Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Ralph Jose P. Burns was born on June 29, 1922 in Newton, Massachusetts and began playing the piano as a child. Attending the New England Conservatory of Music, he learned the most about jazz by transcribing the works of Count Basie, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. While a student, he lived in the home of Frances Wayne, who was an established big band singer and her brother Nick Jerret was a bandleader who began working with him. He found himself in the company of performers as Nat King Cole and Art Tatum.

Moving to New York in the early 1940s, he met Charlie Barnet and the two men began working together. In 1944, he joined the Woody Herman band with members Neal Hefti, Bill Harris, Flip Phillips, Chubby Jackson and Dave Tough. Together, the group developed Herman’s sound. For 15 years, Burns wrote or arranged many of the band’s major hits including Bijou, Northwest Passage, Apple Honey, and on the longer work Lady McGowan’s Dream and the three-part Summer Sequence.

Herman band member Stan Getz was featured as a tenor saxophone soloist on Early Autumn, a hit for the band and the launching platform for Getz’s solo career. Burns also worked in a small band with soloists including Bill Harris and Charlie Ventura. The success of the Herman band provided Ralph the ability to record under his own name. He collaborated with Billy Strayhorn, Lee Konitz and Ben Webster to create both jazz and classical recordings.

Writing compositions for Tony Bennett and Johnny Mathis led to his later work with Aretha Franklin and Natalie Cole. He was responsible for the arrangement and introduction of a string orchestra on two of Ray Charles’s biggest hits, Come Rain or Come Shine and Georgia on My Mind. In the 1990s, Burns arranged music for Mel Tormé, John Pizzarelli, Michael Feinstein and Tony Bennett.

During the 1960s he quit touring as a band pianist and began arranging and orchestrating for Broadway shows including Chicago, Funny Girl, No, No, Nanette, and Sweet Charity. His first film score was for Woody Allen’s Bananas. He worked with Bob Fosse and won an Academy Award for Cabaret, and went on to compose the film scores for Lenny, New York, New York  and All That Jazz, the latter garnered an Academy Award. Besides winning Oscars, Burns won an Emmy,  a Tony and a Drama Desk Award. From 1996 until his death, he restored many orchestrations for New York City Center’s Encores! series.

Carefully hiding his homosexuality throughout his life, pianist, composer and arranger Ralph Burns, who was posthumously inducted into the New England Jazz Hall of Fame in 2004, passed away on November 21, 2001 from complications of a stroke and pneumonia in Los Angeles, California.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Eli Robinson was born on June 23, 1908 in Greenville, Georgia. After working in Cincinnati, Ohio in bands led by Speed Webb, Zack Whyte and also worked with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers. In 1935 he made his first recordings with Blanche Calloway.

1936 saw Eli moving to New York City, where he became a member of the Teddy Hill and Willie Bryant big bands and the Mills Blue Rhythm Band. Three years later he played with Roy Eldridge and joined the big band of Lucky Millinder.

Beginning in 1941, he spent several years as a member of the Count Basie Orchestra. He returned to working with Millinder, then joined Buddy Tate in 1954.

Trombonist and arranger Eli Robinson never recorded as a leader, and passed away on December 24, 1972 in New York City.

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Three Wishes

The answer that Billy Strayhorn gave Pannonica when she asked him what his three wishes would be, if given, was:

1. “I would wish that music would become ever more beautiful than it is, and that I would be able to listen to it forever, and write it forever.”

*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter

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Daily Dose Of Jazz

Sid Phillips was born Isador Simon Phillips on June 14, 1907 in London, England into a Jewish family. He learned violin and piano as a child, and played reeds in his teens as a member of his brother’s European band. He got his start in the music business as a publisher and director for Edison Bell.

In 1930, Phillips began writing arrangements for Bert Ambrose, and joined Ambrose’s ensemble in 1933, remaining there until 1937. Towards the end of the decade he was playing in the United States on radio and freelancing in clubs.

During World War II, Sid served in the Royal Air Force, then put together his own quartet in 1946 and wrote several pieces for the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He led a Dixieland jazz band of his own formation from 1949, and his sidemen variously included George Shearing, Colin Bailey, Tommy Whittle, and Kenny Ball.

Phillips’s first recordings under his own name were made in 1928. In 1937 through 1938, a number of his recordings were issued in the United States, through a contract he signed with Irving Mills and issued on Mills’ Variety label, as well as Vocalion, Brunswick and Columbia labels, though most of his recordings were made in England.

Clarinetist, arranger and bandleader Sid Phillips, who continued to record as a leader well into the 1970s, passed away on May 23, 1973 at aged 65 in Chertsey, Surrey, England.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Robert C. Plater was born May 13, 1914 in Newark, New Jersey and began playing alto sax at age 12. He played locally in Newark with Donald Lambert and the Savoy Dictators in the 1930s. From 1940-42 he played with Tiny Bradshaw before spending 1942-45 serving in the U.S. military during World War II. After his discharge he worked briefly with Cootie Williams, then played intermittently with Lionel Hampton between 1946 and 1964, recording eleven albums with the band.

He also arranged with Hampton, as well as doing some freelance work on the side. In 1964 he took Frank Wess’s place in the Count Basie Orchestra, where he recorded thirty-nine albums and played until his death. His only recordings as a leader were four songs for Bullet Records in 1950.

He was the co-composer of Jersey Bounce, a popular dance number in the 1940s, recorded by various musicians including Glenn Miller and Ella Fitzgerald. Alto saxophonist Bobby Plater passed away on November 20, 1982 in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

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