Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edgar Melvin Sampson, born October 31, 1907 in New York City, he started playing violin at the age of six and picked up the saxophone in high school. He started his professional career in 1924 with a violin-piano duo with Joe Colman and through the rest of the 1920s and early ’30s, he played with many bands, including those of Charlie “Fess” Johnson, Duke Ellington, Rex Stewart and Fletcher Henderson.
1933 saw him joining Chick Webb’s band. It was during his tenure with Webb that he created his most enduring work as a composer, writing Stompin’ at the Savoy and “Don’t Be That Way“. Leaving the Webb band in 1936 with a reputation as a composer and arranger, he was able to freelance with Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Red Norvo, Teddy Hill, Teddy Wilson, and Chick Webb.
Becoming a student of the Schillinger System in the early 1940s, Edgar continued to play saxophone through the late ’40s and led his own band from 1949 to 1951. Through the Fifties, he worked as an arranger for Latin performers Marcelino Guerra, Tito Rodríguez and Tito Puente.
He recorded one album under his own name, Swing Softly Sweet Sampson, in 1956. Due to illness, he stopped working by the late 1960s. Saxophonist, violinist, composer, arranger Edgar Sampson passed away on January 16, 1973 at the age of 65 in Englewood, New Jersey.
More Posts: arranger,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone,violin
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
David Friedrich Dallwitz was born on October 25, 1914 in Freeling, South Australia. He studied violin as a child and after moving with his family to Adelaide, South Australia in 1930, he developed an aptitude for jazz piano. Beginning in 1933 for two years he studied concurrently at the South Australian School of Art and the North Adelaide School of Fine Art.
He led the Southern Jazz Group, a Dixieland band that performed at the first Australian Jazz Convention. Abandoning jazz for a period, he studied at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, composing symphonic and chamber music and taking up bassoon and cello. He became involved in composing and arranging music for revues, leading to the formation of the Flinders Street Revue Company, for which he also directed and played piano.
Returning to jazz in 1970, he resumed recording. He worked with Australian progressive musicians such as John Sangster, Bob Barnard, and Len Barnard. He led the Dave Dallwitz Ragtime Ensemble.
Pianist, bandleader, composer, and arranger, painter, and art teacher Dave Dallwitz, who led jazz, Dixieland and ragtime bands, passed away on March 24, 2003 in Adelaide after finishing the artwork for his album The Dave Dallwitz Big Band live at Wollongong, December 1984.
More Posts: arranger,bandleader,composer,educator,history,instrumental,jazz,music,painter,piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Masahiko Satoh was born on October 6, 1941 in Tokyo, Japan and the family home contained a piano. He started playing at the age of five, and twelve years later he began playing professionally accompanying singers, magicians, and strippers at a cabaret in the Ginza district.
By 1959 Satoh began playing in Georgie Kawaguchi’s band, together with alto saxophonist Sadao Watanabe and tenor saxophonist Akira Miyazawa. After graduating from Keio University, at the age of 26 he moved to the United States to study at the Berklee College of Music. During those two years of study, he read about composing and arranging, earned money working in a food shop, and played the piano in a hotel.
1968 had Masahiko writing and conducting the music for a series of pieces that were combined with dance and performed around New York City. After returning to Japan, he recorded Palladium, his first album as a leader, and appeared on a Helen Merrill album.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, his career led him to perform in a free, percussive style. Masahiko played at the 1971 Berlin Jazz Festival as part of a trio, using at the time an unusual ring modulator to alter the sound. During that period he recorded with Attila Zoller, Karl Berger, and Albert Mangelsdorff. He wrote the psychedelic music for the 1973 anime film Belladonna of Sadness.
He went on to write arrangements for recordings led by, among others, Helen Merrill, Kimiko Itoh, and Nancy Wilson. He arranged for strings and quartet on Art Farmer’s 1983 album Maiden Voyage, formed a large group, named Rantooga, that combined various forms of folk music from around the world, and composed for film, television, and advertisements. By the early 1990s pianist, composer, and arranger Masahiko Satoh composed music for a choir of 1,000 Buddhist monks and now spends 70% of his time arranging and composing, the rest on playing and recording.
More Posts: arranger,bandleader,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Fred Norman was born on October 5, 1910 in Leesburg, Florida and started out playing trombone when he was 14. After working with local bands in Florida, until moving to Washington, D.C. in 1930. There he worked with Duke Eglin’s Bell Hops, Booker Coleman, and Elmer Calloway (Cab’s younger brother). When he joined Claude Hopkins’ Orchestra in 1932, he doubled as a singer and contributed many arrangements.
Norman was with the Hopkins Big Band during its key years (1932-37), and when he departed, gave up the trombone and stuck exclusively to writing. Norman wrote arrangements for many big bands including those of Benny Goodman (1938), Bunny Berigan, Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton, Jack Teagarden, Glenn Miller, Harry James, Artie Shaw, and Tommy Dorsey.
Landing the position of staff arranger for Krupa from 1940 to 1943, he spent periods writing exclusively for Dorsey and Charlie Spivak. In the 1950s, Fred started working closely with MGM and Carlton record labels, among others, and often as a musical director for singers such as Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, and Brook Benton.
Although his orchestra backed numerous singers, he led his own orchestra record date, producing Norman Plays Novello. Trombonist, vocalist, and arranger Fred Norman, who spent most of the swing era as a busy arranger, passed away on February 19, 1993 in New York City, New York.
More Posts: arranger,bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,trombone,vocal
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.
More Posts: arranger,bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,organist,pianist