Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Albert Edwin Condon was born November 16, 1905 in Goodland, Indiana and started playing music on the ukulele before switching to guitar. By the time he was sixteen he was in Chicago playing professionally with Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden and Frank Teschmacher.
In 1928 Condon moved to New York City frequently arranging jazz sessions for various labels, sometimes playing with the artists he brought like Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller. He organized racially integrated recording sessions – when these were still rare – with Waller, Armstrong and Henry “Red” Allen. He played with the Red Nichols band, later forming a long association with Milt Gabler’s Commodore Records in 1938.
From the late 1930s on Eddie was a regular at Nick’s in Manhattan with Pee Wee Russell, Wild Bill Davison and Bobby Hackett. He went on to appear in a short film with Hackett, produced a series of jazz broadcasts from Town Hall during the last years of WWII that gave him national popularity.
From 1945 through 1967 he ran his own New York jazz club, Eddie Condon’s. In the 50s he recorded a sequence of classic albums for Columbia Records, toured Britain, Australia, Japan, the U. S. and performed at jazz festivals throughout the world until 1971. Two years later, Eddie Condon, jazz banjoist, guitarist, bandleader and arranger passed away on August 4, 1973 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Malachi Favors was born August 22, 1927 in Lexington, Mississippi. He began playing double bass at age fifteen and began performing professionally upon graduating high school. His early performances included work with Dizzy Gillespie and Freddie Hubbard. But by 1965, he was a founding member of the AACM – Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and a member of Muhal Richard Abrams’ Experimental Band.
Malachi was a protégé of Chicago bassist Wilbur Ware. His first known recording was a 1953 session with tenor saxophonist Paul Bascomb and four years later recorded with pianist Andrew Hill. He began working with Roscoe Mitchell in 1966 and this group eventually became the Art Ensemble of Chicago, for which he is most prominently known. Favors also worked outside the group, with artists including Sunny Murray, Archie Shepp and Dewey Redman.
Favors’ most notable records include “Natural and the Spiritual”, “Sightsong” andthe 1994 Roman Bunka collaboration and recording at the Berlin Jazz Fest of the German Critics Poll Winner album “Color Me Cairo”.
At some point in his career Malachi added the word “Maghostut” to his name and because of this he is commonly listed on recordings as Malachi Favors Maghostut.
Most associated musically with bebop, hard bop and particularly free jazz, Favors not only plays the double bass but electric bass, guitar, banjo, zither, gong and other instruments. Malachi Favors died of pancreatic cancer in Chicago, Illinois on January 30, 2004 at the age of 76.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Emanuel Sayles: The Banjoist Who Followed the Music Home
Emanuel Sayles was born on January 31, 1907, in Pensacola, Florida, and began his musical education in the classical tradition, playing violin and viola as a child. But the jazz spirit was calling, and Sayles answered by teaching himself banjo and guitar, the instruments that would define his career and connect him to the early New Orleans jazz tradition.
Following the Music to New Orleans
After high school, Sayles made the pilgrimage that so many musicians made: he relocated to New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, where he joined William Ridgely’s Tuxedo Orchestra, a prestigious gig that put him in the center of the city’s vibrant music scene.
What followed was a classic New Orleans apprenticeship: Sayles worked with the legendary pianist Fate Marable, violinist Armand Piron, and trumpeter Sidney Desvigne on Mississippi riverboats, those floating conservatories where musicians learned to swing, read charts, and play for dancers night after night. The riverboat gigs were grueling but invaluable, connecting Sayles to the earliest generations of jazz musicians and teaching him the repertoire that would sustain him for decades.
Making History in Chicago
In 1929, Sayles participated in recordings with the Jones-Collins Astoria Hot Eight—sessions that captured the raw, collective improvisation style of early New Orleans jazz before it became codified and nostalgic. These recordings remain treasured documents of a transitional moment in jazz history.
By 1933, Sayles had moved to Chicago, where he led his own group and became a sought-after accompanist on blues and jazz recordings, working frequently with the great barrelhouse pianist Roosevelt Sykes and others. Chicago in the 1930s was electric with blues and swing, and Sayles’ banjo added that distinctive rhythmic drive that made everything move.
Always Returning to New Orleans
In 1949, Sayles returned to New Orleans, the first of several homecomings, and joined forces with clarinetist George Lewis, one of the leading voices in the New Orleans traditional jazz revival. In 1963-64, he toured Japan with Lewis, bringing authentic New Orleans jazz to audiences halfway around the world who were hungry to hear the music in its original form.
Back in New Orleans, he played with the beloved pianist Sweet Emma Barrett, then traveled to Cleveland in 1960 to work with trumpeter Punch Miller. From 1965 to 1967, he was back in Chicago playing in the house band at the Jazz Ltd. Club, one of the premier traditional jazz venues in the country.
Preservation Hall and the Final Chapter
Returning once more to New Orleans in 1968, Sayles found his spiritual home with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, the ensemble dedicated to keeping the traditional New Orleans sound alive for new generations. Preservation Hall wasn’t just a venue, it was a mission, and Sayles was perfectly suited to be part of it.
Documenting the Tradition
Sayles recorded prolifically as a sideman with cornetist Peter Bocage, trumpeter Kid Thomas Valentine, pianist Earl Hines, and drummer Louis Cottrell, each session a masterclass in the early New Orleans ensemble style. As a leader, he recorded extensively throughout the 1960s for GHB, Nobility, Dixie, and Big Lou record labels, ensuring that his particular approach to the banjo, rhythmically propulsive, harmonically sophisticated, never overplaying, would be preserved for future students of the tradition.
The Unsung Rhythm Master
Emanuel Sayles passed away on October 5, 1986, having spent nearly eight decades playing the music he loved. As a master banjoist, he represented something increasingly rare: a direct connection to the earliest days of jazz, when the banjo was king of the rhythm section and New Orleans was the only place the music existed.
Why His Story Matters
Sayles’ career is a reminder that jazz history isn’t just about the innovators who pushed the music forward, it’s also about the dedicated musicians who preserved what came before, who understood that the old New Orleans collective improvisation style had value and beauty that shouldn’t be lost in the rush toward bebop and beyond.
Every time he returned to New Orleans—and he kept returning, Sayles was affirming that the music’s roots mattered, that there was wisdom in the way the old-timers played, that the banjo had a place even as guitars became dominant. From Pensacola to riverboats to Chicago clubs to Preservation Hall, Emanuel Sayles followed the music wherever it led and always, eventually, back home to New Orleans, where it all began.