Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jymie Merritt was born James Raleigh Merritt on May 3, 1926 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother was a choral director, voice and piano teacher and his father a businessman and author. After serving in the U.S. Army during WWII from 1944 to 1946 he returned home to work for a short time in his father’s real estate business. After a brief flirtation with the clarinet he was inspired by a Duke Ellington recording featuring bassist Jimmy Blanton. Encouraged by his mother he studied with Philadelphia Orchestra double bassist Carl Torello and at the Ornstein School of Music
Over the course of his career Merritt has worked in jazz, R&B and blues. In the early 1950s he toured with rock and roll pioneers Bullmoose Jackson and Chris Powell moving on to work with legendary bluesman B.B. King from 1955 to 1957. In 1957 he moved to Manhattan to work with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers featuring his friend Benny Golson, as well as Bobby Timmons and Lee Morgan. He touring and recording with Blakey extended until 1962, when an unknown ailment forced him to stop touring.
By 1964 Merritt was back, working with the trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker and is featured prominently in Baker’s unfinished autobiography published under the title As Though I Had Wings: The Lost Memoir. From 1965 to 1968 he worked with drummer, composer and activist Max Roach, not only in the rhythm section but as a composer, recording his Downbeat Magazine Critic Poll for Best Jazz Composer “Nommo” on Roach’s critically acclaimed 1966 Atlantic album The Drum Also Waltzes. He left in the late 1960s to work with Dizzy Gillespie and appear with him on the Dick Cavett Show.
One of Jymie most productive showcases as a composer was his reuniting recording of trumpeter Lee Morgan’s 1970 Blue Note release Live at the Lighthouse featuring his composition Absolutions that has become a jazz classic. In 1962 he formed and fronted the Forerunners with Odean Pope, Kenny Lowe, Donald Bailey and September Wrice and they evolved into a music cooperative exploring his system of chord inversions, harmonics, and unique approaches to composition and rehearsals, producing a lexicon of its own known as the Forerunner system or concept.
This group performed regularly in and around Philadelphia for five years, until he joined Roach’s band. Pope would also join Roach’s band, playing with him into the 1970s. Forerunner was on and off periodically from the 1960s through the 1980s, depending on what band Merritt was playing with at the time as well as how his health was. Of the second incarnation in 1982 saxophonist Bobby Zankel, Alan Nelson, Odean Pope, Julian Pressley, Colmore Duncan and Warren McLendon. Approaching his 90th birthday Merritt continues to rehearse and perform with the current incarnation of The Forerunners, many of whom have been with the ensemble from its inception.
In 2013, along with bassist Reggie Workman, he received the Clef Club of Philadelphia’s Living Legend Jazz Award as well as the Jazz Heritage Award and the Don Redman Heritage Award. Double-bassist electric-bass pioneer, bandleader and composer Jymie Merritt, who mainly performed as a sideman with Art Blakey, Sonny Clark, Curtis Fuller, Benny Golson, Lee Morgan and Jimmy Witherspoon, passed away on April 10, 2020 of liver cancer in Philadelphia, aged 93.
Jazz Is Global – Share
More Posts: bass
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sid Weiss was born April 30, 1914 in Schenectady, New York and learned clarinet, violin, and tuba when young. He switched to bass in his teens. He moved to New York City around 1931 and worked the following decade with Louis Prima, Bunny Berigan, Wingy Manone, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Charlie Barnet and Adrian Rollini.
He was with Benny Goodman from 1941–1945, then played in the second half of the 1940s and the early 1950s with Muggsy Spanier, Pee Wee Russell, Cozy Cole, Bud Freeman, Duke Ellington and Eddie Condon. He quit full-time performing in the mid-1950s and in 1968 was an executive of the musicians’ union in Los Angeles, California. Bassist Sid Weiss passed away on March 30, 1994.
Dose A Day-Blues Away
More Posts: bass
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Aaron Bell was born Samuel Aaron Bell on April 24, 1921 in Muskogee, Oklahoma. As a child, he played piano and went on to learn brass instruments in high school. He attended Xavier University where he began playing bass, graduating in 1942 and joining the Navy until 1946.
After his discharge he became a member of Andy Kirk’s band and the next year enrolled at New York University to complete his Master’s degree. Aaron then joined Lucky Millinder’s band followed by gigging with Teddy Wilson.
During the 1950s, Bell appeared on Billie Holiday’s album Lady Sings The Blues and recorded with Lester Young, Stan Kenton, Johnny Hodges, Cab Calloway, Carmen McRae and Dick Hyman. Leaving Haymes in 1960 he took a chair opposite drummer Sam Woodyard in the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
He left Ellington in 1962 to spend time with Dizzy Gillespie before taking pit musician jobs on Broadway. He also recorded with Johnny Griffin, Sonny Stitt and Randy Weson as well as recording as a leader. Bell and Ellington collaborated once more in 1967, on a tribute to Billy Strayhorn. He held a residence at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City from 1969 to 1972.
Aaron was also an educator and began teaching at Essex College in Newark, New Jersey in 1970, remaining there until 1990. During this period he also toured with Norris Tumey, Harold Ashby and Cat Anderson. In the 1980s he returned to piano playing, and retired from active performance in 1989. Double bassist Aaron Bell passed away on July 28, 2003.
Jazz Is Global – Share
;
More Posts: bass
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rocco Scott LaFaro was born on April 3, 1936 in Irvington, New Jersey and grew up in Geneva, New York when his family moved there when he was five. His father played in many big bands and started him on the piano in elementary school. He switched to the bass clarinet in junior high school and the tenor saxophone in high school. It wasn’t until he was eighteen the summer before entering Ithaca College that he finally landed on the double bass.
During the early weeks of his sophomore year Scott joined Buddy Morrow and his big band, then left them in Los Angeles, California after a cross-country tour. Luck prevailed and he quickly found work and became known as one of the best of the young bassists. He studied under Red Mitchell who taught him how to pluck the strings with both the index and middle fingers independently. By 1958 he was spending much of the year in pianist/percussionist Victor Feldman’s band.
In 1959, after many gigs with Chet Baker, Stan Kenton, Cal Tjader, and Benny Goodman he moved back east and joined Bill Evans after his recent departure from Miles Davis. Along with Paul Motian and Evans that he developed and expanded the counter-melodic style that would come to characterize his playing. The trio committed to the idea of three equal voices in the trio, collectively working together organically towards a singular musical idea, often without the time being explicitly stated. LaFaro’s prodigious technique on bass made this concept possible.
By late 1960, LaFaro replaced Charlie Haden as Ornette Coleman’s bassist. In between gigs with Evans he played with Stan Getz and got a recruitment card of interest from Miles Davis. By summer they settled into the Village Vanguard in New York City for a two-week gig. The last day of the run, June 25, was recorded live in its entirely for eventual release as two albums, Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz For Debby, both considered among the finest live jazz recordings of all time.
Double bassist Scott LaFaro passed away from an automobile accident on July 6, 1961 in Flint, New York four days after accompanying Stan Getz at the Newport Jazz Festival and ten days after the Village Vanguard recordings with the Bill Evans Trio.
Posthumously, in 2009, the University of North Texas Press published Jade Visions, a biography of Scott LaFaro by his sister Helene LaFaro-Fernandez. It includes an extensive discography of his recorded work. The same year Resonance Records released Pieces of Jade, the first album released featuring Scott as a bandleader. The album includes five selections recorded in New York City during 1961 that showcase LaFaro with pianist Don Friedman and drummer Pete LaRoca, as well as 22 minutes of LaFaro and Bill Evans practicing My Foolish Heart in late 1960 during a rehearsal.
Give The Gift Of Knowledge
More Posts: bass
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pierre Michelot was born on March 3, 1928 in Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis, Paris, France. He studied piano from 1936 until 1938 when he switched to bass at the age of sixteen.
Throughout his career he performed and recorded with Rex Stewart, Coleman Hawkins, Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli, Don Byas, Thelonious Monk, Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke, Zoot Sims, Dizzy Gillespie, Chet Baker and numerous others.
Michelot was a member of the Jacques Loussier Trio, known for the Play Bach album series. In 1957 he recorded the landmark album Afternoon In Paris with John Lewis and Sacha Distel Septet. As a leader he recorded Round About A Bass with an orchestra on the Uni Jazz France label.
Together with Miles Davis, he was responsible for the critically acclaimed soundtrack of Louis Malle’s film Ascenseur pour l’echafaud and also appeared as an unnamed bass player in the movie Round Midnight.
In later life, bebop and hard bop double bassist Pierre Michelot suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and passed away on July 3, 2005.
Give A Gift Of Jazz – Share
More Posts: bass