Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Grégoire Maret was born May 13, 1975 in Geneva, Switzerland. He began playing the harmonica at the age of 17. Upon graduating from the prestigious Conservatoire Supérieur de Musique de Genève he moved to New York City and studied jazz at the New School University.
Maret has performed with Youssn’Dour, Me’ Shell Ndegeocello, Pete Seeger, David Sanborn, George Benson, Cassandra Wilson, Toots Thielemans, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Gretchen Parlato and the Polish orchestra Sinfonia Viva to name a few. In 2005 he toured with the Pat Metheny Group, received a Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Album for their album The Way Up, and won the Jazz Journalists Association “Player of the Year Award”.
He embarked on a two-year tour with bassist Marcus Miller, and then joined Herbie Hancock’s band. He would co-lead the jazz trio Gaïa with pianist Federico Gonzales Peña and drummer Gene Lake, record the album Scenarios with Andy Milne and play The Concert for the Rainforest with Elton John and Sting.
The harmonica player who has recorded on over six-dozen albums as a sideman, and who has been compared to Toots Thielemans and Stevie Wonder. Grégoire Maret released his self-titled debut album as a leader in 2012 and continues to perform, tour and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Klaus Doldinger was born on May 12, 1936 in Berlin, Germany. By age eleven he entered a Dusseldorf conservatory originally studying piano and then clarinet, graduating in 1957. During his student years, he gained professional performing experience in 1953 with the German Dixieland band The Feetwarmers, recording with them in 1955. Later that same year he founded Oscar’s Trio, modeled on Oscar Peterson’s work.
During the 1960s Klaus worked as a tenor saxophonist, working with visiting American jazz musicians and recording in his own right. Doldinger is perhaps best known for his film scores to the acclaimed German U-boat film Das Boot and The Never Ending Story. He was an honored recipient of the Bavarian Film Awards in 1997.
Doldinger created a recurring jazz project Passport in 1971 that mirrors Weather Report and still enjoys huge success in Germany. He has worked with Johnny Griffin, Brian Auger, Ernst Stroer, Pete York and Michael Hornek among others. Saxophonist Klaus Doldinger died on the evening of October 16, 2025 at his home in Icking, Germany at the age of 89.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Nick Moran was born on April 14, 1963 in New York City and began playing trumpet at age ten, switching over to the guitar at thirteen. His early musical influences were the British rock guitarists Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Peter Frampton. He played in several rock groups throughout high school and college while studying classical guitar. He first discovered the music of George Benson at age fifteen along with Jim Hall, Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.
Nick’s study of jazz began informally in 1991 with arranging and ear training classes at the Fachbereich Musik in Mainz, Germany, where he also played guitar and trumpet in the university big band. He returned to New York in 1998 and began formal jazz studies and graduated from City College of New York in 2001. He did rhythm section studies for two years with bassist Ron Carter and studied composition with pianist/arranger Mike Holober.
He has been a member of the Ray Santos Orchestra, Akiko Tsuruga, Shunzo Ohno, Tom Hubbard, Marco Panascia, Adam Rafferty, Rick Stone, Nick Russo and Russ Spiegel, Cliff Korman and Burt Eckoff. Nick Moran currently leads two bands, is an active solo performer, plays a seven-string guitar, performs throughout New York City and is a producer and recording engineer.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tiny Parham was born Hartzell Strathdene Parham on February 25, 1900 in Winnipeg, Canada. The pianist and bandleader grew up in Kansas City and worked at The Eblon Theatre, mentored by ragtime pianist and composer James Scott. He would later tour with territory bands in the Southwest before moving to Chicago in 1926.
He is best remembered for the recordings he made in Chicago between 1927 and 1930 working with Johnny Dodds along with several female blues singers and with his own band. Most of the musicians Parham played with are not well known in their own right, though cornetist Punch Miller, banjoist Papa Charlie Jackson, saxophonist Junie Cobb and bassist Milt Hinton are exceptions.
His entire recorded output for Victor are highly collected and appreciated as prime examples of late 1920’s jazz. Tiny favored the violin and many of his records have a surprisingly sophisticated violin solos, along with the typical upfront tuba, horns and reeds.
After 1930 he found work in theater houses, especially as an organist and his last recordings were made in 1940. The cartoonist R. Crumb included a drawing of Parham in his classic 1982 collection of trading cards and later book “Early Jazz Greats” of which Parham was the only non-American born so included in addition to the book’s bonus cd containing a Parham track.
Tiny Parham passed away on April 4, 1943 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sérgio Santos Mendes was born in Niteroi, Rio de Janiero, Brazil on February 11, 1941. S a child he attended the local conservancy with hopes of becoming a classical pianist. As his interest in jazz grew, he started playing in nightclubs in the late-1950s just as the jazz-inflected derivative of samba known as bossa nova emerged.
Mendes formed the Sexteto Bossa Rio, recorded Dance Moderna in 1961, toured Europe and the U.S., recorded with Cannonball Adderley and Herbie Mann, played Carnegie Hall and then moved to the States in 1964, cutting two albums for Capitol and Atlantic Records.
Sergio would join the Musicians Union, Create Brasil 65, change the name later to Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66, opt not to record Tito Puente’s “Oye Como Va” which would become a hit for Carlos Santana, release “Mas Que Nada” that would take them platinum. He would record “Look Around” and their fourth album “Fool On A Hill”.
His breakout success was with the performance of Burt Bacharach’s “The Look of Love” at the 1968 Academy Awards telecast, ultimately becoming the biggest Brazilian star in the world at the time. He would go on to record for Elektra, Bell, A&M and Concord record labels, collaborate with Stevie Wonder, reunite with Lani Hall on the Bond “Never Say Never Again” soundtrack, record with will.i.am and The Black Eyed Peas, Jill Scott, India Arie and others on his Timeless project, win several Grammys over the course of his fifty-five releases and be twice nominated for an Academy Award for the Look of Love and his contributions to the 2011 film “Rio”.
Bandleader, pianist, composer, arranger and songwriter Sergio Mendes died on September 5, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. He was 83.
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