Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ben Tucker was born on December 13, 1930 in Nashville, Tennessee. By age twelve he began on trumpet and later on the bass, quickly making a name around town. In high school he taught himself to play the tuba and at Tennessee State learned the fundamentals of bass violin on his own. Following a stint in the Air Force, he settled in California playing with Art Pepper and Shorty Rogers, among others and the legendary “Jazz of Two Cities”.
By the early 1960’s, he was regularly performing and recording with Herbie Mann, Billy Taylor, Dexter Gordon, Buddy Rich, Quincy Jones, Marian McPartland, and Mel Torme. He would go on to play with Gerry Mulligan, Peggy Lee, Tommy Flanagan, Ellis Marsalis, Cy Coleman and Red Norvo among others.
A prodigious composer of over 300 titles, many are jazz standards like “Comin’ Home Baby”, “Devilette”, “The Message,” “ Right Here, Right Now” and his most famous discovery and publishing being the Bobby Hebb tune “Sunny”.
Bassist Ben Tucker was named as one of the world’s Top Ten Bass Players in 1959 by Metronome Magazine, was appointed to the Advisory Committee of the Kennedy Center for the Arts, formed his own production company, bought a radio station, received a Clio, produced “Multiplication Rock”, the musical education tool, and created the Telfair Jazz Society and opened and operated Hard-Hearted Hannah’s, a Savannah jazz club.
Bassist Ben Tucker passed away on on June 4, 2013 of a traffic collision on Hutchinson Island, Georgia.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jay Leonhart was born December 6, 1940 in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in a musical family where everyone played the piano. By the age of seven, Jay and his older brother Bill were playing banjos and guitars and mandolins and basses. They played country music, jazz and anything with a beat. In their early teens, Jay and Bill were television stars in Baltimore and were touring the country performing on their banjos.
When Jay was fourteen he started playing the bass in The Pier Five Dixieland Jazz Band in Baltimore. After studying at The Peabody Institute he attended the Berklee College of Music and The Advanced School of Contemporary Music in Toronto before leaving school to start touring with the traveling big bands of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
By age 21 Leonhart moved to New York City to start his career and eventually began playing for many of the great jazz musicians, big bands, and singers like Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Lou Marini, Tony Bennett, Marian McPartland and Jim Hall. He played lots of funky road gigs with big bands, small bands and singers and visited many little jazz joints around the world.
Jay became a very busy studio musician in New York City, visiting every musical genre from James Taylor to Ozzy Osborne to Queen Latifah, has recorded fifteen solo albums, performs a one-man show, regularly plays with Wycliffe Gordon in a duo, was named The Most Valuable Bassist in the recording industry three times by the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and continues to record, perform and tour worldwide.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Art Davis was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on December 5, 1934 where he began studying the piano at the age of 5, switched to tuba and finally to bass while attending high school. He studied at Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music but graduated from Hunter College.
Davis became a busy New York session musician recording with the like of Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach. He worked with many pop artists and also with classical symphony orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Art performed with bassist Reggie Workman in Coltrane’s group and pioneered the use of two basses in a jazz combo setting. He also launched a legal case that led to the current system of blind auditions for orchestras. Besides working as a leader, he worked as a sideman with Art Blakey, Curtis Fuller, Eddie Harris, Freddie Hubbard, Elvin Jones, Clifford Jordan, Roland Kirk, Abbey Lincoln, Booker Little, Lee Morgan, Hilton Ruiz and Dizzy Reece among others.
He earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from New York University, moved to southern California in 1986, taught at Orange Coast College and balanced his teaching, psychology practice and jazz performances. Bassist Art Davis died on July 29, 2007 from a heart attack.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Johnny Mbizo Dyani was born on November 30, 1945 in Duncan Village, a township of the South African city of East London. He started playing the piano and singing in a traditional choir at an early age. At 13, he switched to bass, but would use both voice and piano later on.
In the early 1960s, Dyani was a member of South Africa’s first integrated jazz band, “The Blue Notes”; however, in 1964 the band fled South Africa to seek musical and political freedom, rebelling against the apartheid regime that inhibited whites and blacks playing together.
In 1966, Dyani toured Argentina with Steve Lacy’s quartet and recorded. The Forest and the Zoo. He would later move to Denmark and Sweden, recording many albums under his own name. He recorded with Dollar Brand a.k.a. Abdullah Ibrahim, Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, David Murray, Mal Waldron, Don Moye and Brotherhood of Breath among many others.
In the 70s he formed the group “Earthquake Power” and then became very active on the European scene. His Witchdoctor’s Son band recorded for Steeplechase Records and he also recorded with Swedish and Brazilian musicians. Dyani’s main focus of playing entered around African jazz, avant-garde jazz and world fusion.
Double bassist and pianist Johnny Dyani passed away suddenly after a concert in Berlin on October 24, 1986 at age 40. After his death, the remaining members of The Blue Notes reunited to record a moving tribute album, titled Blue Notes For Johnny.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Howard Rumsey was born on November 7, 1917 in Brawley, California and first began playing the piano, followed by the drums and finally the bass. After jobs with Vido Musso and Johnnie Davis, he became part of Stan Kenton’s first band. After an argument ensued he left Kenton and played with Charlie Barnet and Barney Bigard before taking a short hiatus from music.
Upon his return Howard hit the Los Angeles jazz scene and formed the Lighthouse All-Stars. For most of the 1950s this group played each Sunday at the Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach. During its lifetime, the Lighthouse All-Stars were one of the primary modern jazz institutions on the West Coast that provided a home for many Los Angeles musicians. He opened his debut show on May 29, 1949 to immediate success.
Rumsey employed in the first Lighthouse All-Stars group the Los Angeles musicians who had been a part of the Central Avenue scene in the 1940s, including Teddy Edwards, Sonny Criss, Hampton Hawes, Frank Patchen, Bobby White and Keith Williams. His second band featured a new wave of players, Jimmy Giuffre, Shorty Rogers, and Shelly Manne. The success of this group soon had them recording for Les Koenig’s Contemporary Records. This contract expanded to include many of the members of the group leading sessions for this same label, such as Art Pepper and Stan Getz.
This third edition of the Lighthouse All-Stars included Bud Shank, Bob Cooper, Rolf Ericsson and Max Roach. This band took part in a historic recording in 1953 that featured both Chet Baker and Miles Davis, along with Russ Freeman and Lorraine Geller.
Various editions of the band hosted other players until the early Sixties when jazz interest faded in Los Angeles, but during its heyday some seventy-five musicians came through their ranks until the group eventually dissolved. From 1971 to 1985 he owned and operated the 200 seat club Concerts by the Sea in Redondo Beach, California.In 2005 the film Jazz on the West Coast: The Lighthouse was released about the group. Double-bassist Howard Rumsey passed away on July 15, 2015 from complications of pneumonia in Newport Beach, California, at the age of 96.
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