Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bob Mintzer was born January 27, 1953 in New Rochelle, New York. After graduating from the Interlochen Arts Academy in 1970, he made his mark as a soloist, mainly on the tenor saxophone and bass clarinet but is also proficient on flute and the EWI (electronic wind instrument).
He is a member of the jazz-rock band the Yellowjackets but among jazz fans is even better known for his inspiring big band work since the early 1980s in the Word of Mouth Big Band and then as the leader of the Bob Mintzer Big Band. Before starting his own big band, Bob was a featured soloist and arranger with the Buddy Rich big band.
In 2008, Bob succeeded pianist Shelly Berg to hold the Bowen H. “Buzz” McCoy and Barbara M. McCoy Endowed Chair in Jazz Studies at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music.
Mintzer has been nominated for thirteen Grammy Awards both for his solo work and big band recordings an his Homage to Count Basie won him a Grammy for the Best Large Ensemble in 2001. He has performed and/or recorded with a wide variety of artists ranging from Tito Puente, Buddy Rich, Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band, James Taylor, The New York Philharmonic, National Symphony, American Saxophone Quartet, Art Blakey, Donald Fagan, Bobby McFerrin, Nancy Wilson, Kurt Elling, to Jaco Pastorius, Mike Manieri, and Randy Brecker.
Saxophonist, clarinetist, composer, arranger and bandleader Bob Mintzer continues to perform, tour and record as he explores funk and Latin domains with his big band.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pud Brown was born Albert Francis Brown on January 22, 1917 in Wilmington, Delaware but was raised in Shreveport, Louisiana. Brown was fluent on saxophone by age five, and toured throughout North America in a family band at the age of seven, playing the circus, nightclub and minstrel show circuits in the mid 1920s.
After moving to Chicago, Pud found work in Phil Lavant’s orchestra in 1938 and then in Lawrence Welk’s band. In 1941 he married, left music to run a motorcycle shop in Shreveport – a failed endeavor, relocated to Los Angeles and found work as a jazz musician.
Brown career exploded over the next several decades working with such jazz musicians as Les Brown, Coleman Hawkins, Doc Cheatham, Danny Barker, Kid Ory, Percy Humphrey and Louis Armstrong among others. He returned to New Orleans in 1975 and became a mainstay of the local scene playing with Clive Wilson’s Original Camelia Brass Band in the 1980s, holding a regular gig at the French Quarter’s Palm Court Jazz Cafe.
Pud Brown, clarinetist, reed player and active as an educator in local schools until his death, passed away on May 27, 1996 in Algiers, Louisiana.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Coleman Randolph Hawkins was born on November 21, 1904 in St. Joseph, Missouri and named after his mother’s maiden name. He started out playing piano and cello prior to playing saxophone at age nine. By the time he turned 14, he was playing around eastern Kansas while attending Topeka High School and simultaneously studying harmony and composition for two years at Washburn College.
In 1921 Hawkins joined Mamie Smith’s Jazz Hounds, toured through 1923 and settled in New York City. Hawkins joined Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra doubling on clarinet and bass saxophone and becoming a star soloist. He recorded with band mates Louis Armstrong and Henry “Red” Allen, a number of solo recordings with either piano or a pick-up band of Henderson musicians. In late 1934, he played with Jack Hylton’s band in London, toured Europe as a soloist until 1939 and worked with Django Reinhardt and Benny Carter in 1937 Paris.
Returning to the States he worked Kelly’s Stables, recorded two choruses of Body and Soul, his landmark recording of the Swing Era. Recorded as an afterthought at the session, it is notable in that Coleman ignores almost all of the melody, only the first four bars are stated in a recognizable fashion. In its exploration of harmonic structure it is considered by many to be the next evolutionary step in jazz recording from where Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues” in 1928 left off.
Over the course of his long and prolific career Hawkins had an unsuccessful attempt at a big band, led a combo at Kelly’s Stables, played with Thelonious Monk, Oscar Pettiford, Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, Ben Webster, Max Roach, Howard McGhee, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Roy Eldridge, J.J. Johnson, Fats Navarro and Duke Ellington among others, recorded a session with Dizzy Gillespie that is considered the first bebop recording and toured with Jazz at the Philharmonic. After 1948 Hawkins divided his time between New York and Europe, making numerous freelance recordings. In the 1960s, he appeared regularly at the Village Vanguard.
Tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins directly influenced many future bebop musicians such as Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. In his later years he stopped recording, began drinking heavily and died of pneumonia on May 19, 1969 in New York.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Milton Mesirow, better known as Mezz Mezzrow was born November 9, 1899 in Chicago, Illinois. The clarinetist and saxophonist has never been ranked as one of the best jazz musicians, organizing and taking part in some magnificent recording sessions involving the best black musicians of the 1930s/40s, including Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson, Frankie Newton, Tommy Ladnier and most importantly Sidney Bechet. His 1938 sessions for the French jazz critic Hugues Panassie, which he is well-known for organizing and financing, involved Bechet and Ladnier and helped spark the “New Orleans revival”.
Mezzrow became better known for his drug-dealing of marijuana than his music. His nicknames “Mezz” and “Muggles” that became slang for marijuana were used in song, the former in the Stuff Smith tune “If You’re A Viper” and the later was the title of a 1928 Louis Armstrong recording and for a brief time was his manager.
In the mid-1940s Mezzrow started his own record label, King Jazz Records, featuring himself in groups that usually included Sidney Bechet and, often, trumpeter Oran “Hot Lips” Page. Mezzrow also can be found and heard playing on six recordings by Fats Waller and his appearance at the 1948 Nice Jazz Festival was a surprise hit.
Following that appearance he made his home in Paris, France and organized many bands that included French musicians like Claude Luter, as well as visiting American artists like Peanuts Holland, Jimmy Archey, Kansas Fields, Lionel Hampton and Buck Clayton, with whom in 1953 he made what is probably his best ever recording: a version of the Louis Armstrong classic “West End Blues”.
Mezz Mezzrow, clarinetist, saxophonist, author and colorful character died on August 5, 1972 in Paris, France.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eddie Daniels was born on October 19, 1941 in New York City and grew up in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn. He became interested in jazz as a teenager when impressed by listening to the recordings of the musicians accompanying singers, such as Frank Sinatra. Eddie’s first instrument was the alto saxophone, started on clarinet at 13 and later received his Masters in Clarinet from Julliard. By 15 he would add the Newport Jazz Festival Youth Competition to what would become a long list of credits. By the time he entered college, he was playing alto, clarinet and adding tenor saxophone to his arsenal.
Daniels has led a variety of bands from small combos to orchestras and has toured worldwide, recorded and appeared on television. Since the 1980s he has focused mainly on the clarinet and in 1989 he won one of many Grammy awards for playing on the Roger Kellaway arrangement of “Memos From Paradise”.
Over the course of his career he has captured Down Beat Magazine’s International Critics New Star on Clarinet Award, played and recorded with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra at the Village Vanguard, George Benson, Joe Farrell, Johnny Hammond, Richard Davis, Yusef Lateef, Airto Moreira and Don Patterson Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band. Clarinetist Eddie Daniels, who also plays saxophone, flute and piccolo, performs commissioned classical compositions, has revolutionized the blend of classical and jazz and continues to tour and record.