Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William Sebastian “Sabby” Lewis was born November 1, 1914 in Middleburg, North Carolina. Raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania he started taking piano lessons when he was five and moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1932 at fourteen. After working with Tasker Crosson’s Ten Statesmen two years later, he organized his own seven-piece band in 1936.
The late 1930s and early Forties saw Sabby and his band as mainstays at notable Boston jazz venues. In 1942, Lewis’ band won a listener contest on a broadcast from the Statler Hotel’s Terrace Room in Boston. The win garnered the band a regular gig on NBC’s The Fitch Bandwagon, heard on 120 stations at the time.
Though Lewis did not tour frequently nor leave Boston often, he did perform on Broadway, in ballrooms and clubs in Manhattan on 52nd Street. He performed with Dinah Washington and Billy Eckstine. During World War II his orchestra included tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves, and drummer Alan Dawson spent much of the 1950s in the band. His band also included trumpeter Cat Anderson, Sonny Stitt, Roy Haynes, Al Morgan, Idrees Sulieman and Joe Gordon.
Having been seriously injured in an automobile accident in 1962, his performing was greatly curtailed. Sabby became Boston’s first Black disk jockey at WBMS, which later became WILD in the Fifties. He went on to be a housing investigator for the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination until his retirement in 1984.
Pianist, bandleader, and arranger Sabby Lewis died on July 9, 1994.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Walter Dobschinski was born Dobrzynski on October 29, 1908 in Berlin, Germany. He received formal musical training on piano at the Berlin Conservatory, but concentrated on trombone once he became interested in jazz.
For most of the 1930s he played with Teddy Stauffer, including tours of western Europe and on the ship SS Reliance. In 1939 he worked with Kurt Hohenberger, and was involved with the German Dance and Entertainment Orchestra during World War II. Following the war, he led a swing jazz ensemble for Berliner Rundfunk, recording extensively with this group with Rex Stewart appearing on some of these recordings. He continued leading ensembles in the 1950s.
Trombonist and bandleader Walter Dobschinski, who in his later career concentrated on arranging and composition, died on February 16, 1996 in Berlin.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roger Wolfe Kahn was born on October 19, 1907 in Morristown, New Jersey, into a wealthy German Jewish banking family. He began studying the violin aged six and is said to have learned to play eighteen musical instruments before starting to lead his own orchestra in 1923, at the age of only 16. His interest in music led the ten year old to buy a ukulele with instructions on how to play. The ukulele turned his mind toward violins, pianos, banjos and jazz orchestras.
By sixteen he rejected college, formed his own booking agency and organized a paying band. He installed it at the Knickerbocker Grill in New York. Self-taught, he could play every instrument in the outfit, and his favorite instruments were the piano and saxophone. By the time he reached nineteen, he had eleven orchestras on his books that played in resorts and hotels from Newport, Rhode Island to Florida. His success enabled him to pursue his passion for composing music and aviation.
Kahn appeared in a short film, hired many famous jazz musicians and singers of the day to play and sing in his band, especially during recording sessions. They were Tommy Dorsey, Morton Downey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Artie Shaw, Jack Teagarden, Red Nichols, Libby Holman, Gertrude Niesen, Franklyn Baur, Dick Robertson, Elmer Feldkamp and Gene Krupa.
Early on in his career he made several recordings under the name Roger Wolfe Kahn and His Hotel Biltmore Orchestra. He and his Orchestra recorded four takes of the song Rhythm Of The Day for Victor Records and for some reason Victor chose not to release any of them. Undeterred, he wrote the song Following You Around, and arranged the score of his stage musical Rhapsurdity and Hearts and Flowers.
During his career Roger made recordings for Victor, Brunswick and Colubia records, fronted several fashionable New York night clubs and owned several clubs, one beingLe Perroquet de Paris, opened in New York in November 1926 with a five-dollar cover charge. In 1938, the Kahn Orchestra reformed to perform a special one-off concert, in what could have been the Kahn Orchestra’s last concert.
Roger Wolfe Kahn, who was a composer, bandleader and an aviator, died of a heart attack in New York City on July 12, 1962.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Paolo Ricca was born on October 2, 1963 in Turin, Italy and began studying classical piano at an early age. After school, he continued his studies and expanded into the realm of jazz performance and composition at CPM Music Institute in Milan, Italy where he graduated, under the tutelage of Franco D’Andrea.
The early 1980’s saw the beginning of his professional career performing for live audiences. A few years later Paolo performed in over 3000 concerts and festivals all over Europe, while simultaneously building a solid reputation as a studio musician. He has collaborated with John Etheridge, Soft Machine, Stèphane Grappelli, John Williams, Lee Brown, La Verne Jackson, Mokhtar Samba ( Joe Zawinul’s Sindycate, Jaco Pastorius, Carlos Santana, M. Orza, Dee D. Jackson, Haddaway and many others.
He ventured into music technology, computers, sequencers, looping, and sampling. Ricca began studio work with engineering, recording, as well as arranging and composing. He has worked for major recording companies, producing music on both a national and an international level.
Pianist Paolo Ricca, whose 2023 release, My Italian Piano Songbook, won First Prize for Best CD at the prestigious Swiss International Music Competition, continues to perform, tour and record as a leading voice in contemporary international piano music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alphonse “Al” Goyens was born October 1, 1920 in Wetteren, Belgium. He took piano lessons as a child but abandoned them at the age of twelve. In 1936, he bought a trumpet and began playing music again, teaching himself and playing with amateur bands. Completing a degree in industrial engineering, he was interned in Germany at the outbreak of the war and had to stop playing. Starting again he played too intensely, which paralyzed his lips, but overcame this situation through careful practice.
His return from captivity saw him a member of orchestras led by Henri Van Bemst and Jean Omer, making his first recordings with the latter. He then joined the orchestra of Léo Souris who played for the American army in Germany. Returning to Belgium, Al joined other musicians to form the Orchestre régulier du Cosmopolite , which gave him the opportunity to perform with major names of the jazz scene who were guests in Brussels.
In 1949 he and his orchestra again toured for the US Army, performing in Germany, the Azores, and the USA. Goyens led his orchestra for nearly a decade from 1949 featuring Jacques Pelzer, Bobby Jaspar, Francy Boland, Jean Warland, Freddy Rottier, and occasionally Don Byas and Kenny Clarke.
Once again he went on to work for the US Armed Forces and later with an international orchestra in Spain and the United States. Al later arranged and played in the Brussels Big Band. His favorite trumpeters were Clifford Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, and Clark Terry but his playing was more reminiscent of Harry Edison.
Trumpeter, arranger and orchestra leader Al Goyen played flugelhorn, and bugle, who never recorded as a leader, appreciated the sound of the muted trumpet, died on January 30/31, 2008 in Forest/Vorst, Belgium.
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