Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe Darensbourg was born Joseph Wilmer Darensbourg on July 9, 1906 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He received some of his earliest training from Alphonse Picou. After playing with local groups, and traveling with a medicine show and a circus band, he settled in Los Angeles, California and worked with Mutt Carey’s Liberty Syncopators.
He worked in Seattle from 1929 to 1944, working on cruise lines, playing in after-hours clubs and roadhouses, and backing several non-jazz entertainers. Darensbourg resumed playing jazz in 1944, in a traditional group with Johnny Wittwer. When he returned to Los Angeles, he recorded with Kid Ory and worked briefly with R&B bandleader Joe Liggins.
From 1947 to 1953 Joe worked solely with Ory, then spent the rest of his career in traditional ensembles, working with such musicians as Gene Mayl, Teddy Buckner and Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars. He led his own groups, and had a hit with the song Yellow Dog Blues, and toured with the Legends of Jazz from 1973 to 1975. He also worked with Buddy Petit, Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie Creath, Fate Marable, Andy Kirk, Johnny Wittwer and Wingy Manone. Clarinet and saxophonist Joe Darensbourg, one of the purest soloists in traditional jazz, passed away in Van Nuys, California on May 24, 1985.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bruce Turner was born Malcolm Bruce Turner on July 5, 1922 in Saltburn, England. Educated at Dulwich College, he learned to play the clarinet as a schoolboy and began playing alto sax while serving in the Royal Air Force in 1943 during World War II. He played with Freddy Randall from 1948–53, and worked on the Queen Mary in a dance band and in a quartet with Dill Jones and Peter Ind.
He briefly studied under Lee Konitz in New York City in 1950 then joined Humphrey Lyttelton’s outfit from 1953 to 1957. After leaving Lyttelton he led his own Jump Band from 1957–65 and was featured and arranged the music in the 1961 film Living Jazz. In 1961, Turner and his band recorded the LP Jumpin’ At The NFT (National Film Theatre) coinciding with the film’s release. Two years later he took part in the largest trad jazz event to be staged in Britain with George Melly, Diz Disley, Acker Bilk, Chris Barber, Kenny Ball, Ken Colyer, Monty Sunshine, Bob Wallis, Alex Welsh and Mick Mulligan.
He returned to work with Randall from 1964–66, and played with Don Byas in 1966 and Acker Bilk from 1966 to 1970. He continued to work with Lyttelton and Ind in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and played with the Jump Band every so often. He worked with Wally Fawkes, John Chilton, Stan Greig, Alex Welsh, and Dave Green through the Seventies. He led his own small ensembles in the 1990s, up until his death.
He was noted for his very quiet voice and his autobiography Hot Air, Cool Music was published in 1984. He also wrote a column on jazz for the Daily Worker. Saxophonist, clarinetist, and bandleader Bruce Turner passed away on November 28, 1993 in Newport Pagnell.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pete Fountain was born Pierre Dewey LaFontaine, Jr. in a Creole cottage style frame house on July 3, 1930 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father later changed his name to Peter and added Junior. He started playing clarinet as a child due to suffering from weakened lungs from a respiratory infection. Choosing the clarinet, his lungs became strengthened after receiving a doctor’s advice to play an instrument that he would have to blow into.
He took private lessons but also learned to play jazz by playing along with phonograph records of first Benny Goodman and then Irving Fazola. Early on he played with the bands of Monk Hazel and Al Hirt. Fountain founded The Basin Street Six in 1950 with his longtime friend, trumpeter George Girard . Four years later the band broke up and he was hired to join the Lawrence Welk orchestra and became well known for his many solos on the television show, The Lawrence Welk Show.
Post Welk, Pete was hired by Decca Records A&R head Charles “Bud” Dant and went on to produce 42 hit albums with Dant. He returned to New Orleans, played with The Dukes of Dixieland, then began leading bands under his own name. On the Sixties and Seventies he owned his own club in the French Quarter and later acquired Pete Fountain’s Jazz Club at the Riverside Hilton. He would lead a quintet comprised of bassist Don Bagley, vibist Godfrey Hirsch, pianist Merle Koch, and double bass drummer Jack Sperling. He played the Hollywood Bowl and appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 56 times.
Over the course of his career his club would host Cliff Arquette, Jonathan Winters, Frank Sinatra, Phil Harris, Carol Lawrence, Robert Goulet, Keely Smith, Robert Mitchum, Brenda Lee, among many others. He would play and/or record with Oliver “Sticks” Felix, John Probst, Paul Guma, Godfrey Hirsch, Jack Sperling, Don Bagley, Morty Corb, Godfrey Hirch, Merle Kock, Stan Wrightsman and Al Hirt, who had a club down the street. He performed his last show at the Hollywood Casino in 2010.
He is a founder and the most prominent member of the Half-Fast Walking Club, one of the best known marching Krewes that parade in New Orleans on Mardi Gras Day. He has been honored with induction into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, given a star on the Delta Music Museum Walk of Fame, and received an honorary degree from Loyola University New Orleans. Clarinetist Pete Fountain, who played jazz, Dixieland, pop jazz, honky-tonk jazz, pop, and Creole music, passed away in his hometown on August 6, 2016 from heart failure at the age of 86.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gary Foster was born May 25, 1936 in Leavenworth, Kansas and started on the clarinet at age 13. His first personal musical inspiration was Olin Parker, his Jr. High School music director and private teacher who introduced him to Woody Herman, Count Basie and many other types of music. He listened closely to the Woody Herman orchestra recording of “Four Brothers” from the late 1940s which featured jazz saxophonists Stan Getz, Zoot Sims and Serge Chaloff and for him, Getz stood out on the tenor saxophone because of his tone. but Lester Young and Charlie Parker were also major influences.
His earliest professional experience was at age of 15 playing Leavenworth VFW Hall dances with bassist Harold Stanford. After high school Gary studied at Central College in Fayette, Missouri, he then transferred to the University of Kansas studying classical clarinet, music education, musicology and conducting. While there he met and played with Kansas City jazz trumpet great Carmell Jones.
In 1961 at age 26 Foster moved to Los Angeles, California to join the West Coast jazz scene, teaching privately and studying the flute but finding little work for a saxophonist to make a living only playing jazz he turned to studio work as a woodwind doubler to support his family. His initial associations and friendships with Clare Fischer and Warne Marsh were vital to Foster’s artistic approach to music and jazz improvisation.
He joined at its inception in 1973 he was a member of the Grammy Award winning Toshiko Akiyoshi – Lew Tabackin Big Band, worked with the big bands of Clare Fischer, Louis Bellson, Mike Barone, Ed Shaughnessy, and the Marty Paich Dek-tette, as well as with Cal Tjader, Poncho Sanchez, Sammy Nestico, Shelly Manne, and Rosemary Clooney and numerous others.
For over 45 years he has made his studio work has included television, movies, recordings, media and soundtracks such as Monsters, Inc., Ice Age, Elf, Meet The Fokkers, and Haunted Mansion to name a few. Foster has been in the Academy Awards Television Orchestra for 30 different broadcasts of the show, performed regularly with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.
Saxophonist, clarinetist and flutist Gary has taught at Pasadena City College, University of Missouri, University of California, Los Angeles and California State University and founded Nova Music Studios. He has co-authored educational materials and conducts clinics at colleges and performs and lectures at professional music symposiums.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Walter Dewey Redman was born May 17, 1931 in Fort Worth, Texas. He attended I.M. Terrell High School and played saxophone in the school band with Ornette Coleman, Prince Lasha and Charles Moffett. After high school he briefly enrolled in the electrical engineering program at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama but became disillusioned with the program and returned home to Texas. In 1953, he earned a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Arts from Prairie View Agricultural and Mechanical University and while attending switched from clarinet to alto saxophone, eventually to tenor.
Following his degree, Redman served for two years in the Army and upon his discharge he began working on a master’s degree in education at the University of North Texas. While there he taught music to fifth graders in Bastrop, Texas and worked as a freelance saxophonist at night and on weekends around Austin, Texas. By 1957 he graduated in Education with a minor in Industrial Arts.
1959 saw him moving to San Francisco, California as result of an early collaboration with clarinetist Donald Rafael Garrett. He would go on to perform with Ornette Coleman, from 1968 to 1972 and recording New York Is Now!, among others. Dewey was also a part of Keith Jarrett’s American Quartet from 1971 – 1976, whose album The Survivors’ Suite was voted Jazz Album of the Year by Melody Maker in 1978.
In the mid-70s Redman formed the quartet Old And New Dreams with Coleman alumni Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell. They recorded four albums in the period to 1987. He performed and recorded as an accompanying musician with jazz musicians who performed in varying styles within the post-1950s jazz idiom, including drummer Paul Motian, Pat Metheny, Jane Bunnett, Anthony Cox, Cameron Brown, Billy Hart, Matt Wilson, Roswell Rudd, Randy Weston, Clifford Thornton, Jon Ballantyne, Michael Boclan, David Bond, Leroy Jenkins, Dane Belany and Michel Benita.
As a leader with more than a dozen recordings, Dewey established himself as one of the more prolific tenor players of his generation. Though generally associated with free jazz, he would also play standards and ballads reminiscent of the blues and post-bop mainstream and would sometimes hum into his sax while performing.
Tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, who occasionally played alto saxophone, the Chinese suona and clarinet mainly in the free jazz genre, passed away from liver failure in Brooklyn, New York, on September 2, 2006. He was the subject of an award-winning documentary film Dewey Time and recorded two albums with his son Joshua.
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