Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Thelma Terry was born Thelma Esther Combes on September 30, 1901 in Bangor, Michigan in 1901. After her parents divorced she moved with her mother and two sisters to Chicago, Illinois where she chose to study string bass. Her early years were spent on the road performing in Chautauqua assemblies. When she graduated from Austin Union High School, she earned first chair in the Chicago Women’s Symphony Orchestra. As this did not provide her with a living, she turned to jazz.
She found her way into Chicago nightlife, playing in and around the city with her all-women band, Thelma Combes and her Volcanic Orchestra, or her jazz string quartet, and was hired by Al Capone as the house band in his Colosimo’s Restaurant.
Withan article in Variety bringing national attention to her, the Music Corporation of America took notice of Combes and renamed her “Thelma Terry” and gave her an all-male band, Thelma Terry and Her Playboys, with a young Gene Krupa on drums.
MCA billed Terry as “The Beautiful Blonde Siren of Syncopation”, “The Jazz Princess”, and “The Female Paul Whiteman”. Bud Freeman was so enthusiastic about the band that he paid another musician to fill his seat in the Spike Hamilton Band so he could join the Playboys. The band toured nationally on the Eastern Seaboard and as far west as Kansas City. In 1929 she disbanded the Playboys, quit MCA to marry Willie Haar and settled in Savannah, Georgia.
After a failed comeback, and a divorce in 1936 she sold her string bass, turned her back on the music profession, and took a job as a knitting instructor. She spent her last years with family in her native Michigan.
Bandleader and bassist Thelma Tery, who was the first American woman to lead a notable jazz orchestra as an instrumentalist, transitioned on May 30, 1966 from esophageal cancer at the age of 64.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joseph Shulman was born on September 12, 1923 in New York, New York. His first professional experience was with Scat Davis in 1940 followed with a stint alongside Les Brown in 1942.
Joining the military in 1943 he recorded with Django Reinhardt while a member of Glenn Miller’s wartime band. Upon his return to the States he played with Buddy Rich and Claude Thornhill, then he played with Miles Davis on the Birth of the Cool sessions.
He went on to work with Peggy Lee from 1948 to 1950 and with Lester Young in 1950. Shulman did a recording session with Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington that same year.
Marrying Barbara Carroll in 1954, the two toured together until his death. Bassist Joe Shulman transitioned from a heart attack on August 2, 1957 in New York City.
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THE JAZZ SYMBIOSIS QUINTET
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GWENYTH HAYES QUARTET
Bassist and vocalist Gwenyth Hayes’ hybrid reinterpretations give due respect to classic songs and soul covers from many genres and eras. They center around her sultry voice, groove-oriented bass lines and tight instrumental arrangements. This approach serves to reinvent popular soul, jazz, soft rock, and blues standards with a sensual and contemporary feel. Gwenyth’s sound appeals to diverse audiences and is meant to be reminiscent to many generations.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Willie Henry Ruff Jr. was born September 1, 1931 in Sheffield, Alabama. He attended the Yale School of Music earning his Bachelor and Masters of Music by 1954.
He first met Dwike Mitchell in 1947 when they were teenaged servicemen stationed at the former Lockbourne Air Force Base in Ohio. Mitchell recruited Ruff to play bass with his unit band for an Air Force radio program. The two of them went on to later play in Lionel Hampton’s band but left in 1955 to form their own group, the Mitchell-Ruff Duo. They played as a second act to artists such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie.
From 1955 to 2011 the duo regularly performed and lectured throughout the United States, Asia, Africa, and Europe. The Mitchell-Ruff Duo was the first jazz band to play in the Soviet Union in 1959 and in China in 1981. Chosen by John Hammond to be the bass player for the recording sessions of Songs of Leonard Cohen, an album first released in 1967. During those sessions, he and Cohen laid down the bed tracks for most of the songs on the album.
He is one of the founders of the W. C. Handy Music Festival in Florence, Alabama, was a faculty member at the Yale School of Music from 1971 until his retirement in 2017, teaching music history, ethnomusicology, and arranging. Willie was a founding Director of the Duke Ellington Fellowship Program at Yale, held a visiting appointment at Duke University, where he oversaw the jazz program and directed the Duke Jazz Ensemble and was on the faculty at UCLA and Dartmouth.
Over the course of his career he recorded as a soloist, in a duo and as a sideman with Quincy Jones, Bobby Hutcherson, Gil Evans, Benny Golson, Milt Jackson, Lalo Schifrin, Sonny Stitt, Clifford Coulter, Miles Davis and Jimmy Smith.
French horn and double bassist Willie Ruff, who played in the Mitchell-Ruff Duo with pianist for over 50 years, was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and has published his memoir A Call to Assembly: The Autobiography of a Musical Storyteller, is retired at 91.
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