Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Vlady Bas was born Wladimiro Bas Zabache on February 2, 1929 in Bilbao, País Vasco, Spain. He moved to Madrid in 1952 and represented Spain at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. He was one of the first Spanish jazz musicians to play free jazz.
He has been associated with The International Youth Band, Jazztet de Madrid, Juan Carlos Calderon y Su Orquesta De Jazz, Louis Armstrong Newport International Jazz Band, Manolo Gas & The Tinto Band Bang, Orquesta Blue Stars, and Pepe Nieto Y Su Orquesta.
He founded the Vlady Bas Quartet, still on the road, now with his daughter Paula Bas as singer. The quartet members are Carlos Villa, guitar; Fernando Sobrino, piano; Antonio Domínguez, string bass and Antonio Calero, drums.
Saxophonist, clarinetist and flutist Vlady Bas is still on the road.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Werner Dies was born on January 15, 1928 in Frankfurt, Germany. An autodidact on guitar and saxophone, he studied clarinet and composition starting in 1947. From 1947 to 1955 he played guitar in the dance band of Willy Berking, and was a member of the bands Hotclub Combo and Two Beat Stompers.
He led his own ensemble, went on a tour of Yugoslavia in 1955 and from 1955 to 1965 he was a member of Hazy Osterwald’s sextet, and also worked as a session musician and arranger. He toured with Joe Turner and, in 1968, Charly Antolini.
He had a hit in Germany in 1954 with Schuster bleib bei deinen Leisten (The Little Shoemaker) that spent eight weeks at #1 on the German hit parade starting in October 1954. He later worked for Howard Carpendale, Adam & Eve, Graham Bonney, and other singers, and produced easy listening music with his own ensemble, the Werner Dies Sax Band.
He wrote a treatise on clarinet improvisation that was published in 1967. He produced the group Bläck Fööss from 1973 to 2003. Tenor saxophonist, clarinetist, guitarist, composer, and arranger Werner Dies died on February 5, 2003.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Al Belletto was born on January 3, 1928 and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. He graduated from Warren Easton Charter High School before entering Loyola University New Orleans studying music and then earning a master’s degree from Louisiana State University.
Belletto played with Sharkey Bonano, Louis Prima, Wingy Manone and the Dukes of Dixieland in the 1940s and 1950s. He went on to lead his own band and record several albums on Capitol Records from 1952. Along with his ensemble they became part of Woody Herman’s band for U. S. State Department tours of South America in 1958 and 1959.
In the Sixtiess, Al worked at the New Orleans Playboy Club fronting the house band and serving as Musical/Entertainment Director, booking nationally known acts into the venue.
Saxophonist and clarinetist Al Belletto, who recorded six albums as a leader, died on December 26, 2014 in Metairie, Louisiana.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ronald Edward Cuber was born on December 25, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. In 1959 he was playing tenor saxophone when he joined Marshall Brown’s Newport Youth Band at eighteen, but switched to the baritone. His first notable work was with Slide Hampton in 1962 and then went with Maynard Ferguson the following year until 1965. George Benson recruited him for a year in ‘66 to 1967.
As a leader he was known for hard bop and Latin jazz, the latter with Eddie Palmieri, As a sideman he played outside the genre with B. B. King, Paul Simon, Eric Clapton, J. Geils Band, and one of his most spirited performances is on Dr. Lonnie Smith’s 1970 Blue Note album Drives. He was also a member of the Saturday Night Live Band.
Ronnie played with Frank Zappa on the live album Zappa in New York, which was recorded in 1976. He went on to gain membership in the Lee Konitz nonet from 1977 to 1979.He was a member of the Mingus Big Band from its inception in the early 1990s until his death. He performed as an off-screen musician for the movie Across the Universe.
Baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber, who also played soprano and tenor saxophones, clarinet and flute, died at the age of 80 on October 7, 2022 in his New York’s Upper West Side studio from internal injuries sustained after a fall that could not be treated due to overwhelming Covid patients at the start of the pandemic.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bob Smith was born on December 9, 1945 in Columbus, Ohio and was the first child of a young pair of Swing Kids. Growing up he listened to the radio and records playing big band instrumentals and vocals. He became familiar with Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Jimmy Dorsey, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and the Andrews Sisters in the family’s Ohio State University campus area apartment.
By the time he turned ten he had rented a metal clarinet from a local shop and started his entrance into the music industry. Two years later Bob began lessons on the clarinet with David Hite and at Columbus Linden-McKinley high school joined the dance band by learning to play baritone saxophone. This was followed by the purchase of a Selmer Mark VI alto and fell in love.
Attracting national attentionhe as a member of the dance band in 1961-62 the band was invited those two years to the Stan Kenton National Stage Band Camps as a featured guest band. They enjoyed the thrills of being rehearsed by Stan Kenton, Buddy DeFranco, Buddy Morrow, John LaPorta, Don Jacoby, Buddy Baker and others. Then Kenton and DeFranco took them to Chicago’s McCormick Place to perform for the Midwest Band and Orchestra Directors Convention.
At the Ohio State University School of Music he majored in Music Education and alto saxophone was his major instrument. Smith added bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, tenor and bass saxes to his arsenal of instruments.
He taught instrumental music in southern and northwest Ohio and privately in Columbus and Toledo, Ohio. Along with being an educator Bob spent the majority of his working career in business sales, retiring in 2008. Over the decades alto saxophonist Bob Smith has played in numerous big bands in Ohio and currently performs in Toledo’s Swingmania All-Stars, a band that never recorded an album or a song.
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