Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dave Lee was born on August 12, 1926 in Newington, London, England and took lessons as a child. When his photographer father was transferred during the war to the North East to work on camouflaging military equipment, it was here that he started to perform in local groups. His big break came in 1942 when he won the Melody Maker poll for Best New Jazz Pianist.
A move to South Africa in 1947 had him working as a resident musician for night clubs in Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg. He went on to study at the Johannesburg Conservatory of Music gaining a Mus.Bac. By 1954 Lee invited Johnny Dankworth to perform in South Africa, and it was Dankworth who persuaded him to return to England as a pianist/arranger for the Johnny Dankworth band. From 1955 to 1959 he played on all of the recordings made by the Johnny Dankworth Orchestra.
David performed with Terry and McGhee, the Buddy Tate Quartet and Jack Parnell. He also arranged for Norman Wisdom, Benny Hill, Cleo Laine and Judy Garland. From 1959 he led a trio who recorded a number of successful albums, including A Big New Band from Britain, which was in The Cashbox Top Ten for six weeks. The trio also produced music for the 1960s TV series The Avengers, for which John Dankworth had written the original theme music, and the Trio features prominently in the 1962 episodes The Removal Men. They would go on to appear in several other episodes.
With his composing career beginning in the 1950s, he was writing jingles for television ads, then teamed up with lyricist Herbert Kretzmer and wrote hit songs Bangers and Mash, Goodness Gracious Me, and Kinky Boots and music for the West End stage musical Our Man Crichton in 1964.
His film music career began in 1960 with low-budget features, but gradually he progressed to fine orchestral scores for important movies. In 1983, Lee was elected BBC Jazz Society Musician of the Year, and in 1990 was one of the founders of jazz-only radio station 102.2 Jazz FM. Still busy in his 90s, pianist, arranger, orchestra leader, songwriter and film composer David Lee’s novel Nothing Rhymes with Silver about a fictional jazz pianist was published in 2007.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harry Arnold Persson was born on August 7, 1920, in Helsingborg, Sweden and led his first big band in 1942, playing the saxophone initially but eventually ceased to perform, concentrating on arranging.
From 1949-52 he played and arranged for Thore Ehrling’s band and worked extensively as a studio musician, particularly writing film scores through much of the 1950s. From 1956 to 1965 Arnold led the Swedish Radio Big Band, which included Arne Domnérus, Bengt Hallberg, and Åke Persson.
American trumpeter Benny Bailey played with the band for a time, Quincy Jones arranged and briefly led the group, and they recorded with Ernestine Anderson, Lucky Thompson, Coleman Hawkins, Toots Thielemans, Tony Scott, and Stan Getz.
Disbanding the group in 1965, Arnold continued working as an arranger and led big bands in Europe. Saxophonist and bandleader Harry Arnold passed away on February 11, 1971 at the age of 51 in Stockholm, Sweden.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Kelly was born on July 31, 1915 in Miami, Florida. In the 1930s Panama Francis was a sideman in Kelly’s band. During the Forties, he played in Al Cooper’s band.
Kelly played in Francis’s Savoy Sultans band in the 1970s, and had played of the same name in the 1940s. Leading his own bands he was also a sideman who worked with Tiny Grimes, Rex Stewart, and Cozy Cole.
Tenor saxophonist, vocalist, bandleader, and arranger George Kelly, who recorded seven albums as a leader, passed away at the age of 82 on May 24, 1998.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dick Cary was born in Hartford, Connecticut on July 10, 1916 and earned a bachelor’s degree in music from Wesleyan University in 1938. He began performing in Connecticut and New York and landed a two-year full-time solo gig at Nick’s in Greenwich Village in New York City in 1941. The early 1940s saw him playing with Joe Marsala, the Casa Loma Orchestra, Brad Gowans, and as a staff arranger for Benny Goodman.
During a stint in the Army in 1944-46 while stationed on Long Island, Cary managed to continue recording with Muggsy Spanier and Wild Bill Davison among others. After his discharge, he worked with Billy Butterfield, then the pianist in the initial formation of Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars in 1947–48. In 1949–50 he was in Jimmy Dorsey’s orchestra, and throughout the 1950s worked with Eddie Condon, Pee Wee Russell, Max Kaminsky, Bud Freeman, Jimmy McPartland, and Bobby Hackett.
A move to Los Angeles, California in 1959 saw him becoming an active freelance, touring, and studio musician. Dick began writing and arranging music for the Tuesday Night Friends, who only performed annually at the Los Angeles Classic Jazz Festival and Sacramento Jazz Jubilee.
Trumpeter, composer, and arranger Dick Cary, who recorded eight albums asa leader and two-dozen as a sideman, passed away on April 6, 1994 in Glendale, California.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Joseph Harold Holmes, better known in the music world as Johnny was born in Montreal, Canada on June 8, 1916. He began playing cornet at 10 and studied briefly with C. Van Camp. After playing trumpet for a year in 1940 in a co-operative band, the Esquires, he took over its leadership from 1941 to 19.50.
After establishing the Johnny Holmes Orchestra they played Saturday nights at Victoria Hall in Montreal that was broadcast on CBC radio. They occasionally toured in Quebec and Ontario. One of Montreal’s leading dance bands of the day, it boasted a healthy jazz quotient and benefited from Holmes’ ability to identify talented younger musicians. At various times his sidemen included Nick Ayoub, Al Baculis, Percy and Maynard Ferguson, pianist Bud Hayward, Art Morrow, and Oscar Peterson. Lorraine McAllister and Sheila Graham, in turn, sang with the band.
Holmes retired from music from 1951 to 1959 but was heard 1959 to 1969 on several CBC radio shows including The Johnny Holmes Show, Broadway Holiday, among others. His orchestras made several broadcast recordings between 1966 and 1973 for the CBC’s LM series and continued to perform periodically until his retirement from music in 1978. One edition without saxophones took the name Brass Therapy.
He wrote numerous arrangements for his orchestra and his radio shows, more than 40 songs, and such extended works as The Fair City, a jazz suite dedicated to Expo 67. Trumpeter, bandleader, arranger, and composer Johnny Holmes, who has no known recording on line, passed away on June 11, 1989 in Montreal.
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