Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alun Morgan was born on February 24, 1928 in Pontypridd, Wales and became interested in jazz as a teenager during World War II. Charlie Parker was a significant influence on him in the late 1940s.
Morgan began to write on jazz from the early 1950 for Melody Maker, Jazz Journal, Jazz Monthly and Gramophone, and for 20 years from 1969 a weekly jazz column in a local Kent newspaper.
Over his writing career he completed liner notes for over 2,500 albums, initially for Vogue Records. From 1954 he contributed to music programs for BBC Radio. Morgan was the author of a book on modern jazz in England and the co-author of several books on jazz records. They were Jazz On Record: A Critical Guide, Jazz On Record: A Critical Guide To The First 50 years, Modern Jazz-The Essential Records, Modern Jazz – A Survey Of Developments Since 1939, Count Basie, and The Gramophone Jazz Good CD Guide.
He lectured on jazz at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Music in London, England. Additionally, he was a full-time architect until 1991.
Shortly after retiring from his other occupation, he emigrated to Australia to live out his life. Author and critic Alun Morgan transitioned on November 11, 2018.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John James Chilton was born on July 16, 1932 in London, England to working-class parents and was evacuated to Northamptonshire, where he began playing the cornet at the age of 12. Switching to trumpet at 17, after doing two years in the RAF, in 1952 he formed his own jazz band.
He worked in Bruce Turner’s Jump Band from 1958 to 1963 which also had a film of their exploits called Living Jazz in 1961. He went on to play in Alex Welsh’s Big Band. During the 1960s he played piano on some pop recordings, worked in Mike Daniels’ Big Band. He formed his own Swing Kings band which backed touring American jazz musicians including Buck Clayton, Ben Webster, Bill Coleman and Charlie Shavers. He also recorded The Song of a Road, one of the radio ballads by folk singers Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger in the 1950s for the BBC.
He would go on to work with cartoonist Wally Fawkes, form John Chilton’s Feetwarmers, and began accompanying jazz singer George Melly. Together they made records and toured the world for nearly 30 years. In 1983 and 1984 they had their own BBC television series called Good Time George, and appeared on countless other TV shows.
A songwriter and composer, one of his songs, “Give Her A Little Drop More”, was used in the film St Elmo’s Fire. John is one of the few European writers to win a Grammy Award for his album notes on Bunny Berigan and was nominated again in 2000. He won the British Jazz Award for Writer of the Year, his Who’s Who of Jazz was described as one of the essential jazz books, and he wrote award winning books on Coleman Hawkins, Louis Jordan Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong. Trumpeter John Chilton continued to play trumpet with the clarinetist Wally Fawkes in London until he passed away on February 25, 2016 in London.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Chuck Anderson was born in Chicago, Illinois on June 21, 1947. He began guitar lessons at the age of 14 and by 1963, he was teaching guitar and playing in a band.
At the age of 19, he began studies with Dennis Sandole, who was notable for his association with John Coltrane, James Moody, Michael Brecker, Pat Martino and Jim Hall.
In 1969, Anderson was offered the staff guitar job at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The Latin was a popular venue before gambling came to Atlantic City. During that period, he accompanied and performed with Bobby Darin, Billy Eckstine, and Peggy Lee, playing fourteen shows a week.
By 1973 Chuck had returned to jazz and formed the Chuck Anderson Trio with Al Stauffer on bass and Ray Deeley on drums. Four years later, he was the staff guitar job at Valley Forge Music Fair in Devon, Pennsylvania.
During the years leading up to the Eighties he worked with Nancy Wilson, Michel LeGrand, and Anthony Newley. In the years that followed, he concentrated on teaching, composing, and session work.
He has written a column, The Art and Science of Jazz, for the web magazine All About Jazz. Guitarist, educator, composer, and author Chuck Anderson continues his career in music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Fred Ramsey was born Charles Frederic Ramsey, Jr. on January 29, 1915 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received his BA at Princeton University in 1936. After graduation he took jobs at Harcourt Brace until 1939, the United States Department of Agriculture from 1941 to 1942, and then with Voice of America.
In 1939 with Charles Edward Smith, he wrote Jazzmen, an early landmark of jazz scholarship particularly noted for its treatment of the life of King Oliver. After receiving Guggenheim fellowships, Fred visited the American South in the middle of the 1950s to make field recordings and do interviews with rural musicians, some of which were used in releases by Folkways Records and in a 1957 documentary, Music of the South.
He curated an anthology of early jazz recordings for Folkways, titled simply Jazz. Ramsey worked with the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University from 1970. He researched Buddy Bolden’s life with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1974–75 and continued with a Ford Foundation grant in 1975–76. He presented early jazz interviews on National Public Radio in 1987.
Writer and record producer Fred Ramsey, who authored six books on jazz, passed away on March 18, 1995 in Paterson, New Jersey.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Digby Fairweather was born Richard John Charles Fairweather in Rochford, Essex, England on April 25, 1946. Before becoming a professional musician, he was a librarian, which embarked him on a lifetime interest in jazz bibliography and archiving.
In 1971 he led his first band, Dig’s Half Dozen, and recorded in 1973 with Alex Welsh. Four years later he was a member of the band Velvet with Ike Isaacs, Len Skeat, and Denny Wright, then a member of the Midnite Follies Orchestra and the Pizza Express All-Stars.
The early 1980s saw Fairweather starting a band that performed music by Nat Gonella. He worked as a sideman for George Chisholm, Alex Welsh, Tiny Winters, and Brian Priestley. Through the 1980s and ’90s he led the Jazz Superkings, the Great British Jazz Band, and the Half Dozen.
From 1992 to 1998 he pursued a parallel career as a broadcaster on BBC Radio and Jazz FM, occasionally deputizing Humphrey Lyttelton on his show Best of Jazz and successively presenting Jazz Parade and Jazz Notes. He was also part of the Salute to Satchmo.
Fairweather and Stan Barker started the Jazz College charity to introduce improvisation in schools. He established the Association of British Jazz Musicians and the National Jazz Foundation Archive. He wrote Jazz: The Essential Companion in 1987 with Brian Priestly and Ian Carr. In 2000 it was renamed The Rough Guide to Jazz.
Digby’s Half Dozen toured and recorded with singer George Melly, and in the later years of his career from 2003 to 2007. Apart from his playing and group leading, Fairweather wrote the book How to Play Trumpet. In 2016, founded The Jazz Centre (UK), a charity whose aim is to promote, preserve and celebrate the culture of jazz in all its forms.
Cornetist, author, and broadcaster Digby Fairweather, who has recorded nineteen albums as a leader, published four books and has received several awards for jazz, continues his career as a musician.
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