Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lorraine Winifred Geller was born Lorraine Walsh on September 11, 1928 in Portland, Oregon. She started out with the all-female big band Sweethearts of Rhythm, based in New York. She met saxophonist Herb Geller, married him in 1951, and together they moved to Los Angeles, California where they played with many musicians on the West Coast jazz scene, such as Shorty Rogers, Zoot Sims, Stan Getz, and Red Mitchell. She also did sessions with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.
In 1957, she accompanied Kay Starr and the following year, concentrating on raising her daughter, she pared down her performances. She did, however, play at the first Monterey Jazz Festival. On October 13, 1958 pianist Lorraine Geller transitioned in Los Angeles, attributed to heart failure or pulmonary infection.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Herman Davis Burrell was born September 10, 1940 in Middletown, Ohio and grew fond of jazz at a young age after meeting Herb Jeffries. He studied piano and music at the University of Hawaii from 1958 to 1960, then starting in 1961 he attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. 1965 saw him walking across the stage to receive degrees in composition/arranging and performance. While in Boston, he played with Tony Williams and Sam Rivers.
After graduation Dave moved to New York City, where he worked and recorded with Grachan Moncur III, Marion Brown, and Pharoah Sanders. He also started the Untraditional Jazz Improvisational Team with saxophonist Byard Lancaster, bassist Sirone, and drummer Bobby Kapp. Three years later he co-founded The 360 Degree Music Experience with Moncur and Beaver Harris, recording two albums with the group. The following year, Burrell began an association with Archie Shepp, with whom he would play the 1969 Pan-African Festival in Algiers, Algeria. They would go on to record nearly twenty albums.
Burrell’s debut as a leader was an album titled High Won-High Two that was released in 1968. This was followed by Echo and La Vie de Bohème recorded in Paris in 1969, and Round Midnight for Nippon Columbia.
In 1978, with Swedish poet and lyricist Monika Larsson he composed a jazz opera entitled Windward Passages, with an album of the same name, based on the opera, released in 1979. Their touring and recording collaborations resulted in four more albums. He would later appear on seven David Murray albus recorded between 1988 and 1993.
Burrell tours and performs as a soloist and as a leader of a duo, trio, and larger ensembles. His recordings have received high praise from Down Beat, Village Voice, Jazz Times and others. Into the new millennium he has continued to perform, record and release several albums including a live recording in Italy. In 2022, pianist Dave Burrell donated his archive to the Center for American Music in the University of Pittsburgh Library System. He continues to be active in jazz.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Elmer Schoebel was born in East St. Louis, Illinois on September 8, 1896. Early in his career he played along to silent films in Champaign, Illinois. After moving on to vaudeville late in the 1910s, he played with the 20th Century Jazz Band in Chicago, Illinois in 1920.
1922-23 saw him as a member of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, then led his own band, known variously as the Midway Gardens Orchestra, the Original Memphis Melody Boys and the Chicago Blues Dance Orchestra, before joining Isham Jones in 1925. After returning to Chicago, Elmer played with Louis Panico and Art Kassel, and arranged for the Melrose Publishing House.
By the 1930s, Schoebel was writing and arranging, working as the chief arranger for the Warner Brothers publishing division. From the 1940s onward he did some performing with Conrad Janis, Blue Steele’s Rhythm Rebels (1958), and with his own ensembles in St. Petersburg, Florida. He continued to play up until his death.
Schoebel wrote a number of standards, including Bugle Call Rag, Stomp Off- Let’s Go, Nobody’s Sweetheart Now, Farewell Blues, and Prince of Wails. While a member of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings he wrote I Never Knew What A Girl Could Do, Oriental, and Discontented Blues.
Pianist, composer and arranger Elmer Schoebel, who as a leader only recorded one of his own compositions in 1929 titled Prince of Wails, transitioned on December 14, 1970.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Senri Oe was born on September 6, 1960, in Fujiidera city, Osaka, Japan. He began playing piano at the age of three, and was trained by his junior high school teacher Yumi Nara, who would go on to become an acclaimed opera singer. After each of the lessons, Nara would encourage him to improvise, and eventually he began to compose.
Upon being introduced to music by The Carpenters, Captain & Tenille and Gilbert O’Sullivan, Oe decided to become a singer-songwriter. Soon after, Oe’s music repertoire expanded to include jazz musicians such as Chris Conor, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Winton Kelly, Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.
In 1975 at 15 Oe intended to study jazz but after participating in the final Yamaha Popular Song Contest POPCON, in 1980 he entered Kwansei Gakuin University majoring in economics while simultaneously beginning to pursue a professional music career. He formed his first band during his time at university, was scouted by Sony Music and signed to Epic Sony Japan in 1981. His pop career unexpectedly took off and he chose to put his jazz aspirations on hold.
At the New School for Jazz, in 2008 Senri moved to Manhattan, New Yorkand later He went on to start a prolific carrer as a pop singer/songwriter but in 2007 he began his serious study of jazz. After graduating from The New School for Jazz, he launched his jazz record label, Peace Never Die Records, in 2012. His jazz debut album was Boys Mature Slow the same year. As of 2021 he has released another six albums under the PND label.
Oe’s work towards composing for a drum-less trio was titled Collective Scribble, with saxophone, piano and upright bass. He has recorded as a leader with Sheila Jordan, Jon Hendricks, Theo Bleckmann and Lauren Kinhan. His Answer July was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Jazz Album category in 2017.
Pianist, composer, producer, actor, singer, and songwriter Senri Oe continues to compose, perform and stretch the realms of his jazz imagination, while writing and producing music for other artists and film soundtracks.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joki Freund was born Walter Jakob Freund on September 5, 1926 in Höchst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He began playing the accordion as a child, switching to tenor saxophone after World War II ended.
Early in the postwar era, he played with Joe Quitter, Carlo Bohlander, Gerry Weinkopf, Joe Klimm, and Jutta Hipp, before forming his own ensemble. He began performing with American musicians, including Donald Byrd, Art Taylor, and Doug Watkins during their European festival appearances.
He went on to play with and arranged for Albert Mangelsdorff in the jazz orchestra of Hessischer Rundfunk, and Erwin Lehn in the Süddeutscher Rundfunk orchestra. He played with the Frankfurt Jazz Ensemble on soprano saxophone in the 1970s, also performing as a leader around this time.
Saxophonist Joki Freund, who predominantly played in a quintet setting but also in orchestras or big bands, transitioned on February 15, 2012 in Schwalbach am Taunus, Germany.
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