which led to an engagement in San Francisco, back to Chicago playing eventually with Oliver again.
Hardin met Louis Armstrong when Oliver sent for him and subsequently were married in 1924. She took him shopping and taught him how to dress more fashionably, and finally convinced him to strike out on his own. Moving to New York City he joined Fletcher Henderson, while she stayed in Chicago with Oliver and then leading her own band.
Hardin, Armstrong, Kid Ory, Johnny St. Cyr and Johnny Dodds comprised the Hot Five recordings for Okeh Records. She would go on to record sessions with the same group as a leader for Vocalion, Columbia Records and New Orleans Wanderers. In the late 1920s Hardin and Louis parted ways and she formed a band with a cornet player she considered Louis equal, Freddie Keppard. In the 1930s, she sometimes billed herself as Mrs. Louis Armstrong, led an All Girl Orchestra, then a mixed-sex big band, which broadcasted nationally over the NBC radio network.
The same decade she recorded a series of sides for Decca Records as a swing vocalist, recorded with Red Allen, and back in Chicago collaborated with Joe Williams, Oscar Brown Jr., Red Saunders and Little Brother Montgomery. Throughout the rest of her career she continued to perform and record, and began writing an autobiography that she never completed. A month after attending Louis’ funeral in New York City, she was performing at a televised memorial concert for Louis, Lil Hardin Armstrong collapsed at the piano and died on the way to the hospital.
Pianist, composer, arranger, singer and bandleader Lil Hardin Armstrong, second wife and recording collaborator of Louis Armstrong in the 1920s, passed away on August 27, 1971. Her compositions have been sampled and revived by many and was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2014.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James P. Johnson was born James Price Johnson on February 1, 1894 in New Brunswick, New Jersey and was also known as Jimmy Johnson. A move to San Juan Hill, where Lincoln Center stands today, and subsequent move uptown by 1911, exposed him to the musical experience of New York City’s bars, cabarets and symphonies and listening to Scott Joplin attributed to his early influences. With perfect pitch and excellent recall he was soon able to pick out on the piano tunes that he had heard.
Johnson got his first job as a pianist in 1912, left school to pursue his career in music. From 1913 to 1916 Johnson spent time studying the European piano tradition with Bruto Giannini, spending the next four to five years studying other pianists and composing his own rags. In 1914, he met Willie “The Lion” Smith and became best friends. By 1920 he had gained a reputation as a pianist on the East coast on a par with Eubie Blake and Lucky Roberts, making dozens of piano roll recordings and recording for the Perfection, Artempo, Rythmodik, QRS and Aeolian labels.
James was a pioneer in the stride playing of the jazz piano. He developed into the favorite accompanist of Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith. He continued to compose and record during the 1920s and 1930s he recorded on W. C. Handy’s Black Swan label as well as Columbia. He branched out and became musical director for the revue Plantation Days, went to Europe with the show that toured for five years and made it to Broadway.
By the Depression Era his career slowed down somewhat and he found it difficult to adapt to the new swing era music gaining popularity. In the late 1930s Johnson slowly started to re-emerge with the revival of interest in traditional jazz, but suffering a stroke in 1940 took him out of the action until 1942 when he began to record, with his own and other groups with Eddie Condon, Yank Lawson, Sidney de Paris, Sidney Bechet, Rod Cless and Edmond Hall. He went on to record for jazz labels Asch, Black and White, Blue Note, Commodore, Circle and Decca, perform with Louis Armstrong and was a regular guest on the rudi Blesh This Is Jazz broadcasts.
He would teach Fats Waller his Carolina Shout composition, Duke Ellington learned it note for note from his piano roll and the tune became a right of passage for every contemporary pianist. Considered the last major rag pianist and the first major jazz pianist he became the bridge between the two styles. His influence led to the emergence of Art Tatum, Donald Lambert, Louis Mazetier, Pat Flowers, Cliff Jackson, Hank Duncan, Claude Hopkins, Count Basie, Ellington, Don Ewell, Jimmy Guarnieri, Dick Hyman, Dick Weststood, Ralph Sutton, Joe Turner, Neville Dickie, Mike Lipskin and Butch Thompson.
Pianist and composer James P. Johnson, who composed the Roaring Twenties theme song Charleston, along with If I Could be With You One Hour Tonight, and whose music has appeared in countless films, passed away on November 17, 1955 at age 61.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Percy Gaston Humphrey was born January 13, 1905 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was the son of clarinetist Willie Eli Humphrey and the younger brother of clarinetist Willie and trombonist Earl. He learned the musical basics of New Orleans jazz from his grandfather “Professor” Jim Humphrey.
For more than thirty years he was leader of the Eureka Brass Band founded by trumpeter Willie Wilson and played alongside Willie Parker, John Casimir and George Lewis. After Wilson got ill, Alcide Landry, Joseph “Red” Clark and Dominique “T-Boy” Remy each temporarily led the group until 1946 when Percy took over until the demise of the band in 1975. He also played in the band of pianist Sweet Emma Barrett.
For years he led his own jazz band Percy Humphrey and His Crescent City Joymakers. He played regularly at Preservation Hall from its opening in the early Sixties until shortly before his death. He traveled and performed internationally with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band as well as his own bands.
As a leader and sideman of the various groups he recorded prolifically with Pax, Alamac, Folkways, Jazzology and Sounds of New Orleans. A 1951 album, New Orleans Parade, features Humphrey with trombonists Charles “Sunny” Henry and Albert Warner and saxophonist Emmanuel Paul. Their 1962 sessions, Jazz at Preservation Hall, Volume 1: the Eureka Brass Band of New Orleans, on Atlantic Records with his borhter Willie, Kid Sheik Cola, Pete Bocage, Alber Warner and Oscar “Chicken” Henry, Emanuel Pail, Wilbert “Bird” Tilman, Josiah “Cie” Frazier and Robert “Son Fewclothes” Lewis.
After 1975, Percy revived the name occasionally for festival performances and other appearances. Trumpeter and bandleader Percy Humphrey continued to lead his own band until his passing in New Orleans on July 22, 1995 at the age of ninety .His last gig was at the annual New Orleans jazz festival in April, three months before his death.
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