Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Yusef Lateef was born William Emanuel Huddleston on October 9, 1920 in Chattanooga, Tennessee and by the time he was five his family moved to Detroit. Throughout his early life Lateef came into contact with many Detroit-based jazz musicians who went on to gain prominence, including vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Elvin Jones and guitarist Kenny Burrell
Proficient on saxophone by graduation from high school at the age of 18, he launched his professional career and began touring with a number of swing bands. In 1949, he was touring with Dizzy Gillespie and his orchestra. In 1950, Lateef returned to Detroit and began his studies in composition and flute at Wayne State University. It was during this period that he converted to Islam.
Lateef began recording as a leader in 1957 for Savoy Records overlapping with Prestige Records subsidiary label New Jazz, collaborating with Wilbur Harden, Herman Wright, Frank Gant, and Hugh Lawson among others. By 1961, with the recording of Into Something and Eastern Sounds his dominant presence within a group context had emerged and his ‘Eastern’ influences are clearly audible in all of these recordings.
Along with trumpeter Don Cherry, Yusef can lay claim to being among the first exponents of the world music as sub-genres of jazz. He played on numerous albums, was a member of Cannonball Adderley’s Quintet during the early Sixties, was a major influence on John Coltrane, he began to incorporate contemporary soul and gospel phrasing into his music, founded his own label YAL Records and was commissioned by the WDR Radio Orchestra to compose the African American Epic Suite.
Lateef has written and published a number of books including two novellas and Yusef Lateef’s Flute Book of the Blues. He has received the Jazz Master Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, and has had aired a special-documentary program for Lateef, titled A Portrait of Saxophonist Yusef Lateef In His Own Words and Music. He has recorded nearly six-dozen records as both a leader and sideman and continued to compose, perform, record and tour until his transition at age 93 on December 23, 2013 in Shutesbury, Massachusetts.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Adam Cordero was born on November 18, 1999 and grew up in Roslyn Heights, New York. He became captivated by the sounds of nature which he has incorporated in his compositions. Attending the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts
Adam holds a BFA degree with high honors from The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. He is also an adjunct professor at the New School and teaches privately.
Cordero teaches his own studio of students privately and is an adjunct faculty member at The New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music. He has played the established jazz venues in New York City, and has toured internationally to Switzerland and South Korea.
His quintet, Arcadia, strives to unite people in the common cause of protecting the environment. Cordero is a leading founder of the music venue Julian’s NYC and the music label, Tidebloom Records.
Saxophonist, composer, educator, and multi-instrumentalist Adam Cordero, who also plays clarinet, bass clarinet, and flute, continues to perform, tour and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Raymond Michael Pizzi was born January 19, 1943 in Everett, Massachusetts. His first instrument was clarinet and he attended the Boston Conservatory and Berklee College of Music in the 1960s.
Pizzi taught in Randolph, Massachusetts public schools from 1964 to 1969 before relocating to California. In the 1970s he worked with Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Frank Zappa, Shelly Manne, Willie Bobo, Moacir Santos, Mark Levine, and Dizzy Gillespie.
The Eighties saw him accompanying Nancy Wilson and was a sideman for Milcho Leviev and Bob Florence. He worked with the American Jazz Orchestra into the early-1990s. Ray recorded as a leader, including in a quartet called Windrider.
As an educator he joined the faculty at the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami in 1997.
Saxophonist, bassoonist, and flautist Ray Pizzi, nicknamed Pizza Man, died on September 2, 2021.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Makanda Ken McIntyre was born Kenneth Arthur McIntyreon on September 7, 1931 in Boston, Massachusetts to a father whoplayed mandolin. He started his musical life on the bugle when he was eight years old, followed by piano. In his teens he discovered the music of Charlie Parker and began playing saxophone at nineteen, then clarinet and flute two years later. Serving in the Army in 1953, for two years he played saxophone and piano in Japan.
Following his discharge Ken attended the Boston Conservatory where he studied with Gigi Gryce, Charlie Mariano, and Andy McGhee. In 1958 he received a degree in flute and composition with a master’s degree the next year in composition. He also received a doctorate (Ed.D.) in curriculum design from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1975.
1960 saw McIntyre recording as a leader with Eric Dolphy. The following year and for the next six he taught music in public schools. He took oboe lessons in New York before playing with Bill Dixon, Jaki Byard, and the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra. He went on to spend three years with pianist Cecil Taylor. During the 1970s he recorded with Nat Adderley and Beaver Harris and in the 1980s with Craig Harris and Charlie Haden.
In 1971, he founded the first African American Music program in the United States at the State University of New York College at Old Westbury, teaching for 24 years. He also taught at Wesleyan University, Smith College, Central State University, Fordham University, and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.
In the early 1990s, while performing in Zimbabwe, a stranger handed him a piece of paper with the word “Makanda” written on it, which translates to many skins in the Ndebele language and many heads in Shona. He changed his name to Makanda Ken McIntyre. At the age of 69 on June 13, 2001 he transitioned from a heart attack in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Orie Frank Trumbauer was born on May 30, 1901 in Carbondale, Illinois, Trumbauer grew up in St Louis, Missouri, the son of a musical mother who directed saxophone and theater orchestras. His first important professional engagements were with the Edgar Benson and Ray Miller bands, shortly followed by the Mound City Blue Blowers, a local group that became nationally famous through their recordings on Brunswick.
Trumbauer recruited Bix Beiderbecke for Jean Goldkette’s Victor Recording Orchestra, of which he became musical director. After leaving Goldkette, he and Beiderbecke worked briefly in Adrian Rollini’s short lived New Yorkers band, then joined Paul Whiteman in 1927. In 1927, he signed a contract with OKeh and released a 78 recording of Singin’ the Blues. Originally recorded and released by the Original Dixieland Jass Band in 1920, the Okeh recording became a smash hit. Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra would record it in 1931 in the Trumbauer-Beiderbecke version.
He played with Whiteman for eight of the following nine years. Frank had a separate contract with OKeh from 1927 through 1930, where he recorded some of the most legendary small group jazz recordings of the era with Brunswick, Columbia, and Victor.
Leading The Three T’s, featuring the Teagarden brothers in 1936, two years later he and Mannie Klein co-led a band. In 1940 he left music to use his pilot skills to join the Civil Aeronautics Authority. Frank became a test pilot during World War II he was a test pilot with North American Aviation, and trained military crews in the operation of the B-25 Mitchell bomber. He continued to work for the CAA after the war, and also played in the NBC Orchestra. After 1947, although he continued to play and record, he earned most of his income in aviation.
Saxophonist, bassoonist, clarinetist and composer Frank Trumbauer, who was the influence for Lester Young, passed away of a sudden heart attack on June 11, 1956 in Kansas City, Missouri, age 55.
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