Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Aaron Lewis was born in LaGrange, Illinois on May 3, 1920 but was raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He learned classical music and piano from his mother starting at the age of seven, then continued his musical training at the University of New Mexico and also studied anthropology. He served in the Army stationed in France during World War II and during his three-year tour of duty he met and performed with Kenny Clarke. Together they formed a band and in the bop style, John composed and arranged.
After the war he went to New York where he found work in the 52nd Street clubs with Allen Eager, Hot Lips Page and others. This led to him joining dizzy Gillespie’s bop-style big band and further developing his skill as a composer and arranger while matriculating through the Manhattan School of Music. He soon returned to Europe on tour, remained a continued to write and study piano. By ’48 he was back in the States playing with Charlie Parker, Illinois Jacquet, Lester Young, Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald.
Lewis, vibraphonist Milt Jackson, drummer Kenny Clarke, and bassist Ray Brown had been the small group within the Gillespie big band that played their own short sets when the brass and reeds needed a break. This led to the foursome forming a full-time working group in 1950, known at first as the Milt Jackson Quartet. After replacing Brown with Percy Heath the name was changed to the Modern Jazz Quartet and assuming the role of musical director from 1954 to 1974, John oriented it toward a quiet, chamber style of music that found a balance between his gentle, almost mannered compositions and Jackson’s more elemental writing and playing.
Over a long and illustrious career, John directed the School of Jazz at the Music Inn, was musical director for the Monterey Jazz Festival from 1958 to 1982, taught at City College of New York and Harvard University, rejoined the re-formed MJQ, led his own sextet, founded the American Jazz Orchestra, participated in Re-Birth of the Cool, was involved in various Third Stream Projects all while continuing to teach, compose and perform.
John Lewis, conservative bop pianist, composer, arranger and musical director for the Modern Jazz Quartet passed away in New York City on March 29, 2001.
Give A Gift Of Jazz – Share
More Posts: piano
Daily Dose OF Jazz…
Ward Pinkett was born on April 29, 1906, the son of an amateur cornet player. He started playing the trumpet when he was ten years old. He played in the school band at Hampton Institute and later attended the New Haven Conservatory of Music.
After working with the White Brothers Orchestra in Washington, D. C. he moved to New York City and played for brief periods with the bands of Charlie Johnson, Willie Gant, Billy Fowler, Henri Saparo, Joe Steele and Charlie Skeete.
During his stint with Jelly Roll Morton in 1928–30, he participated in seven of Morton’s recording sessions and his solos on “Strokin’ Away” and “Low Gravy” that are considered by music historians to be the best of his career. He also worked with Chick Webb, Bingie Madison, Rex Stewart and Teddy Hill but was never able to achieve fame.
By 1935 he teamed with Albert Nicholas and Bernard Addison at Adrian Rollini’s Tap Room and also had a short stint with Louis Metcalf’s Big Band. He recorded with King Oliver, Bubber Miley, Clarence Williams, the Little Ramblers and James P. Johnson.
Ward Pinkett died of alcoholism-aggravated pneumonia on March 15, 1937 just six weeks short of his thirty-first birthday.
Take A Dose On The Road
Take A Dose On The Road
More Posts: bandleader,trumpet
Daily Dose OF Jazz…
Blossom Dearie was born April 28, 1924 in East Durham, New York and as a child she studied Western classical piano but switched to jazz in her teens. After high school Dearie moved to New York City to pursue a music career and began to sing in groups such as the Blue Flames with the Woody Herman Orchestra and the Alvino Rey’s Blue Reys before starting her solo career.
She moved to Paris in 1952 and formed a vocal group, the Blue Stars of Paris, which included Michel Legrand’s sister Christine and Bob Dorough. In 1954 the group had a hit in France with a French version of “Lullaby of Birdland”. The Blue Stars would later evolve into the Swingle Sisters. Interestingly, on her first solo album released two years later, she plays the piano but does not sing.
After returning to the U.S. Blossom, Dearie made her first six American albums as a solo singer and pianist for Verve Records in the late 1950s and early 1960s, mostly in a small trio or quartet setting. In 1962, she recorded a radio commercial for Hires Root Beer. Through the Sixties she recorded with orchestra, performed in supper clubs around New York, appeared at Ronnie Scott’s in London and recorded four albums in the UK.
After a period of inactivity, by the ‘’70s she established her own label, Daffodil Records, lent her voice to “Mother Necessity” and “Figure Eight” on “Schoolhouse Rock!” and she collaborated with Johnny Mercer on one of his final songs “My New Celebrity Is You”. Her voice and songs have been featured in such films as Kissing Jessica Stein, The Squid and the Whale, My Life Without Me and The Adventures of Felix.
Blossom Dearie, vocalist, pianist and one of the last remaining supper-club performers, continued to perform in clubs until shortly before she passed away on February 7, 2006 at age 84 in Greenwich Village, New York.
Dose A Day-Blues Away
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Peter Giuffre was born on April 26, 1921 in Dallas, Texas. A graduate of Dallas Technical High School and North Texas Teachers College, he first became known as an arranger for Woody Herman. He would become a central figure in West Coast jazz and cool jazz, and was a member of Shorty Roger’s groups before going solo. Giuffre played clarinet, as well as tenor and baritone saxophones, but eventually focused on clarinet.
His first trio in 1957 consisted of Giuffre, guitarist Jim Hall and double bassist Ralph Pena, later replace by Jim Atlas. With minor hit with Giuffre’s “The Train and the River” featured on a television special The Sound of Jazz, he was matched with Pee Wee Russell for a leisurely jam session. When Atlas left the trio, Jimmy replaced him with valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer. By 1961, Giuffre formed a new trio with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow and exploring free jazz hushed and quiet focus more resembling chamber music. The trio’s early ‘60s explorations of melody, harmony and rhythm are still as striking and radical as any in jazz.
Throughout the ‘60s Giuffre, Bley and Swallow eventually explored wholly improvised music, several years ahead of the free improvisation boom in Europe. By the early 1970s, Giuffre formed a new trio and utilized different instrumentation configurations as he ventured into electric and synthesizers. During this decade he headed the jazz ensemble at New York University, taught private lessons in saxophone and music composition. This continued through the ‘90s at the New England Conservatory of Music.
Jimmy Giuffre, who continually wrote creative and unusual arrangements and who was most notable for his development of forms of jazz which allowed for free interplay between the musicians, anticipating forms of free improvisation, passed away in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on April 24, 2008 of pneumonia, just two days shy of his 87th birthday.
Give A Gift Of Jazz – Share
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alex Hill was born on April 19, 1906 in Little Rock, Arkansas to a minister father and pianist mother who taught her child prodigy to play. Defying his father’s wishes the young pianist delved into secular music and while studying at Shorter College met Alphonse Trent and began arranging for him. After graduating in 1922 he worked with several territory bands including Fats Waller and Terence Holder.
From 1924 to 1926 Alex led his own ensemble, then played with Speed Webb, and in 1927 he spent time with Mutt Carey’s Jeffersonians and Paul Howard’s Quality Serenaders. Later that same year Hill relocated to Chicago and held a job as an arranger for the Melrose Music Publishing Company, while simultaneously arranging for the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra. He began recording as a leader and a sideman in 1928 and continued through 1934.
By 1930, prior to a move to New York City, Alex had played with Jimmy Wade, Jimmie Noone and Sammy Stewart. During his time in New York he arranged for Paul Whiteman, Benny Carter, Claude Hopkins, Andy Kirk, Eddie Condon and Duke Ellington among others. Additionally, he became staff arranger for the Mills Music Company. Reuniting with Fats Waller the two did a show together in New York called “Hello 1931”, and accompanied Adelaide Hall.
Hill again put together his own group in 1935, but after playing the Savoy Ballroom he disbanded the ensemble due to his battle with tuberculosis. Moving back to Little Rock, pianist and arranger Alex Hill passed away in February 1937 at the age of 30.
Give A Gift Of Jazz – Share