Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pee Wee Hunt was born Walter Gerhardt Hunt on May 10, 1907 in Mount Healthy, Ohio. Developing a musical interest at an early age, his mother played the banjo and his father played the violin. The teenager was a banjoist with a local band while he was attending college at Ohio State University where he majored in Electrical Engineering. During his college years, he switched from banjo to trombone. Graduating from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, he joined Jean Goldkette’s Orchestra in 1928.
Pee Wee was the co-founder and featured trombonist with the Casa Loma Orchestra, but he left the group in 1943 to work as a Hollywood radio disc jockey before joining the Merchant Marine near the end of World War II. He returned to the West Coast music scene in 1946 and his Twelfth Street Rag became a three million-selling number one hit in 1948.
Hunt was satirized as Pee Wee Runt and his All-Flea Dixieland Band in Tex Avery’s animated MGM cartoon Dixieland Droopy in 1954. His second major hit was Oh! in 1953, his second million-selling disc, which reached number three in the Billboard chart.
Trombonist Pee Wee Hunt passed away after a long illness at age 72, on June 22, 1979 in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jack Bland was born on May 8, 1899 in Sedalia, Missouri and learned to play the banjo. In 1924 he co-founded the Mound City Blue Blowers with Red McKenzie in St. Louis, Missouri. Their first hit record was Arkansas Blues, a success in Chicago and the American midwest. After Eddie Lang joined the group towards the end of 1924, they toured England.
The late 1920s saw Bland playing more cello and guitar and in 1929, Lang left the group, replaced by Gene Krupa. Also in 1929, the Blue Blowers appeared in a 1929 short film, The Opry House. Muggsy Spanier, Coleman Hawkins, and Eddie Condon would all play in the ensemble in the 1930s, which moved to more of a Dixieland sound.
Bland did session work in New York City with the Billy Banks Orchestra in the 1930s, with Pee Wee Russell, Red Allen, and Zutty Singleton. Following this, he recorded with a group called the Rhythmakers that included Pops Foster and Fats Waller at times.
By the 1940s Jack was playing on 52nd Street at Jimmy Ryan’s Club, playing with Allen and Singleton as well as Edmond Hall, Vic Dickenson, Ike Quebec, and Hot Lips Page. Some of their sessions were recorded by Milt Gabler and released on Commodore Records. From 1942 to 1944 he played with Art Hodes and also with Muggsy Spanier; he led his own band from 1944 to 1950.
In the 1950s, guitarist and banjoist Jack Bland moved to Los Angeles, California, retired from performing, and worked as a taxicab driver until he passed away in August 1968.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sterling Bruce Conaway was born on October 26, 1900 in Washington, D.C. and learned to play the banjo and mandolin. His early career was spent playing with fellow Washingtonian Duke Ellington in their hometown. Relocated to Chicago, Illinois he joined the band of Carroll Dickerson.
He played in Cyril Fullerton’s band in 1924 and recorded with Helen Gross on ukulele. By the late 1920s he moved to Europe where he worked with Eddie South, Noble Sissle, Freddy Johnson, Freddy Taylor, and Leon Abbey. During this period in his career Sterling led several groups as well.
1936 saw him in Bombay, India playing with Crickett Smith, however, three years later returned to the United States. Banjoist and mandolinist Sterling Conaway continued to perform in big bands and leading his own groups until his passing away in November 1973.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Johnny St. Cyr was born on April 17, 1890 in New Orleans, Louisiana. St. He led several bands in the Crescent City beginning around 1905 and performed on the riverboats with Fate Marable. He played for several leading New Orleans bands including A.J. Piron, the Superior, Olympia and Tuxedo bands before moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1923 with King Oliver.
He is most commonly remembered as a member of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven bands. He also played and recorded with Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers. St. Cyr also performed with Don Cook’s Dreamland Orchestra. He composed the popular standard Oriental Strut, noted for its adventurous chord sequence.
In 1930 Johnny returned to New Orleans to make a living as a plasterer while still playing with local bands led by Paul Barbarin or Alphonse Picou. In 1955 he moved to Los Angeles, California and returned to music full time. From 1961 until his death in 1966, he was the bandleader of the Young Men from New Orleans that featured Barney Bigard, performers at Disneyland.
Banjoist and guitarist Johnny St. Cyr passed away on June 17, 1966 in Los Angeles, California.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Marshall Brown was born on December 21, 1920 in Framingham, Massachusetts. Little recorded, he devoted most of his career to education, earning a music degree from New York University, as a member of the Zeta Psi Fraternity.
He was also a high school band director leading the Farmingdale New York Daler Band from the early 1950s through 1957. Brown was the first high school band director to initiate a jazz education program, which he did in his tenure at Farmingdale High. By 1956 his stage band, the Daler Dance Band, a jazz big band with an average age of 14 years old, was so formidable and impressive, boasted future jazz stars pianist Michael Abene, saxophonist Andrew Marsala, and whiz drummer Larry Ramsden. One night at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival, Count Basie, who was late for his appearance as he entered the festival grounds heard the Daler Band performing their set and exclaimed, “Damn, they started already”, mistaking the Dalers for his band.
Marshall received some attention for performing and recording in a quartet with Pee Wee Russell in the early 1960s. While Russell was most often associated with Dixieland or swing, their quartet performed more adventurous, free jazz-oriented pieces, including pieces by Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane.
During the Sixties he was the resident trombonist at Jimmy Ryan’s, a noted dixieland venue. He also club dated with Luke O’Malley’s Irish band during this time. Brown also performed or recorded at one time or another with Ruby Braff, Beaver Harris, Lee Konitz, George Wein and Basie.
Conductor, arranger and educator Marshall Brown, who also played the valve trombone, trumpet, euphonium, electric bass and the banjo, passed away on December 13, 1983 in New York City.
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