Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bob Florence was born on May 20, 1932 in Los Angeles, California. He began taking piano lessons at five and initially intended to be a concert pianist. His direction changed when he was exposed to jazz while attending Los Angeles City College.
At the beginning of his career Bob worked as a pianist and arranger with Dave Pell. He went on to found his first band in the late 1950s, working with, amongst others, Herb Geller, Bud Shank, Frank Capp and Enevoldsen.
Florence later participated in big band projects in the Los Angeles area, working mainly with session musicians and as an accompanist to various singers. Throughout his career he worked as an arranger for Harry James, Louis Bellson, Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, Count Basie and Doc Severinsen.
In 2000, Florence won a Grammy for Best Large Ensemble Performance. He died of pneumonia in Los Angeles, California on May 15, 2008 at the age of 75.
Put A Dose In Your Pocket
Daily Dose Of Jazz..
Matso Limtiaco was born May 2, 1963 and majored in music education as an undergraduate. After a brief period teaching public school music, he earned his MA in music theory/composition at Washington State University in 1990. After spending six years teaching music at all levels from junior high band to university jazz ensembles, arranging music for groups he led and for a variety of local performers.
Limtiaco gained his first notoriety as a marching band arranger for Washington State University, and then for the University of Washington. Matso quit teaching music full-time and is active as a freelance composer, arranger, and performer in the Seattle area. His baritone saxophone work has anchored the Emerald City Jazz Orchestra saxophone section since 1994, and the band’s two recordings “Alive and Swinging” and “Come Rain or Come Shine” feature his charts.
After spending several years in music education, he left teaching and now works as an independent composer/arranger, with a “day job” as a technical writer for a large manufacturing company. Among jazz arrangers and composers Matso is not the most well-known nor the most prolific but he rapidly established himself as one of the most polished and professional writers anywhere.
Inspire A Young Mind
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Henry Mancini was born Enrico Nicola Mancini on April 16, 1924 in the Little Italy neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio and was raised in the steel town of West Aliquippa near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began piccolo lessons at age eight, by 12 began piano lessons and played flute in the Aliquippa Italian immigrant band, “Sons of Italy”. After graduating from high school he went to Juilliard School of Music and after one year of study was drafted into the Army, where in 1945 was part of the liberation force of a southern Germany concentration camp.
After the war years Mancini entered the music industry as a pianist and arranger for the newly re-formed Glenn Miller Orchestra. He went on to broaden his skills in composition, counterpoint, harmony and orchestration during subsequent studies. By 1952 he joined the Universal Pictures music department and over the next six years contributed music to over 100 movies, most notably The Glenn Miller Story, The Benny Goodman Story, Touch of Evil and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. It was also during this period that he wrote his first hit single for Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians titled I Won’t Let You Out of My Heart.
Henry left Universal International to work as an independent composer and arranger in 1958 and soon scored the television series Peter for writer and producer Blake Edwards. This was the genesis of a relationship in which Edwards and Mancini collaborated on 30 films over 35 years and was one of several pioneers introducing jazz elements in the late romantic orchestral film and TV scoring prevalent at the time.
Mancini’s scored film songs Moon River, Days of Wine and Roses, The Pink Panther, A Time For Us, Baby Elephant Walk, and the Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet as well as many TV shows and movies such as the Thorn Birds, Peter Gunn and Remington Steele. Among his many singers he worked with frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Julie London, Peggy Lee among a host of others. He recorded over 90 albums, eight certified gold by the RIAA, a twenty-year contract with RCA that culminated in 60 commercial albums. Many of his songs have become jazz standards, most notably, Charade, Moment To Moment, Two For The Road, Love Story, Slow Hot Wind, Moonlight Sonata, The Pink Panther, The Days of Wine and Roses and Moon River.
Composer, arranger and conductor Henry Mancini died of pancreatic cancer in Los Angeles, California on June 14, 1994. He was working at the time on the Broadway stage version of Victor/Victoria, which he never saw on stage. Mancini was nominated for an unprecedented 72 Grammys, winning 20; nominated for 18 Academy Awards, winning four; won a Golden Globe Award, nominated for two Emmys, was posthumously Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and honored with a 37 cent postage stamp in 2004.
Put A Dose In Your Pocket
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Matt Dennis was born on February 11, 1914 in Seattle, Washington. His early exposure to music came from the family business of vaudeville, his mother who was a violinist and his father a singer. In 1933 he joined Horace Heidt’s orchestra as a vocalist and pianist. Later he would form his own band, with Dick Haymes as vocalist.
Dennis became a vocal coach, arranger, and accompanist for Martha Tilton and then worked with a new vocal group, The Stafford Sisters. Jo Stafford, one of the sisters, joined the Tommy Dorsey band in 1940 and persuaded Dorsey to hire him as arranger and composer. He would go on to wrote prolifically, with 14 of his songs recorded by the Dorsey band in one year alone, including “Everything Happens To Me”, an early hit for Frank Sinatra.
With four years in the U.S. Air Force in World War II behind him, Matt returned to music writing and arranging. He got a boost from his old friend Dick Haymes, who hired him to be the music director for his radio program, and with lyricist Tom Adair wrote songs for Haymes’ program.
Dennis made six albums, most of which are out of print; however, his 1953 song Angel Eyes that he composed with lyricist Earl Brent has become a frequently recorded jazz standard. Added to that list of standards are Will You Still Be Mine, The Night We Called It A Day and Violets For Your Furs.
Composer, pianist, arranger, singer and bandleader Matt Dennis passed away on June 21, 2002 in Riverside, California at the age of 88.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cecil Irwin was born December 7, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois. Learning to play clarinet and tenor saxophone, his career began playing with Carroll Dickerson, Erskine Tate and Junie Cobb. He would then join Earl “Fatha” Hines in 1928 in the reed section and arranging for the big band.
During this period Cecil recorded on more than a dozen sessions with Hines in a variety of ensembles with which his playing and arranging is prominent. Irwin also freelanced as a sideman working and recording with New Orleans notables Johnny Dodds, Jabbo Smith, King Oliver, and also with Stephane Grappelli and Joe Venuti.
While on tour driving outside Des Moines, Iowa, tenor saxophonist and arranger Cecil Irwin perished in a car accident at the age of 32 on May 3, 1935, cutting short a promising career.
Dose A Day – Blues Away