Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Ray Perry was born on February 25, 1915 in Boston, Massachusetts to a musical family and began playing the violin at a young age, and didn’t pick up the alto saxophone till he was twenty. He organized his first band, the Arabian Knights, in 1932.

Working the bread and butter gigs, he performed with the best in the business from 1935 to 1943, among numerous others, Dean Earl in the Little Harlem Orchestra, Clarence “Chick” Carter Orchestra with Gerald Wilson, then with Joe Nevils band when it masqueraded as the Blanche Calloway Orchestra, before joining the Lionel Hampton band. In the mid-thirties Ray developed a technique of simultaneously singing an octave below his playing as he bowed his violin. Hearing him, bassist Slam Stewart adopted the same technique, except he sang an octave above his playing.

Poor health forced him to return to Boston in late 1942, where he found work with Sherman Freeman, Sabby Lewis, and his fraternal band, the Perry Brothers Orchestra with Joe on tenor saxophonoe and Bey on drums, Performing more frequently on alto saxophone, despite his short career, Perry worked with Shadow Wilson, Illinois Jacquet Vernon Alley, J. C. Heard, Joe Newman, Fred Beckett, Sabby Lewis, Sir Charles Thompson, and Irving Ashby.

Health problems continued to dog him for almost a decade leading to the passing away of violinist and alto saxophonist Ray Perry from kidney disease at age 35 in November 1950 in New York City. However, his final record date was with Illinois Jacquet earlier that year. Some of his best surviving violin work was recorded with a Hampton septet in late 1940.

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