Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Skip Hall was born Archie Hall on September 27, 1909 in Portsmouth, Virginia and studied piano under his father. He lived in New York from age eight and in the late twenties, he relocated to Cleveland, Ohio where he led his own band for most of the 1930s.
He worked as an arranger on contract, arranging for Jay McShann from 1940 to 1944. During World War II he played with Don Redman and in 1943 he entered military service and played in a band while stationed in England.
He would eventually work with Hot Lips Page around the year 1945 and then joined the Sy Oliver band, who was his brother-in-law. Following this he worked with Wynonie Harris, Thelma Houston, and Jimmy Rushing before joining Buddy Tate’s group in 1948. He worked with Tate for twenty years both as a performer and arranger.
In the 1950s and 1960s, he performed with Dicky Wells, Emmett Berry, and George James, as well as working solo and with his own small groups. Arranger, pianist, and organist Skip Hall passed away in November 1980, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bill DeArango was born William Louis DeArango on September 20, 1921 in Cleveland, Ohio. A self-taught on guitar, while attending Ohio State University, he played with Dixieland bands at night. After serving in the Army from 1942–44, he moved to New York City and worked first with Don Byas and Ben Webster.
A year later, Bill was playing on an album with Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. Working as a sideman with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Ike Quebec, Slam Stewart, he then led his own band with Terry Gibbs.
In 1947, DeArango returned to Cleveland and performed locally for two decades, recorded an album with pianist John Williams in 1954. By the 1960s had opened up a guitar store, taught guitar lessons, and late in the decade, he managed the rock band Henry Tree. Performing regularly in the Seventies at Cleveland’s Smiling Dog Saloon working with Ernie Krivda and Skip Hadden, mixing hard rock and free jazz.
His next recording was on the album Another Time/Another Place by Barry Altschul, then 298 Bridge Street by Kenny Werner, and Names by Jamey Haddad. In 1993, he released his second solo album, Anything Went, with Joe Lovano.
He entered a nursing home in 1999 and suffered dementia until his death seven years later, although he continued performing locally until late 2001. Guitarist William DeArango passed away on December 26, 2005 in his hometown.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Don D.T. Thompson was born in Drumheller, Alberta on September 19, 1932. He played saxophone and clarinet at twelve and began promoting his own jazz concerts, Jammin’ the Blues, in Edmonton at 17. Moving to Toronto, Canada in 1952, he toured Canada and the United States from 1954 to 1958 with Anne Marie Moss.
Save for a period in 1965 and 1966 with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra in the United States, Thompson was a mainstay of the Toronto jazz scene through the 1960s. During the early 1960s, he led singer Tommy Ambrose in a big band ensemble. He appeared regularly at the First Floor Club with small groups and a big band from 1959 until 1965, and was seen in the NFB’s Toronto Jazz with a quintet.
He performed on many CBC TV pop music shows, Club Six and Music Hop and played in several Toronto studio orchestras. In 1961 he recorded as a member of the Pat Riccio Big Band in Ottawa and 1963 saw him with pianist Wray Downes and trombonist Rob McConnell. He also released a record as part of a quintet that included trumpeter Fred Stone.
After touring for ten years beginning in 1971 and recording with pop singer Anne Murray, he returned to jazz. In 1981 moving away from his early bebop-based style he landed on a simpler, full-toned, melodic approach in the manner of a Stanley Turrentine. D.T. wrote and recorded several jazz themes; his pop-song arrangements appear on albums by Murray, John Allan Cameron and Gordon Lightfoot.
Saxophonist, composer, and arranger Don D.T. Thompson passed away in Vancouver, Canada on March 21, 2004.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cat Anderson was born William Alonzo Anderson on September 12, 1916 in Greenville, South Carolina. Losing both parents when he was four years old, he was sent to live at the Jenkins Orphanage in Charleston, South Carolina where he learned to play the trumpet. It was his classmates that gave him the nickname “Cat” based on his fighting style.
He toured and made his first recording with the Carolina Cotton Pickers, a small group based at the orphanage. After leaving the Cotton Pickers, Anderson played with guitarist Hartley Toots, the Claude Hopkins Big Band, Lucky Millinder, the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra, the Sabby Lewis Orchestra, the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, with whom he recorded the classic Flying Home No. 2, and the Doc Wheeler Sunset Orchestra with whom he also recorded from 1938–1942.
His career took off in 1944 when he joined Duke Ellington’s orchestra at the Earle Theater in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He quickly became a central part of Ellington’s sound. Although Anderson was a very versatile musician, capable of playing in a number of jazz styles, he is most renowned for his abilities in the extreme high or “altissimo” range. He had a big sound in all registers but could play up to a “triple C” with great power, able to perform his high-note solos without a microphone.
A master of half valve and plunger mute playing, Cat was capable of filling in for anyone else who was not there. He led and fronted his own big band and in addition, he was a very skilled arranger and composer. He performed his own compositions El Gato and Bluejean Beguine with Ellington, and others of his compositions and arrangements with his own band, for example on his 1959 Mercury recording, Cat on a Hot Tin Horn.
After 1971, he settled in the Los Angeles, California area, where he continued to play studio sessions, perform with local small and big bands, and to tour Europe. He recorded seven albums as a leader, and as a sideman recorded sixty-four with Johnny Hodges, Quincy Jones, Rosemary Clooney, Frances Faye, Mel Torme, Earl Hines, Bell Berry, Benny Carter, Claude Bolling, Gene Ammons, Louis Bellson, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Lionel Hampton. Trumpeter Cat Anderson passed away from cancer on April 29, 1981.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harry Percy South was born on September 7, 1929 in Fulham, London, England. Coming into prominence in the 1950s, he subsequently performed with Joe Harriott, Dizzy Reece, Tony Crombie, and Tubby Hayes. In 1954, he was in the Tony Crombie Orchestra, together with Dizzy Reece, Les Condon, Joe Temperley, Sammy Walker, Lennie Dawes, and Ashley Kozak.
After returning from a nine-month stint in Calcutta, India, with the Ashley Kozak Quartet, he spent four years with the Dick Morrissey Quartet, where he both wrote and arranged material for their subsequent four albums.
Forming his own jazz big band in 1966, featuring UK musicians Hayes, Dick Morrissey, Phil Seamen, Keith Christie, Ronnie Scott, and Ian Carr, and recorded an album for Mercury Records. In the mid-1960s, he began working with British rhythm & blues singer and organist Georgie Fame, with whom he recorded the album Sound Venture. At that time he was also composing and arranging for Humphrey Lyttelton, Buddy Rich, Sarah Vaughan, and Jimmy Witherspoon.
Working for a time as the musical director to Annie Ross, Harry later branched out into session work, writing themes for television and music libraries, and having written the scores for the Pete Walker films, he is also credited with the arrangements for Emerson, Lake & Palmer, again arranged for Annie Ross and Georgie Fame in collaboration on what was to be Hoagy Carmichael’s last recording, In Hoagland.
Pianist, composer, and arranger Harry South, who was honored with the CD Portraits ~ The Music of Harry South released by the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, passed away on March 12, 1990 in Lambeth, London at age 60.
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