Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Kim Reith was born on February 19, 1954 in San Diego, California. As a child, she was exposed to a large jazz, blues, folk, opera, world and ethnomusicology recording collection belonging to her music-loving mother.

In 1979 Reith made her entrée into music as a backup vocalist in an all-women’s blues and gospel chorale for San Francisco, California blues pianist, singer/songwriter and recording artist Gwen Avery. She began her instrumental career as a guitarist, singer and songwriter for an experimental SF punk-rock trio, the Well Babies. In 1985 she began studying guitar privately with San Francisco jazz guitarists Marlena Teich and Duncan James and with the Los Angeles/San Diego jazz guitarist Art Johnson, and spent many years in independent study.

1987 saw her beginning to focus exclusively on jazz studies, eventually getting her feet wet with various small San Francisco jazz bands. In 1992 she supported herself by playing solo jazz guitar on the streets of Paris, France returning to San Diego in 1993. That year, she joined acclaimed avant-garde Canadian saxophonist Maury Coles for duo explorations and performances. At the opposite end of the jazz spectrum, Kim also performed with the UCSD Big Band under Jimmie Cheatham’s direction. She formed both the duo Groove Yard and the Kim Reith Trio in 1994, performing extensively with both groups throughout San Diego between 1994 and 2000.

Reith has been composing jazz works for small and large ensembles since 1993, formally studying jazz theory, composing and arranging under Rick Helzer at SDSU. Recording her debut album BAIL! In late 1999 she documented her compositions and her ensemble work with San Diego bassist Bruce Grafrath. She has gone on to collaborate with Bronx-born Swiss resident Edmund J. Wood, on a series of experimental open improvisations, featuring Reith on hollow-body electric guitar and Wood on fretless bass and implied-time drum loops.

Guitarist Kim Reith currently composes and performs in Los Angeles, California. Unfortunately she has not posted any of her music on line.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Shirley Crabbe was born on February 18, 1963 in New York City, New York. As a teenager she wanted to sing jazz after being inspired by a performance of Ella Fitzgerald singing the song A Tisket, A Tasket in an old Abbott and Costello movie. She pursued her dreams first to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where she earned a Bachelor of Music, then returned home to study Voice at the Manhattan School of Music. During this period of study by day she traveled downtown to sing jazz in the clubs.

She has performed at festivals, jazz clubs and concert series in New York City and its surrounding area. She has appeared at some of Harlem’s best jazz rooms such as Minton’s and the Lenox Lounge, as well as the 2019 Berks Jazz Fest, Zinc Bar,  Metropolitan Room and Birdland. Crabbe has opened for Abby Lincoln, recorded with Houston Person, and has performed with Harold Mabern, Jamil Nasser, Donald Vega, David Budway, Ron Blake, David Glasser, Brandon Lee, Matt Haviland, Cameron Brown, Jon Burr, Jim West, among others.

In 2011 Shirley released her debut album Home which remained on the Jazz Week Album Chart for 26 weeks. Her sophomore project Bridges hit the Jazz Week album chart Top 50 albums. She has been the recipient of several honors and awards.

Vocalist Shirley Crabbe, who won the New York Bistro Award Winner for Outstanding Recording: Bridges in 2019, continues to performa nd record.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Paul Crawford was born on February 16, 1925 in Atmore, Alabama, to parents who were a Baptist minister and a music teacher. After serving in the Navy during World War II he graduated from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York where he studied trombone in a classical style. He went on to study under trombonist and teacher Emory Remington, pursued for a time graduate studies at the University of Alabama. Moving to New Orleans, Louisiana in 1951 he became a specialist in the Dixieland style of Jazz.

Crawford initially took up residence in the French Quarter of New Orleans where he became acquainted with people in the local arts and music scene. He also started performing at the New Orleans Jazz Club and learned to play Dixieland. Soon after he became co-bandleader of the Crawford-Ferguson Night Owls, with Leonard Ferguson, frequently performing on the steamboat President.

He made his first recordings on trombone in 1957 with the Lakefront Loungers. During this time, Paul played the trombone on non-paying gigs, and participated in jam sessions. He performed with Sharkey Bonano and with bandleader Paul “Doc” Evans.

By the 1950s, with Deep South laws prohibiting white musicians from performing with Black musicians, jobs dried up. As these laws were struck down in the 1960s, opportunities opened up for Crawford to perform with various notable Black jazz musicians in New Orleans. In 1964, Crawford was approached by Allan Jaffe, who was the owner of Preservation Hall, about performing at the Preservation Hall venue. With Punch Miller, he became a part of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

Shortly thereafter, he became a part of the Olympia Brass Band, marched in many New Orleans Jazz Funerals and often performed with the baritone horn. He was a founding member of the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra. As a member of this group and others, he helped make the soundtrack for the movies “Pretty Baby” and “Live and Let Die”, as well as many other recording sessions. Crawford played the baritone horn in many performances of the musical “One Mo’ Time”.

Crawford was an associate curator at the Tulane University Hogan Jazz Archive. As curator, conducted numerous interviews for an oral history of jazz, and resurrected many forgotten pieces of jazz music and developed arrangements of them. He also developed a significant number of photos of jazz musicians and performances, in a private collection.

Trombonist, baritone hornist, arranger and music historian Paul Crawford, who specialized in Dixieland jazz, transitioned on July 31, 1996 of lung cancer. He had been living in a New Orleans skilled nursing facility at the time.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Csaba Deseo was born February 15, 1939 in Budapest, Hungary. His mother was a violin teacher and he began playing the instrument at the age of 10. He continued his musical education at Béla Bartók Conservatory in Budapest, and got his diploma in 1961. He taught in music schools until 1967 when he became a member of the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, where he played until 1999. During the time he played innumerable concerts in Hungary and in many countries of the world from Japan to the United States. He performed with artists like Sir Georg Solti, Leonard Bernstein, Ádám Fischer, and Yehudi Menuhin, to name a few.

His career took off in 1963 when he appeared with his first group at the legendary Dalia Club in his hometown. From 1964 they gave regular concerts and were frequently featured on Hungarian Radio and TV. He would play at festivals and jamborees in the Sixties, then recorded his debut album under his own name Four String Tschaba in 1975 for MPS Records in West Germany. In that session Deseo played both violin and viola, and he would go on to record 4 LPs and 6 CDs with Hungarian and foreign musicians.

1975 saw Csaba meeting Zagreb vibraphonist Bosko Petrovic, with whom he played regularly until 2011. He also appears as a guest star in Germany, where he usually solos with the group of Walter Kurowski.

Since 1980 Deseo has fronted bands with different line-ups. His more important partners were pianist Laszlo Gardony, vibraphonist Richard Kruza, guitarist Andor Kovacs, bassist Bela Lattmann and drummer Imre Koszegi. Since 1990 he’s been working mainly in a trio and is a regular guest artist at the concerts of the Benko Dixieland Band and the Budapest Ragtime Band.

During the past few decades he has also played with international stars and is a regular contributor to the specialist Hungarian music magazine, Gramofon ~ Classical and Jazz. Violinist Csaba Deseo continues to perform and record.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Glenn Spearman was born on February 14, 1947 in New York City, New York. music was a part of his life from an early age. His father was a singer and academic who performed on stage in Broadway musicals as well as in opera. By the age of six, the young lad was playing piano, but throughout the years he tried his hand at different instruments. By the time he was in high school he had settled on the tenor sax.

Attending college in Colorado on a sports scholarship, Glenn realized that music held a stronger attraction for him than sports, and he eventually dropped out of school to focus on his music. He became active in Oakland, California in the late 1960s, however, he moved to Paris, Francein 1972 and founded the band Emergency with bassist Bob Reid. This group recorded two albums, performed on radio and television in France, and appeared at the festival in Avignon. He was artist-in-residence in Rotterdam, Netherlands and toured through Europe before returning to the United States in 1978.

Following his return he worked in the Cecil Taylor Unit, primarily out of San Francisco, California though he performed on both sides of the Atlantic through the 1980s. In the 1990s, he led the Double Trio which included Larry Ochs, William Winant, and Lisle Ellis as sidemen; this ensemble played at the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Vancouver International Jazz Festival. They were commissioned for a piece by the Move Dance Theater which was performed at Laney College.

He worked with the Rova Saxophone Quartet and with filmmaker Lynn Marie Kirby in addition to teaching at Mills College. Tenor saxophonist Glenn Spearman, who was associated with free jazz and experimental music, transitioned from cancer on October 8, 1998 in Berkeley, California.

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