Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bill Hardman was born William Franklin Hardman, Jr. on April 6, 1933 in Cleveland, Ohio. Growing up he worked with local players like Bobby Few and Bob Cunningham and while in high school he appeared with Tadd Dameron. After graduating he joined Tiny Bradshaw’s band.
Hardman’s first recording was with Jackie McLean in 1956, later playing with Charles Mingus, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver, and Lou Donaldson. He led a group with Junior Cook and recorded as a leader: Saying Something on the Savoy label. The album received critical acclaim in jazz circles but was little notoriety with the general public. He had three periods in as many decades with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, though his misfortune was not to be with the Messengers at the time of their popular Blue Note recordings. Blakey occasionally featured him playing several extended choruses unaccompanied.
Though he was a crackling hard bop player with blazing technique, crisp articulations, and a no-frills sound, he never received commercial success like his colleagues Donald Byrd, Freddie Hubbard, and Lee Morgan.
Bill later incorporated into his sound the fuller, more extroverted romantic passion of a Clifford Brown – a direction he would take increasingly throughout the late-1960s and 1970s. As a leader, he recorded six albums, as a sideman he recorded more than three dozen with Dave Bailey, Walter Bishop Jr., Charles Earland, Curtis Fuller, Benny Golson, Eddie Jefferson, Ronnie Mathews, Jimmy McGriff, Hank Mobley, Houston Person, Mickey Tucker, Steve Turre, Mal Waldron, and Reuben Wilson.
Hard bop trumpeter and flugelhornist Bill Hardman passed away on December 5, 1990 in Paris, France.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Bishop was born in Seattle, Washington on April 5, 1956 and raised in Germany, Washington, DC, San Antonio, Texas and Eugene, Oregon. He started playing drums at 9 in Washington, DC with the Patriots drum corps and performed regularly throughout high school and college in Oregon, studying with Mel Brown and Charles Dowd. Attending the University of Oregon, he later transferred to the jazz program at North Texas State University.
Moving to Seattle in 1981 he had an extended engagement with the band Glider and never left. An unusually creative and fertile scene at the time, the city offered performances with top touring artists and the opportunity to create long and substantial musical relationships with inspired Northwest musicians. 1983, saw Bishop helping to form the fusion group Blue Sky, which released two national Top 10 albums and toured throughout the west coast and Canada over the next 9 years.
He was a twenty-year member of the piano trio New Stories with pianist Marc Seales and bassist Doug Miller, releasing 4 CDs of their own, 6 with the late be-bop saxophonist Don Lanphere, and Song for the Geese with Mark Murphy. They were a house trio for 17 years at Bud Shank’s Pt. Townsend Jazz Festival, headlined the 1993 JVC Jazz Festival in Vladivostok, Russia, appeared in concert with Tom Harrell, Julian Priester, Charles McPherson, Vincent Herring, Nick Brignola, Conte Condoli, Bobby Shew and Larry Coryell.
They regularly appeared around the country by themselves or touring with Mark Murphy, Ernie Watts or Don Lanphere. He has performed in concerts and clubs with Lee Konitz, Slide Hampton, Benny Golson, George Cables, Kenny Werner, Bobby Hutcherson, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Sonny Fortune, Herb Ellis, Buddy DeFranco, Bobby McFerrin, Joe Locke, Jerry Bergonzi, Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, Larry Coryell, and countless others.
John has taught drums privately for forty years, was on the faculty at the University of Washington from 2005-2009, regularly holds drum and jazz workshops throughout the country with the Hal Galper Trio, and co-founded The Reality Book, a web-based, HD Video Play-Along education system for jazz musicians of all levels.
Drummer, educator, record label owner, graphic designer, and festival presenter John Bishop continues to perform, record, tour and educate. has been one of the primary voices in Northwest Jazz for over 35 years. He’s appeared on more than 100 albums, was inducted into the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame in 2008, and was named a “Jazz Hero” by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2019.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gary Smulyan was born on April 4, 1956 in Bethpage, New York. He studied at Hofstra University before working with Woody Herman. His biggest influence is Pepper Adams. When Adams died, he recorded an album titled Homage, which featured eight pieces composed by Adams. He has recorded for Criss Cross Jazz and Reservoir Records, including the critically acclaimed High Noon: The Jazz Soul of Frankie Laine, featuring arrangements by Mark Masters.
He has recorded with Jimmy Knepper, Mulgrew Miller, Tommy Flanagan, Dick Oatts, Cedar Walton, Bob Stewart, John Clark, Joe Lovano, Joe Magnarelli, Mike LeDonne, Dennis Irwin, Christian McBride, Billy Drummond, Steve Johns, Peter Bernstein, Dominic Chianese, Gary Versace, Joseph Brent, Martin Wind, and Matt Wilson.
He has worked with an orchestra, as well as with Benny Green, Riccardo Fassi, Gerald Wilson, and Michael Benedict. Since 2006, Smulyan has served as artistic director at the Berkshire Hills Music Academy in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
Baritone saxophonist Gary Smulyan has consistently been ranked best baritone saxophone player in the annual Down Beat magazine readers’ and critics’ polls, continues to lead a trio with bassist Ray Drummond and drummer Kenny Washington.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz
Paul James Abler was born April 3, 1957 in Saginaw, Michigan but grew up in Pontiac, Michigan. He first came into contact with jazz as a child when his grandfather played drums on recordings of Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington. Influenced by Jimi Hendrix, he turned to the guitar and in 1982 he moved to Los Angeles, California where he studied with Joe Diorio, Carl Schroeder and Ron Eschete at the Musicians Institute (Guitar Institute of Technology). In 1988 he moved to Boston, Massachusetts where he took improvisation lessons with Jerry Bergonzi.
1990 saw Paul moving back to Michigan where he played in Detroit with Marcus Belgrave, Harold McKinney, James Carter, David McMurray, Roy Brooks, Straight Ahead, and Leonard King. By 2003 he was living in New York permanently and has worked with Cindy Blackman, Allen Farnham, Joe Lee Wilson, Charles Davis, Cameron Brown, Guilherme Franco, Yusef Lateef, the Mingus Big Band, Ted Curson, David Ruffin and The Funk Brothers, among others.
In 2005, Abler released the album In the Marketplace as a leader under his own name, in which Marion Hayden, Cindy Blackman, William Evans, and Robert Pipho had worked. In addition, he worked with his own formations, which in various formations, among others Bobby Battle, Gerald Cleaver, Craig Taborn, Ugonna Okegwo, Helio Alves, Santi Debriano, Adriano Santos and Harvie S belonged.
Abler wrote over 150 compositions, some of which were used in films and television series such as Madam Secretary, Breaking Bad, 20/20, The Big Bang Theory and Mad Men. Abler, who most recently lived in New Jersey, was involved in six recording sessions from 1991 to 2013. On March 3, 2017 in Livingston, New Jersey guitarist and film composer Paul Abler passed away at the age of 69.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz
Harry Howell Carney was born on April 1, 1910 in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up close to future bandmate Johnny Hodges. He began playing the piano at age seven, moved to the clarinet at 14, and added the alto saxophone a year later. His first professional gig was in Boston clubs.
Early influences on Carney’s playing included Buster Bailey, Sidney Bechet, and Don Murray. He also reported that, for his baritone saxophone playing, he “tried to make the upper register sound like Coleman Hawkins and the lower register like Adrian Rollini”
After moving to New York City he played a variety of gigs at the age of 17, and soon Carney was invited to join the Duke Ellington band for its performances in Boston in 1927. In October the same year, he recorded his first session with the band and having established himself, stayed with it for the rest of his life.
The band began a residency at the Cotton Club in New York at the end of the year, and Ellington added more personnel in 1928. Carney’s main instrument became the baritone saxophone and he became a dominant figure on the baritone in jazz, with no serious rivals on the instrument until the advent of bebop in the mid-1940s. Within the overall sound of the Ellington band, Carney’s baritone was often employed to play parts of harmonies that were above the obvious low pitching of the instrument; this altered the textures of the band’s sound.
In 1938, Carney was invited to play with Benny Goodman’s band at Carnegie Hall and the recordings were released as The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert. By 1944 he added the bass clarinet, co-composed Rockin’ in Rhythm and was usually responsible for executing the bubbling clarinet solo on this tune. In 1957, he was part of a band led by pianist Billy Taylor that recorded the album Taylor Made Jazz.
For over four decades Harry became the longest-serving player in Ellington’s orchestra. On occasions, he would serve as the band’s conductor, recorded one album as a leader and had many showpiece features written for him by the bandleader including his 1973 Third Sacred Concert built around his baritone saxophone.
Over the course of his career, he recorded with Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Hodges, Jazz at the Philharmonic, and Billy Taylor. After Ellington’s death on May 24, 1974, some four months later baritone saxophonist and bass clarinetist Harry Carney, who was an early jazz proponent of circular breathing, passed away on October 8, 1974, in New York City.
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