Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Han Bennink was born April 17, 1942 in Zaandam, Netherlands, the son of a classical percussionist. He began playing the drums and the clarinet during his teens. He also went on to learn to play the violin, banjo and piano, which feature him on some of his recordings.
Through the 1960s, while in his t,wenties he was the drummer with a number of American musicians visiting the Netherlands, including Dexter Gordon, Wes Montgomery, Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy.
He subsequently became a central figure in the emerging European free improvisation scene. In 1963 he formed a quartet with pianist Misha Mengelberg and saxophonist Piet Noordijk which performed at the 1966 Newport Jazz Festival. The following year Han co-founded the Instant Composers Pool with Mengelberg and Willem Breuker, which sponsored Dutch avant garde performances. Late in the decade he played in a trio with saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and Belgian pianist Fred Van Hove, which became a duo after Van Hove’s departure in 1976.
From the late 1980s through the early 2000s, Bennik collaborated closely with Dutch post-punk band The Ex, simultaneously playing through the 1990s in Clusone 3, a trio with saxophonist/clarinetist Michael Moore and cellist Ernst Reijseger.
He has recorded twenty albums as a solo or leader and recorded over a eight dozen albums as a sideman with the likes of Derek Bailey, Conny Bauer, Don Cherry and Alexander von Schlippenbach, Steve Lacy, Lee Konitz, Ray anderson, Gary Bartz, Jckie McLean, Paul Bley, Annette Peacock, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Uri Caine, Myra Melford, and Sonny Rollins. (partial list)
His style is wide-ranging, running from conventional jazz drumming to highly unconventional free improvisation. Drummer Han Bennink is best known as one of the pivotal figures in early European free jazz and free improvisation, and he continues to push forward the envelope of his music at 80.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bud Scott was born Arthur Budd Scott on January 11, 1890 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He played guitar and violin as a child and performed professionally from an early age. His first job was with New Orleans dance band leader John Robichaux in 1904 and as a teenager he played with Buddy Bolden. In 1911 he was playing guitar with Freddie Keppard’s Olympia Orchestra. In 1912 he left New Orleans with a large travelling show.
As a violinist he performed with James Reese Europe’s Clef Club Orchestra at a historic 1912 concert at Carnegie Hall, and the following year worked with Europe’s ensemble on the first jazz recordings on the Victor label.He would go on to play on a number of Victor Talking Machine Company ragtime recordings with James Reese Europe’s Society Orchestra in 1913.
A graduate of the Peabody School of Music, he was a notable rhythm guitarist in Chicago, Illinois’s Jazz Age nightclubs of the 1920s. Moving there in 1923, he became a member of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, originating the now traditional shout, Oh, play that thing!, on Oliver’s recording of Dippermouth Blues. He also worked with Johnny Dodds and Jimmy Blythe, Erskine Tate, Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers and Richard M. Jones’ Jazz Wizards.
Scott was the first person to use a guitar in a modern dance orchestra, in Dave Peyton’s group accompanying Ethel Waters at Chicago’s Cafe de Paris. After performing and recording with Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra in 1928 he moved to California. Making a living as a professional musician through the 1930s, when traditional jazz was eclipsed by big-band swing music, he formed his own trio. In 1944 Scott joined an all-star combination that evolved into Kid Ory’s Creole Jazz Band. This was an important force in reviving interest in New Orleans-style jazz in the 1940s, and he wrote the majority of the band’s arrangements.
In 1944 Bud joined an all-star traditional New Orleans band that was a leader of the West Coast revival, put together for the CBS Radio series The Orson Welles Almanac. He arranged most of the songs for Kid Ory’s band, of which he was a part. His talent for arranging earned him the title of The Master.
A stroke in 1948 forced his retireent from music. Guitarist, banjoist, violinist and vocalist Bud Scott, whose obituary ran on the front page of the Los Angeles Sentinel, transitioned in Los Angeles, California on July 2, 1949, aged 59.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edward L. Gibbs was born on December 25, 1908 in New Haven, Connecticut. A student of the great banjoist and bandleader Elmer Snowden, he went back and forth among three different stringed instruments during his career.
Gibbs began his career late in the 1920s, playing with Wilbur Sweatman, Eubie Blake, and Billy Fowler. He played with Edgar Hayes from 1937 and played with him on a tour of Europe in 1938. After a short stint with Teddy Wilson, he joined Eddie South’s ensemble in 1940, and worked later in the decade with Dave Martin, Luis Russell, and Claude Hopkins.
As a bassist, he led his own trio at the Village Vanguard and played in a trio with Cedric Wallace, but returned to banjo in the 1950s during the Dixieland jazz revival. He played and recorded with Wilbur de Paris among others during this time.
After studying with Ernest Hill, he returned to bass in the middle of the 1950s, but played banjo once again in the 1960s during another surge in interest in the Dixieland groups. He played at the World’s Fair in 1965 and in 1969 he played bass and occasionally banjo as a member of Buzzy Drootin’s Jazz Family, which included Herman Autrey, Benny Morton, Herb Hall, Sonny Drootin on piano and Buzzy on drums. Also, in the late ’60s he was part of a group called The Happy Family who featured him on both banjo and bass.
Banjoist, guitarist, and bassist Eddie Gibbs, who retired from active performance in the 1970s, passed away on November 12, 1994.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Louis Thomas Black was born on June 8, 1901 in Rock Island, Illinois and began playing banjo during early childhood. He became a professional musician in 1917.
By 1921 he had joined the famous New Orleans Rhythm Kings at Friar’s Inn in Chicago, Illinois. With this band, he participated to the first-ever interracial recording session with pianist Jelly Roll Morton.
Leaving the band in 1923, Lou went on to play with other bands. From 1925 until 1931, he was a staff musician for radio station WHO in Des Moines, Iowa. He left music in the early 1930s, but came back and began playing in 1961. He sat in with several bands during a brief stay in New York City, then played gigs in Moline, Illinois from the fall of 1963.
An automobile accident landed him in a Rock Island hospital and while recovering from his injuries, he suffered a fatal heart attack. Lou Black, who often went by Lew or Louie and was one of the foremost banjo players of the Jazz Era, passed away on November 18, 1965.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Morris Ellis “Fruit” White was born January 17, 1911 in Nashville, Tennessee and grew up in Peoria, Illinois. During the 1920s he played with Charlie Creath, Dewey Jackson, and Ethel Waters before joining The Missourians in 1928.
In 1930, Cab Calloway became the leader of the ensemble, with White becoming one of his most important sidemen. He remained with Calloway’s band until 1938. He played with Lionel Hampton in 1941, then left the music industry for good.
Banjoist and guitarist Morris White passed away In November 1986.