Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bernard Francis “Bernie” McGann was born June 22, 1937 in Granville, New South Wales, Australia. He began his career in the late 1950s and remained active as a performer, composer, and recording artist until near the end of his life.
Bernie first came to prominence as part of a loose alliance of modern jazz musicians who performed at the El Rocco Jazz Cellar in Kings Cross, Sydney in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He had an enduring collaboration with drummer John Pochee.
During the 1960s and early 1970s, McGann also performed with rock and pop groups as a session musician. Around 1970 he was a member of the Sydney rock-soul band Southern Comfort.
He led the Bernie McGann Trio and Bernie McGann Quartet through his career. The most well-known lineup of the trio was McGann on alto saxophone, John Pochee on drums, Lloyd Swanton on bass, with the addition of Warwick Alder on trumpet in the quartet.
Alto saxophonist Bernie McGann passed away on September 17, 2013 following complications from heart surgery. He was 76.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sarah DeLeo was born in Waterbury, Connecticut on June 21st and grew up listening to a wide range of music, from Motown to Elvis, and from Linda Ronstadt to Donna Summer. She began singing at age nine and was singing standards before she even started high school. Studying the great singers such as Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald, and Aretha Franklin had a great influence on her developing her own style. Her further study of the jazz idiom included listening to Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, and Sarah Vaughan.
Attending Barnard College as an American Studies major, she always maintained her love for the music and continued performing whenever possible. Not a product of the conservatory system, Sarah received her jazz schooling the old-fashioned way in the New York City clubs. After college, she began singing in jam sessions and in piano bars throughout Manhattan where she became a regular.
Invaluable guidance came from singer/songwriter Lina Koutrakos where she developed her skills as a lyric interpreter. She has also studied with jazz musicians Jay Clayton, Dena DeRose, Giacomo Gates, and Kirk Nurock. Sarah’s repertoire consists of jazz and pop standards from the 1920s through the 1960s. 2005 saw her recording and releasing her debut CD, The Nearness of You, to critical acclaim and an introduction to both national and international audiences. Deleo’s sophomore release came in 2009 with I’m In Heaven Tonight, that combined old and new songs including a swinging version of the indie rock duo The White Stripes In The Cold, Cold Night. Taking the best from the masters and combining it with her own signature style vocalist Sarah DeLeo continues to deliver the lyric performing, recording, and touring.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ray Mckinney was born Raymond Patterson McKinney on June 20, 1931 in Detroit, Michigan. He was the fourth of ten children artistically gifted, and most of the children took music lessons from their mother. Starting on the Ocarina, he soon graduated to the piano, then the cello which he took to the instrument immediately. His father and English teacher encouraged him to write poetry and he became quite proficient.
During his high school years that Ray was first exposed to jazz, hearing Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb in 1939, also Erskine Hawkins and Jay McShann when he had Charlie Parker with him. Music in the neighborhood, there were bands made up of youngsters who played homemade instruments, such as, pails, brushes, spoons and it was where Ray learned that he only needed himself to make music.
The band director at Northwestern High School forced him to switch from cello to bass. Academically gifted, he was determined to be heard above the Northwestern band, he developed his technique. His passion for music consumed his time and he quit school in 1947 at age sixteen. He was spending time with like-minded students and other aspiring musicians from his west-side neighborhood, Maurice Wash, Claire Rockamore, Barry Harris, and Frank Foster. It was where he developed stamina, playing twelve, eighteen hours at a time. McKinney and Harris worked local jobs backing a vocal group in which Harris’ wife Christine was a member. This group recorded at least twenty titles for the New Song label in 1950.
Ray became a force to be reckoned with on the competitive Detroit scene and he worked with several Detroit piano stars. Though he liked bassists Alvin Jackson, Clarence Sherrill and Major “Mule” Holley, his major influences were Ray Brown, Oscar Pettiford, Tommy Potter and Dillon “Curly” Russell. He befriended Paul Chambers and his cousin Doug Watkins, because their playing impressed him, especially Paul’s bowing.
In 1956 he moved to New York City with harpist Dorothy Ashby’s group, however, the gig didn’t last long when Ray was fired after punching Ashby’s husband in the face during an argument. He would go on to work with Guy Warren, Barry Harris, Ben Webster, Edmund Hall, Max Roach, Walter Benton, Booker Little, Julian Priester, Coleman Hawkins, Mal Waldron, Eric Dolphy, Red Garland, Yusef Lateef, Andy Bey and spent a year with comic Nipsey Russell’s back-up band.
For a short time he experimented with heroin but by 1973 McKinney was clean and living in Oberlin, Ohio and with a new love interest before settling in San Diego, California in 1974. With not much jazz happening he took up a series of day jobs for the next four years while continuing to create poetry.
His precarious health and his lack of insurance caused his friends concern and made his last years were unsteady. He received a special Lifetime Achievement award during Baker’s Keyboard Lounge 70th anniversary celebration in 2004. It was one of his final public appearances. Bassist Ray McKinney passed away on August 3, 2004, aged 73 in San Diego.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roberto Magris was born June 19, 1959 in Trieste, Italy. By the 1980s he was leading the jazz trio Gruppo Jazz Marca with whom he recorded three albums, Comunicazione Sonora, Aria di Città and Mitteleuropa. In 1987 he put together an Italian quartet that stayed together for nearly 20 years, touring Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America and recording two albums, Life in Israel and Maliblues.
In the 1990s he founded the acid-jazz groups DMA Urban Jazz Funk and Alfabeats Nu Jazz, performing in Europe and in America. In 1998 Magris formed the Europlane Orchestra that included several jazz musicians from various European countries. With the Europlane Orchestra he recorded three albums Live At Zooest, Plays Kurt Weill, and Current Views.
2005 saw Magris partnering with Hungarian saxophonist Tony Lakatos on the album Check-In in 2005 he went on to collaborate with bassist Art Davis and drummer Jimmy “Junebug” Jackson on the album Kansas City Outbound issued by JMood. That same year, he hooked up with alto saxophonist Herb Geller on the album Il Bello del Jazz and some years later, JMood released another album with Herb Geller titled An Evening with Herb Geller & The Roberto Magris Trio – Live in Europe 2009.
During his time in the United States, Magris has become the musical director of JMood and has also recorded two albums in tribute to the trumpeter Lee Morgan, two trio albums with Elisa Pruett and Albert “Tootie” Heath devoted to the music of pianist Elmo Hope, and another to the legacy of alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley.
While in Los Angeles, California he recorded with Idris Muhammad and saxmen Paul Carr and Michael O’Neill, one album with Sam Reed, a double CD set in tribute to the bebop era, three albums with his trio from Kansas City and performed with his sextet that included trumpeter Brian Lynch at the WDNA Jazz Gallery in Miami, Florida. In Chicago, Illinois he recorded with a group including trumpeter Eric Jacobson and tenor saxophonist Mark Colby.
His influences have been Wynton Kelly, Tommy Flanagan, Bill Evans, Kenny Drew, Jaki Byard, Randy Weston, McCoy Tyner, Andrew Hill, Paul Bley, Don Pullen, and Steve Kuhn. He has recorded nearly three dozen albums as a leader or as a member of groups he has founded. Pianist, composer and arranger Roberto Magris continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gene Sedric, born Eugene Hall Cedric on June 17, 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri into a family where his father played ragtime piano. He played with Charlie Creath in his hometown and then with Fate Marable, Dewey Jackson, Ed Allen, and Julian Arthur.
Joining Sam Wooding’s Orchestra in 1925 he toured Europe with him until 1931 when the unit dissolved. During his time in Europe he recorded with Alex Hyde. When he returned to New York City he played with Fletcher Henderson and Alex Hill, before joining Fats Waller’s Rhythm in 1934, where he remained to 1942. When Waller went on solo tours Sedric found work gigging alongside Mezz Mezzrow in 1937 and Don Redman from 1938 to 1939).
Sedric put together his own group in 1943, prior to playing with Phil Moore in 1944 and Hazel Scott in 1945. He put together another ensemble from 1946–51, playing in New York City. His later associations through the late 1940s into the early 60s include time with Pat Flowers, Bobby Hackett, Jimmy McPartland, Mezzrow again, Conrad Janis, and Dick Wellstood. He recorded sparingly as a leader in 1938, 1946, and with Mezzrow in 1953.
Clarinetist and tenor saxophonist Gene Sedric, who acquired the nickname “Honey Bear” in the 1930s because of his large camel hair coat, passed away on April 3, 1963 in New York City.
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