Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Peter Sidney Mulligan who was known by Mick, was born on January 24, 1928 in Harrow, Middlesex, England. He began playing trumpet while a student at Merchant Taylors’ School, Northwood and entered into the family wine company, but became an alcoholic and eventually was pushed out of the business by his relatives.
Forming his Magnolia Jazz Band in 1948, he met George Melly soon afterwards and they became close associates who performed together for many years. Mulligan’s orchestra included Roy Crimmins, Ian Christie, and Archie Semple that rivalled Humphrey Lyttelton’s band in popularity on the British trad jazz circuit.
While he booked excellent side men, Mick was not a top-flight musician and his own playing was often hampered by intoxication; their recording legacy is spotty because their releases were irregular and generally for small labels. He and Melly’s antics were drunken and scandalous outings, making them regular tabloid figures in the 1950s.
Breaking up his band in 1953 he reformed it a year and a half later, continuing with the new group into 1962 and was part of the biggest trad jazz event to be staged in Britain at Alexandra Palace. By the early 1960s, rock and roll had whittled the enthusiasm for trad jazz to nearly nothing and Mulligan disbanded the Magnolia Jazz Band. He went on to manage Melly, who was launching a solo career. He played occasionally into the 1970s, but mostly retired to run a grocery store. Later in life he became interested in horse racing, and owned or part-owned several race horses, including the prize-winning horse, Forever My Lord.
Trumpeter and bandleader Mick Mulligan, who was best known for his presence on the trad jazz scene, suffered a stroke at age 78 and died in Chichester, West Sussex, England on December 20, 2006.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Andy Sheppard was born on January 20, 1957 in Warminster, Wiltshire, England. In the late Seventies at the age of 19 he emerged as a musician in the Salisbury-based contemporary quartet Sphere, gigging only three weeks after picking up the saxophone. He honed his skills in the wine bars and jazz clubs of the United Kingdom (UK) and Europe in the early 1980s.
He also played with world music groups and with more established improvisers such as Keith Tippett. While still with Sphere, he moved to Paris, France working with French bands Lumière and Urban Sax. The mid-1980s saw Sheppard returning to the UK, playing often on Ki Longfellow-Stanshall and Vivian Stanshall’s Bristol, England-based Old Profanity Showboat. He released his self-titled debut solo album, featuring trumpeter Randy Brecker and bassist/producer Steve Swallow in 1987 and was awarded the Best Newcomer prize at the 1987 British Jazz Awards, followed by the Best Instrumentalist Award in 1988.
Andy would go on to join George Russell’s Living Time Orchestra and tour with Gil Evans. His sophomore solo album, Introductions in the Dark, also received Best Album and Best Instrumentalist at the 1989 British Jazz Awards. He toured the world and became the first to bring a Western jazz group to play in Outer Mongolia.
The Soft on the Inside Band was Sheppard’s first big band in 1990 for an album of the same name. This band turned into In Co-Motion, and after this he signed a deal with Blue Note Records, who issued Rhythm Method in 1993. That band expanded to Big Co-Motion and recorded a live album Delivery Suite at London jazz club Ronnie Scott’s which was released by Blue Note in 1994.
Saxophonist and composer Andy Sheppard, who has had the television movie The Music Practice, based on his music, continues to perform and compose.
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GARY VERSACE
The Band: Gary Versace~piano, Adam Kolker~saxophone, Jeremy Stratton~bass, Billy Mintz~drums
No cover. One Drink minimum. Tips for musicians encouraged.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Raymond Michael Pizzi was born January 19, 1943 in Everett, Massachusetts. His first instrument was clarinet and he attended the Boston Conservatory and Berklee College of Music in the 1960s.
Pizzi taught in Randolph, Massachusetts public schools from 1964 to 1969 before relocating to California. In the 1970s he worked with Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Frank Zappa, Shelly Manne, Willie Bobo, Moacir Santos, Mark Levine, and Dizzy Gillespie.
The Eighties saw him accompanying Nancy Wilson and was a sideman for Milcho Leviev and Bob Florence. He worked with the American Jazz Orchestra into the early-1990s. Ray recorded as a leader, including in a quartet called Windrider.
As an educator he joined the faculty at the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami in 1997.
Saxophonist, bassoonist, and flautist Ray Pizzi, nicknamed Pizza Man, died on September 2, 2021.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz..
Bernard Cash was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England on January 18, 1935. Music became his religion and he began his musical career as a trumpet player, gaining a reputation playing with different bands around the United Kingdom. At 25 he took up the double bass under the tutelage of Peter Ind. To earn a living he moved to London, England in 1961 with his wife, where he became involved in the jazz scene, and played with many musicians of note.
Returning to Yorkshire he founded the Light Music Course at Leeds College of Music. Recruiting his friend and mentor Ind, the two went about establishing the first real jazz course in the UK of which jazz guitarist Dave Cliff was an alumni. Leaving the academia of college he moved his family to Bridlington, on the East Yorkshire Coast, and worked as a peripatetic instrumental teacher. He continued to make regular trips to London to play jazz and organized jazz gigs in the North of England with many of the great players he had met.
He studied music at Hull University from 1974 to 1977 and while there Bernie organized numerous jazz gigs that included Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh. He continued to work in music education and maintained his own career. He held the position of Deputy Music Advisor for the Hull area, created the big band Great Jazz Solos Revisited, and scored some of his favourite artists’ solos, including Lester Young, Charlie Parker and Charlie Christian.
The big band enlisted the heavyweights of British jazz, Peter Ind, Peter King, Bob Burns, Art Morgan, Jim Livesey, Kathy Stobart, John Holbrooke, and Dave Cliff. He went on to create in conjunction with English playwright Alan Plater the jazz opera “Prez” based on the life of Lester Young. With the education system losing its luster he returned to London in 1986, playing jazz and being a traveling instrumental teacher.
He joined the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra, Yorkshire Opera and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and toured with them. While on tour with the Royal Philharmonic in Germany, bassist Bernie Cash, who was an accomplished flautist, saxophonist and trumpeter, collapsed and died of a heart attack on October 7th, 1988.
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