Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Frances Wayne was born Chiarina Francesca Bartocci or Clara Bertocci, on August 26, 1924 in Somerville, Massachusetts. After graduating from Somerville High School she moved to New York City in her teens, where she sang in an ensemble led by her brother, saxophonist Nick Jerret.

Early in the 1940s, she recorded with Charlie Barnet’s big band, and in 1943 sang with Woody Herman’s band. After marrying Neal Hefti, who formed his own big band in 1947, Frances soloed in this ensemble well into the 1950s. She later sang with smaller ensembles, featuring Hank Jones, Milt Hinton, Jerome Richardson, Richie Kamuca, John LaPorta, Billy Bauer, and Al Cohn.

Wayne was the female vocalist on The Woody Herman Show for his radio broadcasts. After a long bout with cancer, vocalist Frances Wayne, best known for her recording of ”Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe, passed away in her hometown at age 58 on February 6, 1978.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Louis “King” Garcia was born on August 25, 1905 in Juncos, Puerto Rico and played early in his life in the Municipal Band of San Juan, whose director was Juan Tizol’s uncle, Manuel Tizol. This led to some work with the Victor Recording Orchestra.

Moving to the United States in the early 1920s during the Jazz Age, he played with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and the Emil Coleman Orchestra. The Thirties saw him increasingly working in the studios, including his most important association, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, which he recorded with both together and separately. He also played with the Vic Berton Orchestra, Richard Himber, Nat Brandwyne, Amanda Randolph, Louis Prima, and vocalist Amanda Randolph.

In the 1940s he returned to play with Coleman again, and led his own Latin ensemble that decade. By the 1960s he had moved to California and faded from the scene, essentially retiring due to failing health.

Trumpeter and bandleader King Garcia, who spent most of his career in the United States, passed away in Los Angeles, California on September 4, 1983.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Kjeld Bonfils was born on August 23, 1918 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was one of the figures involved in the Golden Age of Danish jazz in the 1930s.

During the Nazi occupation of Denmark from 1940 to 1945, jazz was discouraged by the regime, but Bonfils played with Svend Asmussen in Valdemar Eiberg’s band, as well as elsewhere. Jazz became a symbol of the underground and political protest.

Pianist and vibraphonist Kjeld Bonfils,  who was hailed as one of the best soloists of his day, passed away on October 13, 1984 at age 66.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Bumps Myers was born Hubert Maxwell Meyers on August 22, 1912 in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Moving to southern California with his family when he was nine years old, he began playing with Curtis Mosby in the late 1920s.

The 1930s saw him playing with Buck Clayton including on a tour of China. In addition, he played with Lionel Hampton and Les Hite. In the 1940s Bumps performed extensively with Benny Carter, Lester Young, Jimmie Lunceford, Sid Catlett, T-Bone Walker, Benny Goodman, and Russell Jacquet.

Through the 1950s he continued performing live and working as a session musician, with Jimmy Witherspoon, Helen Humes, Red Callender, Louie Bellson, and Harry Belafonte. After working with Horace Henderson in the early 1960s, he put together his own group Bumps Myers & His Frantic Five and recorded prior to retiring due to health problems.

Tenor saxophonist Bumps Myers, who also on occasion played alto and soprano, passed away on April 9, 1968 in Los Angeles, California.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

William James “Count” Basie was born on August 21, 1904 in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father played the mellophone, his mother played the piano and gave him his first piano lessons. Taking in laundry and baking cakes for sale for a living, she paid 25 cents a lesson for his piano instruction. The best student in school, he inished junior high school and spent much of his time at Red Bank’s Palace Theater, where he quickly learned to improvise music appropriate to the acts and the silent movies.

A natural pianist but preferring drums he was discouraged by the obvious talents of Sonny Greer, who also lived in Red Bank and became Duke Ellington’s drummer in 1919, He let the idea of drumming go and concentrated on the piano exclusively at age 15. He and Greer played together in venues until Greer set out on his professional career. By then, Basie was playing with pick-up groups for dances, resorts, and amateur shows, and Harry Richardson’s Kings of Syncopation.

By 1920 Basie was in Harlem where he bumped nto Greer and started meeting the musicians making the scene like Willie “The Lion” Smith and James P. Johnson. Before he was 20 years old, he toured extensively on the Keith and TOBA vaudeville circuits as a solo pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers, and comedians. This provided an early training that was to prove significant in his later career.

Back in Harlem in 1925, he met Fats Waller, who taught him how to play that instrument. As he did with Duke Ellington, Willie “the Lion” Smith helped Basie out during the lean times by arranging gigs at house-rent parties, introducing him to other leading musicians, and teaching him some piano technique.

In 1928, Basie joined Walter Page and his Famous Blue Devils. It was at this time that he picked up the moniker of Count. The next year saw him in Kansas City holding down the piano chair with Bennie Moten. After a couple of re-organizations of the band, Basie formed his own nine-piece band, Barons of Rhythm who played regularly at the Reno Club and on the radio. Moving to Chicago, Illinois the band eventually became the Count Basie Orchestra where they did their first recordings for Vocalion under the name Jones-Smith, as Basie had already signed with Decca.

Over the course of the fifty years he led the band he was instrumental in creating innovations like the use of two “split” tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, which any other bands copied. He also brought to prominence such players as Lester Young, Herschel Evans, Freddie Green, Buck Clayton, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Al Grey, Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes, Thelma Carpenter, and Joe Williams.

Pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer Count Basie, who recorded close to two hundred albums and in 1958 became the first Black man to win a Grammy Award, passed away on April 26, 1984.

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