Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bobby Bryant was born on May 19, 1934 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and played saxophone in his youth before moving on to the trumpet and then the flugelhorn. A move to Chicago, Illinois in 1952, where he studied at the Cosmopolitan School of Music until 1957. Remaining until 1960, he played with Red Saunders, Billy Williams, and other ensembles.
He relocated to New York City in 1960 and then Los Angeles, California in 1961, and became a fixture on the West Coast jazz scene. Leading his own groups, in addition, Bobby played with Vic Damone, Charles Mingus, Oliver Nelson, Gerald Wilson, Frank Capp/Nat Pierce, and the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. He also worked as a studio musician and a music educator.
His most famous solo was in the song “L.O.V.E” recorded with Nat King Cole in 1964. He recorded five albums as a leader, arranged two albums for Peggy Lee in 1969 and Gene Ammons in 1971, and more than two-dozen with Brass Fever, Earth, Wind & Fire, Clare Fischer, Benny Golson, Eddie Harris Richard “Groove” Holmes, Quincy Jones, Stan Kenton, B. B. King, Blue Mitchell, Oliver Nelson, Lalo Schifrin, Horace Silver, The Three Sounds, Gerald Wilson, and Jimmy Witherspoon.
Having sustained health problems which reduced his activity to part-time, trumpeter and flugelhornist Bobby Bryant passed away in Los Angeles of a heart attack at the age of 64 on June 10, 1998.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frederick Katz was born on February 25, 1919 in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York City and was classically trained. He studied under Pablo Casals and performed with several symphony orchestras. He was a child prodigy on both the cello and piano and performed in public as a teenager and was drawn to the music of Manhattan nightclubs and to folk music. During World War II he conducted concerts and wrote musical revues for the U.S. Seventh Army. He was a member of the National Symphony Orchestra.
Katz was a member of drummer Chico Hamilton’s quintet, one of the most important West Coast jazz groups of the 1950s. His arco cello defined the chamber jazz focus of Chico Hamilton’s Quintet and the group quickly gained popularity. The Chico Hamilton Quintet, including Katz, appeared in the film noir The Sweet Smell of Success in 1957, starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, where Katz was described in passing as the Quintet’s primary composer. Katz and Hamilton wrote a score for the film which was ultimately rejected in favor of one by Elmer Bernstein.
As a leader Fred recorded several albums, wrote and conducted the arrangements for singer Carmen McRae’s 1958 album Carmen For Cool Ones, and recorded with Dorothy Ashby, Pete Rugolo, Ken Nordine and Paul Horn. He scored nineteen films and television shows including A Bucket of Blood, The Wasp Woman, Creature from the Haunted Sea and The Little Shop of Horrors. Later in his career, Katz became a professor of ethnic music in the Anthropology Department at California State University, Fullerton and California State University, Northridge, where he taught world music, anthropology and religion for over 30 years. One of his students was John Densmore, drummer of The Doors.
Cellist and composer Fred Katz, who was one of the earliest jazz musicians to establish the cello as a viable improvising solo instrument, passed away on September 7, 2013, in Santa Monica, California.
Daily Dose OF Jazz…
Carson Raymond Smith was born on January 9, 1931 in San Francisco, California and his older brother, Putter, was also a notable bassist & composer. His early work was in West Coast jazz, playing with Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Russ Freeman, and Chico Hamilton and recorded with Clifford Brown, Dick Twardzik, and Billie Holiday at Carnegie Hall through the Fifties.
In 1959, he toured with Stan Kenton, then in 1960 recorded with Charlie Barnet. 1962 saw Carson moving to Los Angeles, California and playing with Charlie Teagarden and Lionel Hampton. He toured Japan with Georgie Auld in 1964.
Later in the 1960s, he played with Buddy Rich, Arno Marsh, and Carl Fontana. He held a longtime residency at the Four Queens Hotel in Las Vegas, where he accompanied visiting musicians such as Art Farmer, Lew Tabackin, Zoot Sims, and Chet Baker. Double-bassist Carson Smith passed away on November 2, 1997, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Robert Edward Brookmeyer was born an only child on December 19, 1929 in Kansas City, Missouri and began playing professionally in his teens. Attending though not graduating from the Kansas City Conservatory of Music, he played piano in big bands led by Tex Beneke and Ray McKinley, but concentrated on valve trombone from when he moved to the Claude Thornhill orchestra in the early 1950s.
He was part of small groups led by Stan Getz, Jimmy Giuffre, and Gerry Mulligan in the 1950s and during the Fifties and Sixties he played New York City clubs, television house band, studio recordings, and arranged for Ray Charles and others. In the early 1960s Brookmeyer joined flugelhorn player Clark Terry in a band and they appeared together on BBC2’s Jazz 625.
A move to Los Angeles, California in 1968 saw Bob becoming a full-time studio musician, spending 10 years on the West Coast, and sinking into a serious alcohol problem. After overcoming this debilitation he returned to New York and became musical director for the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra in 1979. Writing for and performed with jazz groups in Europe from the early 1980s, he went on to establish and run a music school in the Netherlands, taught at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, as well as other institutions.
Eight time Grammy nominated trombonist, composer, arranger, bandleader and educator Bob Brookmeyer, who played n the mainstream, cool, post bop and West Coast jazz genres, passed away on December 15, 2011 in New London, New Hampshire.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William Overton Smith was born on September 22, 1926 in Sacramento, California and grew up in Oakland, California, where he began playing clarinet at the age of ten. He put together a jazz group to play for dances at 13, and at the age of 15 he joined the Oakland Symphony. Idolizing Benny Goodman, after high school he completed a brief cross-country tour with a dance band that ended his romance for the life of a traveling jazz musician. He gave two weeks’ notice when the band reached Washington, D.C. and encouraged by an older band member to get the best education he could, he headed to New York.
Beginning his formal music studies at the Juilliard School of Music, he played New York jazz clubs like Kelly’s Stables at night. However, uninspired by the Juilliard faculty, he returned to California and at Mills College he met pianist Dave Brubeck, and became a member of the Dave Brubeck Octet, and later occasionally subbed for saxophonist Paul Desmond in the Dave Brubeck Quartet.
Winning the Prix de Paris presented Smith the opportunity for two years of study at the Paris Conservatory, and in 1957, he was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome and spent six years in that city. He has since received numerous other awards, including two Guggenheim grants.
As an educator at the University of Southern California, he began a thirty-year career at the University of Washington School of Music in Seattle, where he taught music composition and performance. He co-led the forward-thinking Contemporary Group, first with Robert Suderburg and then with trombonist Stuart Dempster, from 1966 to 1997 and at 91 clarinetist Bill Smith is currently professor emeritus.
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