Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Oleg Leonidovich Lundstrem was born April 2, 1916 into a family of musicians in Chita, Transbaikal Oblast. His family moved to Harbin, China when he was five. By 1935, inspired by Duke Ellington’s Dear Old Southland record which he purchased, he joined forces with eight other young Russian amateur musicians and formed the Oleg Lundstrem Orchestra. The following year the band moved to Shanghai, China where they immediately became popular among the public. The band was an important part of Shanghai’s jazz scene until 1947, along with Buck Clayton Orchestra.

After World War II, in 1947 Oleg returned to the Soviet Union and settled in Kazan, where he worked as a violinist in the opera and ballet theatre, while keeping his jazz orchestra as a side act. 1956 saw the Oleg Lundstrem Orchestra moving to Moscow where he was appointed by the Soviet cultural authorities as the orchestra’s art director and conductor.

His orchestra was recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest continuously existing jazz band in the world, the official name being The State Oleg Lundstrem Chamber Orchestra of Jazz Music.

Composer and conductor Oleg Lundstrem, also spelled Lundstroem or Lundström, transitioned from natural causes at his home on October 14, 2005 in Korolyov, Moscow Oblast at the age of 89.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Alan Haven was born Alan Halpern on April 1, 1935 in Prestwich, Lancashire, United Kingdom. His early work was performed on a Lowrey organ. He collaborated with John Barry on two Bond movies ~ From Russia With Love and Dr. No, and Barry wrote an extended jazz organ solo for his Oscar-winning theme from The Lion in Winter and recorded it as a single.

He released several albums in the 1960s and 1970s, initially on Fontana Records, CBS Records including a recording of a live set at Ronnie Scott’s in London, England. He released Live at Annie’s Room  and Mastersound, remastered and re-released three of Alan’s previous albums Organ Show, Images and Collector’s Item.

Local musicians, including Eric Delaney, organized a big band night featuring Alan. With his wife Karen they produced four albums which were Two, Day By Day, Libra and By The Seaside, which was released in 1992.

Organist Alan Haven transitioned on January 7, 2016.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Russ Spiegel was born March 30, 1962 in Los Angeles, California, and raised in Santa Monica, California. His family was musical as he has an older sister who plays the bluegrass fiddle, a pianist and composer brother and a father who is an avid amateur jazz trumpeter.

A fan of pop radio as a youngster, Russ discovered rock music as he entered his teens. Picking up the electric guitar he took lessons at a local music store, eventually buying a Fender Stratocaster. He started jamming with area musicians, which led to forming a rock cover band. Finishing high school in Frankfurt, Germany he enrolled in the University of Maryland that had a campus in Munich, Germany. While there, he formed a progressive-rock band, joined a local R&B and soul unit, and began learning jazz standards. In 1982 Spiegel returned to the U.S. to complete his bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, earning a degree in philosophy.

In 1986 had Spiegel in Boston, Massachusetts on scholarship at Berklee College of Music. Upon completion of his studies, he relocated to Germany in 1988 where he gradually made contacts in the music world. He began playing on military bases and at local jazz clubs and festivals. During a stint in Paris, France he formed a quartet called Guitar Hell, which toured widely in France and Germany. He soon found himself in demand as a guitarist and electric bassist with various European big bands, jazz ensembles, and blues groups.

Around the same time, Russ joined the band of German jazz organist Barbara Dennerlein and toured Europe with her before receiving the coveted Jazz Scholarship by the city of Frankfurt for his contributions to the city’s artistic scene.

In 2001 Spiegel returned to the U.S. settled in New York City and studied under teachers Adam Rogers, Paul Bollenback, Ben Monder and John Patitucci, receiving his master’s degree in jazz performance from the City College of New York.

In 2008 his Jazz/North Indian classical fusion ensemble, Sundar Shor, undertook a tour of India under the auspices of the American Center, and it has toured widely in Europe as well. Guitarist Russ Spiegel continues to perform and record.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Linton Garner was born on March 25, 1915 in Greensboro, North Carolina. As a youngster he wanted to play cornet rather than piano, but due to problems with his teeth, was forced to concentrate on the keyboard. From the age of 8 until 10 he had piano lessons, as did his three sisters, unlike his brother.

He was arranger and pianist with Fletcher Henderson’s band before the Second World War, then spent 1943 to 1946 in the army, where he played both piano and trumpet in different bands. Afterwards he was pianist and arranger for a number of distinguished bands including those of Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie. He also accompanied Sarah Vaughan, Nat King Cole, Carmen McRae and Della Reese. He also wrote songs, including You’re the One For Me.

Moving to Canada in 1963, by 1974 he was invited by Arni May to Vancouver, British Columbia to accompany him at the opening of the Richmond Inn Hotel. Linton stayed in Vancouver and worked in many venues becoming the resident pianist for seven years at the Four Seasons Hotel.

The 1990s had him playing at the Three Greenhorns in Vancouver. He also sang and played the piano in Rossini’s restaurant in Kitsilano. The Linton Garner Legacy Quartet, featuring drummer Don Fraser, bassist Russ Botten, pianist Ron Johnston, and pianist Miles Black continues to play Garner’s music.

Pianist, trumpet and vocalist Linton Garner, who was Erroll’s older brother, transitioned from kidney failure in Vancouver, at the age of 87 on March 6, 2003.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Fred Anderson was born in Monroe, Louisiana on March 22, 1929.  When he was ten, his parents separated, and he moved to Evanston, Illinois, where he initially lived with his mother and aunt in a one-room apartment. When Anderson was a teenager, a friend introduced him to the music of Charlie Parker, and he soon decided he wanted to play saxophone, purchasing his first instrument for $45. He listened to Lester Young, Johnny Hodges, Dexter Gordon, Gene Ammons, and Illinois Jacquet, all of whom would influence his playing. He also heard Young and Parker in concert on multiple occasions.

Unlike many musicians at the time, Anderson did not play with dance bands or school ensembles, and instead focused on practicing, taking private lessons, and studying music theory at the Roy Knapp Conservatory in Chicago, Illinois all the while supporting his family by working as a waiter. He also began making an effort to develop a personal sound on his instrument, with the goal of combining Ammons’ big sound with Parker’s speed.

At around this time, he began to develop a series of exercises which he incorporated into his daily practice routine, and which eventually became a book titled Exercises for the Creative Musician.

In the early 1960s, Anderson began listening to and studying the music of Ornette Coleman, and immediately related Coleman’s playing to that of Charlie Parker. Influenced by Coleman, he formed a piano-less band with trumpeter Bill Brimfield, bassist Bill Fletcher, and drummer Vernon Thomas, playing a mixture of bebop standards and Anderson originals. During the decade he would go on to play weekly jam sessions, joined the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and remained in the States when many of his AACM colleagues left for Europe seeking better opportuities.

In the Seventies he formed the Fred Anderson Sextet, with trombonist George E. Lewis, reedist Douglas Ewart, bassist Felix Blackmon, drummer Hamid Drake, and vocalist Iqua Colson.  By 1977 he and Brimfield visited Europe, where they recorded Accents with the Austrian trio Neighbours, then returned and opened a venue in Chicago that he named the Birdhouse, after Charlie Parker. Unfortunately, Anderson encountered resistance and harassment from officials and people in the neighborhood, who were suspicious of his motives, and he ended up closing the club a year later.

The following decade saw Fred taking over ownership of a bar in Chicago called the Velvet Lounge, and transformed it into a center for the city’s jazz and experimental music scenes, hosting Sunday jam sessions and numerous concerts. The club expanded and relocated in the summer of 2006.

Though he remained an active performer, Anderson rarely recorded for about a decade beginning in the early Eighties. In 1990, however, he received the first Jazz Masters Fellowship from Arts Midwest, and by the mid-1990s, he resumed a more active recording schedule, both as a solo artist, and in collaboration with younger performers. He would go on to perform as a soloist with 30 piece orchestras, mentor young musicians, and his Velvet Lounge has international fame.

Tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson, rooted in the swing, hard bop and free jazz idioms, who continued to record and tour throughout the 2000s and was scheduled to perform the day he died, transitioned on June 24, 2010.

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