Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Henry Butler was born September 21, 1949 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Blinded by glaucoma in infancy and his musical training began at the Louisiana State School for the Blind, where he learned to play valve trombone, baritone horn and drums before focusing his talents on singing and piano,
Butler was mentored at Southern University in Baton Rouge by clarinetist and educator Alvin Batiste. He later earned a master’s degree in music at Michigan State University in 1974, receiving the MSU Distinguished Alumni Award in 2009.
Due to the devastation of his home and his vintage 1925 Mason & Hamlin piano by Hurricane Katrina, Henry moved to first Boulder then Denver, Colorado but by 2009 he relocated to New York City. He has pursued photography as a hobby since 1984,and his methods and photos are featured in a 2010 HBO2 documentary, Dark Light: The Art of Blind Photographers, that aired. His photographs also have been shown in galleries in New Orleans.
Pianist Henry Butler has recorded and released nine albums as a leader for Impulse, Windham Hill and Basin Street Records and as a sideman with James Carter and Corey Harris. He joins the lineage of Crescent City pianists like Professor Longhair, James Booker, Tuts Washington and Jelly Roll Morton. He continues to perform and record in a variety of styles of music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Louis Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana and grew up in the poverty-stricken, rough neighborhood known as “The Battlefield”, which was part of the Storyville legal prostitution district. Abandoned by his father while still an infant, he and his sister lived with relatives for a period of years. He attended the Fisk School for Boys, getting his early exposure to music, worked as a paperboy, discarded food reseller, and hauled coal to the brothels and clubs and worked for a Jewish junk haulers who treated him like family.
Dropping out of school at age eleven, Louis joined a quartet of boys singing on the corner for money, and listened to the bands in Storyville. He developed his cornet playing skills by playing in the band of the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs under the tutelage of Professor Peter Davis who instilled discipline in and provided musical training to the otherwise self-taught Armstrong. He eventually became the bandleader, they played around New Orleans and by thirteen-year-old he began drawing attention by his cornet playing, starting him on a musical career. At fourteen he got his first dance hall job at Henry Ponce’s where Black Benny became his protector and guide. He hauled coal by day and played his cornet at night.
Over the next years he played in the city’s frequent brass band parades and listened to older musicians every chance he got, learning from Bunk Johnson, Buddy Petit, Kid Ory and Joe “King” Oliver, who acted as a mentor and father figure to the young musician. He toured with Fate Marable, replaced King Oliver in Kid Ory’s band, and was second trumpet in the Tuxedo Brass Band.
1922 saw Armstrong in Chicago joining King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band when the city was the center of the jazz universe. He was challenged to “cutting contests” by hornmen trying to displace the new phenomenon, which could blow two hundred high Cs in a row. He made his first recordings on the Gennett and Okeh labels, he met Hoagy Carmichael through his friend Bix Beiderbecke. Taking the advice of second wife Lil Harden Armstrong, he left Oliver and went to work with Fletcher Henderson in New York and developing his own style. By 1924 he switched to trumpet and his influence upon Henderson’s tenor sax soloist Coleman Hawkins, can be judged by listening to the records made by the band during this period.
During this time, Armstrong made many recordings on the side, arranged by Clarence Williams, with the Williams Blue Five pairing him with Sidney Bechet and backing Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Alberta Hunter. He began recording under his own name for Okeh with his famous Hot Five and Hot Seven groups Hot Five and Hot Seven groups, producing hits Potato Head Blues, Muggles and West End Blues, the music of which set the standard and the agenda for jazz for many years to come. His recording of Heebie Jeebies turned on both black and white young musicians to his new type of jazz, including a young Bing Crosby.
Over the course of his career he appeared in musical, played clubs, added vocals to his repertoire covering most famously Carmichael’s Stardust that became one of the most successful renditions. His approach to melody and phrasing was radical and evolved into scat singing. As with his trumpet playing, Armstrong’s vocal innovations served as a foundation stone for the art of jazz vocal interpretation. The uniquely gritty coloration of his voice became a musical archetype that was much imitated and endlessly impersonated.
After spending many years on the road, in 1943 Louis settled permanently in Queens, New York in 1943 in contentment with his fourth wife, Lucille. During the subsequent thirty years, he played more than three hundred gigs a year, toured Africa, Europe, and Asia under sponsorship of the US State Department earning the nickname “Ambassador Satch” and inspiring Dave Brubeck to compose his jazz musical The Real Ambassadors.
He has been honored posthumously with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, won a Male Vocal Performance Grammy for Hello Dolly, has 11 recordings inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame list his West End Blues as one of the 500 songs that shaped Rock and Roll, had a commemorative U.S. postage stamp issued, and has been inducted into six Halls of Fame, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, as well as the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, the US Open main stadium was renamed Louis Armstrong Stadium, and his Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings are now a part of the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress.
Trumpeter and vocalist Louis Armstrong, also known as Satchmo, Dipper, Pops and the King of Jazz, passed away in his sleep of a heart attack on July 6, 1971. His honorary pallbearers included Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Harry James, Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, Earl Wilson, Alan King, Johnny Carson and David Frost. Peggy Lee sand The Lords Prayer, Al Hibbler sang Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen and his long-time friend Fred Robbins gave the eulogy.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
Daily DoseOf Jazz…
Dick McDonough was born on July 30,1904. As a child learning and perfecting his technique on the banjo, by 1927 at age 23 he was playing and recording Chasin’ A Buck and Feelin’ No Pain with Red Nichols. Soon after he joined Paul Whiteman’s outfit and later exchanged the banjo for guitar.
As a guitarist Dick did extensive work as a session musician in the 1930s playing with Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, The Boswell Sisters, Joe Venuti, Benny Goodman, Miff Mole, Adrian Rollini, Red Norvo, Jack Teagarden, Johnny Mercer, Billie Holiday, Pee Wee Russell Frank Trumbauer, Glenn Miller and Gene Gifford among others too numerous to list.
McDonough teamed with Carl Kress to record as a guitar duet in the mid-1930s as well. He played in the Jam Session at Victor with Fats Waller, Tommy Dorsey, Bunny Berigan and George Wettling. His more notable compositions included Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jibe, recorded by the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra with Johnny Mercer on vocals; Stage Fright with Carl Kress, Chicken a la Swing and Danzon.
An influential guitarist and composer, the recording of his version of Fats Waller’s Honeysuckle Rose has to be considered the first “guitar solo” rendition of a jazz standard still preserved. It is a known fact that New Orleans’ guitarist Snoozer Quinn did the same in the 1920’s before everybody else, but those recordings were never issued and, until now, are considered totally lost.
The ‘guitar unaccompanied solo’ tradition followed with among others, Carl Kress, Oscar Aleman, Django Reinhardt, George Van Eps, Al Viola and in the Seventies Joe Pass brought it to a new level. But had it not been for Dick McDonough with his acoustic L5 giving to guitar a new dimension in 1934, this tradition would not have been created. Dick McDonough was unfortunately also an alcoholic and subsequently succumbed to the illness at the age of 33 on May 25, 1938.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Noble Lee Sissle was born July 10, 1889 in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father was a pastor, his mother a schoolteacher and juvenile probation officer. As a youth he sang in church choirs and as a soloist with his high school’s glee club in Cleveland, Ohio. He went on to attend De Pauw University in Greencastle, Indiana on scholarship, later transferring to Butler University in Indianapolis before turning to music full-time.
In 1918 Sissle joined the New York 369th Infantry Regiment and helped to form the 360th Regiment Band. He played violin and also served as drum major for the 369th, and under James Europe’s leadership is now considered amongst the greatest jazz bands of all time. He sang several vocals on the last disc recorded by the band that was released in March 1919.
Leaving the army after the war he joined Europe’s civilian version of the band. Not long afterwards, a disgruntled band member murdered Europe thus leaving Noble to take temporary charge of the band with the help of his friend Eubie Blake. Years earlier the two had struck up a partnership after meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. They would go on to perform in vaudeville, collaborate on the songs I’m Just Wild About Harry and Love Will Find A Way, and then produce the musical Shuffle Along and The Chocolate Dandies. He is the only Black artist to appear in the Pathe film archives.
In 1923, Sissle made two films for Lee DeForest’s Phonofilm Sound-On-Film process titled Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake featuring their song Affectionate Dan, and Sissle and Blake Sing Snappy Songs featuring Sons of Old Black Joe and My Swanee Home. These films are preserved in the Maurice Zouary film collection at the Library of Congress.
He would also appear in other short films, performed with Walter Donaldson, Nina Mae McKinney, the Nicholas Brothers and Adelaide Hall. In 1954, New York radio station WMGM, owned by the Loew’s Theatre Organization, signed him as a disc jockey. His show featured the music of African-American recording artists. Jazz composer, lyricist, bandleader, singer and playwright Noble Sissle passed away on December 17, 1975 at the age of 86 in Tampa, Florida.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Doc Severinsen was born Carl Hilding Severinsen on July 7, 1927 in Arlington, Oregon. Nicknamed “Little Doc” after his father who was a dentist, he originally wanted to play the trombone, which he discovered at neighbor Art Fletcher’s home, but his father urged him to study that instrument instead. Insisting on the trombone, he had to settle for the trumpet, as it was the only horn available in Arlington’s small music store. A week later, with the help of his father and a manual of instructions, the seven-year-old was good enough to be invited to join the high school band.
At the age of twelve, Severinsen won the Music Educator’s National Contest. While still in high school he was hired to go on the road with the Ted Fio Rito Orchestra, however, his stay with the group was cut short by the World War II draft. After serving in the Army he made his broadcasting debut playing live popular music on KODL radio in Dalles, Oregon.
In 1952 during Steve Allen’s tenure as host of the Tonight Show, Doc played first trumpet in the band directed by Skitch Henderson. He actually joined the band several months before Johnny Carson became host in October 1962. Severinsen took over as bandleader in 1967 and soon became noted for his flashy fashions. It gave him the opportunity to update many well-known swing music and jazz standards including classics by Cole Porter, Dizzy Gillespie and others.He remained the bandleader until Carson’s retirement in 1992.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Doc released a number of albums of jazz standards. He recorded with the Enoch Light Comand Records label, with Tito Puente, Clarke-Boland Big Band, Thad Jones/Mel Lewis band, the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Henry Mancini and Don Caneva’s John Hersey High School Bands.
Over the course of his career he has conducted the Phoenix, Milwaukee Minnesota and Pacific orchestras, the Buffalo Philharmonic, his recording of Abblasen has been use as the theme for CBS’s Sunday Morning, he has scored films, co-wrote hit single with Mac Davis, was named Distinguished Visiting Professor of Music and Katherine K. Herberger Heritage Chair for Visiting Artists at Arizona State University. He still performs regularly with the San Miguel 5 playing gypsy jazz, Latin, American ballads and classical Spanish styles.
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