Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Donald Percy Rendell was born in Plymouth, England on March 4, 1926 and raised in London where his father, Percy, was the musical director of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company; his mother Vera was also a musician. He attended the City of London School, to which he gained a choral half-scholarship and during school was evacuated during the Second World War to Marlborough College, where he heard jazz for the first time.
Rendell began playing the piano at the age of five but switched to saxophone in his teens. While working for Barclay’s Bank, he left to become a professional musician and began his career on alto saxophone but changed to tenor saxophone in 1943. During the rest of the 1940s, he was in the bands of George Evans and Oscar Rabin. Beginning in 1950, he spent three years in the Johnny Dankworth Septet and performed with Billie Holiday in Manchester, England, before playing in the bands of Tony Crombie and Ted Heath.
After touring in Europe with Stan Kenton, he played in Cyprus with Tony Kinsey, then Don was a member of Woody Herman’s Anglo American Herd in 1959. During the late 1950s and early Sixties, he led bands, including one with Ian Carr that lasted until 1969, one with Barbara Thompson in the 1970s, and as the sole leader in the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, the Rendell-Carr Quintet gained an international reputation, performing in France at the Antibes Festival and was the Band of the Year for three years in succession in the Melody Maker poll. He performed in festivals in England and France as well as working with Michael Garrick and Brian Priestley.
He taught at the Royal Academy of Music for three years in the early 1970s, at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama beginning in 1984 and wrote instruction books on flute and saxophone. Don Rendell, who played soprano saxophone, flute, clarinet and was also an arranger, passed away after a short illness at the age of 89 on October 20, 2015.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cliff Smalls was born Clifton Arnold on March 3, 1918 and was raised in Charleston, South Carolina. His father, a carpenter, performed piano and organ for Charleston’s Central Baptist Church. He taught Smalls classical music at an early age. He left home with the Carolina Cotton Pickers and also recorded with them, for instance, Off and on Blues and “Deed I Do, which he arranged and featured Cat Anderson in 1937 when he was 19.
With his career coinciding with the early years of bebop, from 1942 to 1946 he was a trombonist, arranger and also backup piano-player for band-leader and pianist Earl Hines, alongside Dizzie Gillespie and Charlie Parker. While in the Hines band he performed often during broadcasts seven nights a week on open mikes coast-to-coast across America. Hines also used Teddy Wilson, Jess Stacy and Nat “King” Cole as backup piano-players but Smalls was his favorite. He also played in the Jimmie Lunceford and Erskine Hawkins bands.
After the inevitable post-World War II breakup of the Hines big-band, Cliff went on to play and record in smaller ensembles with his former Earl Hines band colleagues, singer and band-leader Billy Eckstine, trombonist Bennie Green, saxophonist Earl Bostic and singer Sarah Vaughan. In 1949 he recorded with JJ Johnson and Charlie Rouse. He was the pianist on Earl Bostic’s 1950 hit Flamingo along with John Coltrane but had a serious automobile accident, with Earl Bostic, in 1951 and laid in bed all of 1952, till March of 1953.
Recovering, Smalls shifted his musical career to serve as music director/arranger for singers Eartha Kitt, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis, Jr., Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Clyde McPhatter, Roy Hamilton and Brook Benton. He recorded Bennie Green with Art Farmer in 1956 and was, for many years, a regular with Sy Oliver’s nine-piece Little Big-Band from 1974-1984, a regular stint in New York’s Rainbow Room.
In the 1970s he returned to jazz-recording, including four solo tracks for The Complete Master Jazz Piano Series in 1970, with Sy Oliver in 1973, Texas Twister with Buddy Tate in 1975, Swing and Things in 1976 and Caravan in France in 1978. In 1980 Smalls was featured playing piano in The Cotton Club, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Trombonist, pianist, conductor and arranger Cliff Smalls, who worked in the jazz, soul and rhythm & blues genres, passed away in 2008.
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Three Wishes
Tom McIntosh had only one wish when asked by Pannonica:- “To be exactly as the Creator wished me to be. Then everything else would have to be alright.”
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Requisites
Saudade is an album by Brazilian composer Moacir Santos recorded in 1974 and released on the Blue Note label. The album was recorded at United Artists Studios in West Hollywood, California on March 5, 6 & 12, 1974.
The compositions that make up the album are Early Morning Love (Santos, Yanna Cotti) – 3:25, A Saudade Matta a Gente (Antonio Almeida, J. de Barro) – 6:10, Off and On (Santos, Cotti) – 3:37, The City of LA (Mark Levine) – 3:38, Suk Cha (Santos) – 4:06, Kathy (Santos, Ray Evans, Jay Livingston) – 3:37, Haply-Happy (Santos, Petsye Powell) – 2:59, Amphibious (Santos, Assis) – 3:25, This Life (Santos, Cotti) – 2:33 and lastly What’s My Name (Santos, Evans, Livingston) – 3:07.
The players were Moacir Santos – alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, conductor, arranger, Steve Huffsteter – trumpet, flugelhorn, Benny Powell – trombone, Morris Repass – bass trombone, Sidney Muldrow – french horn, Ray Pizzi – bassoon, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, flute, piccolo, Jerome Richardson – soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, flute, alto flute, Mark Levine – piano, electric piano, arranger, Lee Ritenour – guitar, electric guitar, John Heard – bass, electric bass, Harvey Mason – drums, Mayuto Correa, Carmelo Garcia – conga, percussion, and Donald Alves, Mike Campbell, Jose Marino, Petsye Powell, Carmen Saveiros, Regina Werneck on background vocals.
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Requisites
The album by Claus Ogerman and His Orchestra, Watusi Trumpets, was recorded and released in 1965 on the RCA Victor label. All the compositions were arranged, written and conducted by Ogerman, produced by Andy Wiswell and the session engineer was Mickey Crofford. The liner notes were written by Arnold Falleder.
The tracklist includes It’s Not Unusual, Stingray, Watusi Trumpets, El Watusi, Downtown and Right Now on Side A. Along with the B side featuring Harlem Watch, One Step Above, The Joker, Poinciana, La Bamba and Land Of 1,000 Dances. Filled with jazz, rock, soul, lounge and Latin rhythms this is an inspired look at a number of pop, rock, Brazilian and a classic tunes.
Steeped in the music of the Sixties this finger-popping disc may not change your life but just may take you back to those mod years and have you shaking on the dance floor.
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