Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Michael Steven Bublé was born September 9, 1975 in Burnaby, British Columbia to a fisherman and homemaker. Their surname was originally spelled Bubli. Dreaming of becoming a famous singer since he was two, his interest in jazz began at around age five when his family played Bing Crosby’s White Christmas album. The first time his family noticed his singing talent was during the Christmas holidays, when Bublé was 13 years old, and they heard him powerfully sing the phrase “May your days be merry and bright” when singing on a car ride.

His first singing engagements were in nightclubs at age 16 and were facilitated by his plumber grandfather who offered his plumbing services in exchange for stage time for his grandson and paid for his singing lessons. As a children’s entertainer he used the name Mickey Bubbles.

Bublé grew up listening to his grandfather’s collection of jazz records and credits his grandfather in encouraging his love for jazz music. At 18 he entered a local talent contest and won, but was disqualified for being underage. He went on to enter other contests and perform in clubs, conventions, cruise ships, hotel lounges, and shopping malls.

By 1996 Michael appeared in different roles on television in Death Game, The X-Files, Big Band Boom!, and on the CTV network. He received two Genie Award nominations for Best Original Song in 2000 for I’ve Never Been in Love Before and Dumb ol’ Heart, two songs he wrote for the film Here’s to Life!.

He recorded three independent albums First Dance, Babalu, and Dream before his self-titled debut album in 2003 featuring a range of standards from various eras and genres. He has followed with seven more through 2022 along with tours, a residency, four Grammy awards, 8 Juno awards and numerous nominations. He received the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia.

Vocalist Michael Bublé, who is often credited for helping to renew public interest and appreciation for traditional pop standards and the Great American Songbook, due to his musical influences Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Elvis Presley, Bobby Darin and Sam Cooke. He continues to perform and tour.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jon Mayer was born September 7, 1938 in New York City and grew up in the fertile modern jazz evolution. Learning piano in childhood he confidently expresses strong emotions in his playing.

He also spent time in the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Band as well as on the road with Dionne Warwick, Sarah Vaughan, Anita O’Day and Manhattan Transfer. Mayer’s compositions have been recorded by Les McAnn, Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra, Nancy Wilson, Gladys Knight, Ernie Watts and Jackie Ryan.

He has recorded eleven albums as a leader and two as a sideman, Strange Blues with Jackie McLean and Like Sonny with John Coltrane.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jan Savitt was born Jacob Savetnick on September 4, 1907 in Shumsk, Russian Empire and reared in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He showed musical ability at an early age and began winning conservatory scholarships in the study of the violin. He was offered the position of concertmaster in Leopold Stokowski’s Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, but turned it down, preferring to continue his studies at Curtis Institute. About a year later, believing himself ready, he joined Stokowski and the association continued for seven years, during which time he gained further laurels as a concert soloist and leader of a string quartet.

By  1938, Jan Savitt & His Top Hatters broadcasted as the KYW staff orchestra at KYW/NBC in Philadelphia coast-to-coast. The group also played at the Earl Theatre and performed with The Andrews Sisters and The Three Stooges.

Getting his start in popular music some time later as music director of KYW, he evolved the unique “shuffle rhythm” which remained his trademark. Numerous sustaining programs created such a demand for the “shuffle rhythm” that Jan left KYW to form his own dance crew.

His band was notable for including George “Bon Bon” Tunnell, one of the first Black singers to perform with a white band. Tunnell’s recording with Savitt included Vol Vistu Gaily Star co-composed by Slim Gaillard and Rose of the Rio Grande. Helen Englert Blaum, known at the time as Helen Warren, also sang with Savitt during the war years. His orchestra had a bit role in the 1946 film High School Hero.

Shortly before arriving in Sacramento, California with his orchestra in 1948 he was stricken with a cerebral hemorrhage and taken to Sacramento County Hospital. Bandleader, arranger, and violinist Jan Savitt, known as The Stokowski of Swing, transitioned on October 4, 1948 with his wife at his bedside.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Steve Masakowski was born on September 2, 1954 in New Orleans, Louisiana and The Beatles influenced his desire to play guitar. When he was fourteen, he played bass guitar and co-founded the band Truth, which was based on the rock band Cream. During his high school years he became interested in composing, and started taking guitar lessons to learn about harmony. His teacher introduced him to the music of jazz guitarists Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino, and Lenny Breau.

He went to Berklee College of Music in 1974, studied music theory, arranging, and composition. Returning home with his girlfriend Emily Remler after getting his degree, Steve founded the group Fourplay, not to be confused with the later jazz group of the same name. From 1976 to 1978, he studied classical composition and orchestration at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts with Bert Braud.

The early Eighties he played regularly with local New Orleans musicians such as Willie Tee, Earl Turbinton, Jr. and Alvin Tyler, as well as accompanying visiting musicians Randy Brecker, Tom Harrell, Art Baron, and Dave Liebman. His next band Mars played a mix of jazz and electronic music. He then went on to  found the Composers Recording Studio with harpist Patrice Fisher, guitarist Jimmy Robinson, and violinist Denise Villere. After a ten year stretch the studio closed and he started working in duet with Ellis Marsalis Jr., then joined Astral Project, toured with Dianne Reeves. He leads the band Nova NOLA.

As an educator in 1991, he became a full-time faculty member at the University of New Orleans and became Chair of Jazz Studies and director of the jazz program in 2004 . He invented the key-tar, a guitar-like instrument with seven rows of keys instead of strings, one key at each fret. This pre-MIDI controller was hardwired to a Moog synthesizer.

Inspired by a visit to New Orleans by seven-string guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, he began to explore the seven-string guitar, first finding an early Gretsch, then designing his own models which have the expanded range of a normal guitar and bass guitar combined. Guitarist and educator Steve Masakowski continues to perform, record and educate.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Willie Henry Ruff Jr. was born September 1, 1931 in Sheffield, Alabama. He attended the Yale School of Music earning his Bachelor and Masters of Music by 1954.

He first met Dwike Mitchell in 1947 when they were teenaged servicemen stationed at the former Lockbourne Air Force Base in Ohio. Mitchell recruited Ruff to play bass with his unit band for an Air Force radio program. The two of them went on to later play in Lionel Hampton’s band but left in 1955 to form their own group, the Mitchell-Ruff Duo. They played as a second act to artists such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie.

 From 1955 to 2011 the duo regularly performed and lectured throughout the United States, Asia, Africa, and Europe. The Mitchell-Ruff Duo was the first jazz band to play in the Soviet Union in 1959 and in China in 1981. Chosen by John Hammond to be the bass player for the recording sessions of Songs of Leonard Cohen, an album first released in 1967. During those sessions, he and Cohen laid down the bed tracks for most of the songs on the album.

He is one of the founders of the W. C. Handy Music Festival in Florence, Alabama, was a faculty member at the Yale School of Music from 1971 until his retirement in 2017, teaching music history, ethnomusicology, and arranging. Willie was a founding Director of the Duke Ellington Fellowship Program at Yale, held a visiting appointment at Duke University, where he oversaw the jazz program and directed the Duke Jazz Ensemble and was on the faculty at UCLA and Dartmouth.

Over the course of his career he recorded as a soloist, in a duo and as a sideman with Quincy Jones, Bobby Hutcherson, Gil Evans, Benny Golson, Milt Jackson, Lalo Schifrin, Sonny Stitt, Clifford Coulter, Miles Davis and Jimmy Smith.

French horn and double bassist Willie Ruff,  who played in the Mitchell-Ruff Duo with pianist for over 50 years, was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and has published his memoir A Call to Assembly: The Autobiography of a Musical Storyteller, is retired at 91.

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