Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Thomas Robert Talbert was born on August 4, 1924 in Crystal Bay, Minnesota and grew up listening to big band music on the radio. He learned to play piano before he became a composer. He got started as a band leader when he was drafted in the Army in 1943, becoming composer for a military band at Fort Ord, California, performing for War Bond drives throughout California.

In the late 1940s he led his own big band on the West Coast, much of his work foreshadowing what became known as West Coast jazz. During the decade in Los Angeles he worked with Johnny Richards, Lucky Thompson, Dodo Marmarosa, Hal McKusick, Al Killian, Art Pepper, Steve White and Claude Williamson…….

Moving to New York in the early 1950s after being denied a recording contract in Los Angeles, California he worked with Marian McPartland, Kai Winding, Don Elliott, Johnny Smith, Oscar Pettiford, Herb Geller, Joe Wilder, Eddie Bert, Barry Galbraith, Aaron Sachs and Claude Thornhill. In 1956, Talbert recorded two records that would become his best known works, Wednesday’s Child and Bix Duke Fats, which gained him fleeting fame.

When rock and roll eclipsed jazz in popularity, in 1960 he moved to his parents’ home in Minnesota. He tried his hand at cattle ranching in Wisconsin but eventually moved back to Los Angeles and a musical career in 1975. As a sideman he recorded with the Boyd Raeburn Orchestra,  Johnny Richards, and Patty McGovern.

In addition to composing for TV and movie studios, he became involved in music education, and set up a foundation to help talented young musicians, with one of the first recipients in 1996 was Maria Schneider.

Pianist, composer and band leader Thomas Talbert, who recorded eighteen albums as a leader, transitioned on July 2, 2005 in Los Angeles.

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