Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Ronald Edward Cuber was born on December 25, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. In 1959 he was playing tenor saxophone when he joined Marshall Brown’s Newport Youth Band at eighteen, but switched to the baritone. His first notable work was with Slide Hampton in 1962 and then went with Maynard Ferguson the following year until 1965. George Benson recruited him for a year in ‘66 to 1967.

As a leader he was known for hard bop and Latin jazz, the latter with Eddie Palmieri, As a sideman he played outside the genre with  B. B. King, Paul Simon, Eric Clapton, J. Geils Band, and one of his most spirited performances is on Dr. Lonnie Smith’s 1970 Blue Note album Drives. He was also a member of the Saturday Night Live Band.

Ronnie played with Frank Zappa on the live album Zappa in New York, which was recorded in 1976. He went on to gain membership in the Lee Konitz nonet from 1977 to 1979.He was a member of the Mingus Big Band from its inception in the early 1990s until his death. He performed as an off-screen musician for the movie Across the Universe.

Baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber, who also played soprano and tenor saxophones, clarinet and flute, died at the age of 80 on October 7, 2022 in his New York’s Upper West Side studio from internal injuries sustained after a fall that could not be treated due to overwhelming Covid patients at the start of the pandemic.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Tatsuya Takahashi was born on December 24, 1931 in Tsuruoka, Yamagata, Japan.

In the early 1950s Tatsuya played on US military bases and later in the decade moved to Tokyo, Japan. He worked with Keiichiro Ebihara from 1961, and by 1966 was leading his own ensemble, Tokyo Union, which remained active until 1989.

The 1970s saw him playing at the Monterey and Montreux Jazz Festivals. After leaving Tokyo Union, Takahashi worked in jazz education, and in 1996 founded a new ensemble, Jazz Groovys.

Saxophonist Tatsuya Takahashi died on February 29, 2008 in Tokyo, Japan.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Tom “Kid” Albert was born on December 23, 1877 on a plantation field in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.. He later relocated to New Orleans, Lousiana sometime in his early childhood, settling in the Algiers neighborhood. Living in a run-down shack on Saux Lane, an impoverished strip near the Naval station. He initially played the guitar before learning how to play the violin and was taught basic methods for each instrument by Jimmy Palao.

In the 1890s he began working with the bands with violinist Johnny Gould, and with “Big Eye” Louis Nelson Delisle on clarinet. Soon after he mastered the cornet and the violin Albert’s first band in 1908 was his own which included Papa Celestin and Manuel Manetta. In 1920, he founded the Eureka Brass Band and during the earlier years his band played in Algiers with Henry Red Allen Sr. Band.

In his late thirties, Albert moved across the river to the French Quarter and reformed his band, branding it the Kid Albert Band. The band then began performing in several halls around the city, mostly in the Storyville and Treme sections. For a decade the Kid Albert Band played alongside jazz pioneers Louis Armstrong, Kid Thomas Valentine and other small brass bands but never recorded.

In 1949 trumpeter, violinist and bandleader Kid Albert retired from the bands and died on December 12, 1969, at the age of 91.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Frank Gambale was bornon December 22, 1958 in Canberra, Australia. He graduated from the Guitar Institute of Technology in Hollywood, California with Student of the Year honors and taught there from 1984 to 1986.

With the Mark Varney Project, consisting of Allan Holdsworth, Brett Garsed, and Shawn Lane, he recorded two albums, his debut Truth in Shredding in 1990 and his sophomore project Centrifugal Funk the following year.

1987 saw Frank spending six years as a member of the Chick Corea Elektric Band, playing with Eric Marienthal, John Patitucci, and Dave Weckl. With the band he recorded five albums and shared two Grammy Award nominations.

He spent twelve years as a member of Vital Information led by Steve Smith. He reunited with the Elektric Band in 2002 and with Corea in 2011 when he joined Return to Forever IV with Stanley Clarke, Jean-Luc Ponty, and Lenny White.

Gambale has been head of the guitar department at the Los Angeles Music Academy. He joined the Isina mentorship program as head of the guitar department in 2014. During the next year, he started an online guitar school.

Guitarist Frank Gambale has released twenty albums over a period of three decades, and continues to perform and teach.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

John Josephus Hicks Jr. was born December 21, 1941 in Atlanta, Georgia, the eldest of five children. As a child he moved around the United States as his father, Rev. John Hicks Sr, took up jobs with the Methodist church. His mother was his first piano teacher after he began playing at six or seven in Los Angeles, California. He took organ lessons, sang in choirs and tried the violin and trombone. Once he learned to read music around the age of 11, he started playing the piano in church.

His development accelerated once his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri when Hicks was 14 and he settled on the piano. Attending Sumner High School and played in schoolmate Lester Bowie’s band, the Continentals, which performed in a variety of musical styles. Hicks worked summer gigs in the southern United States with blues musicians  Albert King and Little Milton with the latter providing his first professional work in 1958.

He studied music in 1958 at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he shared a room with drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. He also studied for a short time at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, Massachusetts before moving to New York in 1963.

In New York, John first accompanied singer Della Reese, then went on to play with Joe Farrell, Al Grey, Billy Mitchell, Pharoah Sanders, Jimmy Witherspoon, Kenny Dorham and Joe Henderson before joining Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1964. From 1965 to 1967 he worked on and off with vocalist Betty Carter, then joined Woody Herman’s big band, where he stayed until 1970, playing as well as writing arrangements for the band.

From 1972 to 1973, Hicks taught jazz history and improvisation at Southern Illinois University. From the 1970s onward he had a prolific career as a leader recording his debut in England followed by fifty-three more albums and as a sideman he recorded 300.

Towards the end of his life, he taught at New York University and The New School in New York. In 2006 John played in a big band led by Charles Tolliver, recorded his final studio album On the Wings of an Eagle.

Pianist, composer and arranger John HIcks, whose  collection of papers, compositions, video and audio recordings are held by Duke University, died from internal bleeding on May 10, 2006.

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