Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edward Louis Smith was born on May 20, 1931 in Memphis, Tennessee. After graduating from Tennessee State University he attended graduate school at the University of Michigan. While studying at the University of Michigan, he played with visiting musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thad Jones and Billy Mitchell.
He went on to play with Sonny Stitt, Count Basie, Al McKibbon, Cannonball Adderley, Percy Heath, Philly Joe Jones, Lou Donaldson, Donald Byrd, Kenny Dorham and Zoot Sims. Deciding to forgo being a full-time musician to take a job as a director of Atlanta’s Booker T. Washington High School, where he recorded two albums for Blue Note.
The first, Here Comes Louis Smith, originally recorded for the Boston-based Transition Records, featured Cannonball Adderley, then under contract to Mercury, played under the pseudonym Buckshot La Funke, Tommy Flanagan, Duke Jordan, Art Taylor and Doug Watkins. Replacing Donald Byrd for Horace Silver’s Live at the Newport 1958 set, and his playing was one of his best efforts and was described by one critic as monstrous.
He was a prolific composer and successful band director leaving Booker T. Washington to become director of the Jazz Ensemble at the University of Michigan and a teacher in Ann Arbor’s public school system. He would later record for the SteepleChase label.
Suffering a stroke in 2006, he enjoyed live jazz around the Detroit/Ann Arbor area, but did not return to performing. Trumpeter Louis Smith passed away on August 20, 2016 at age 85.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Born May 18, 1894 in North Buxton, Ontario, Canada, Louis Stanley Hooper was raised in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He attended the Detroit Conservatory, where he played locally in dance orchestras in the 1910s. He then moved to New York City around 1920, recorded with Elmer Snowden and Bob Fuller frequently in the middle of the decade, and performed with both of them in Harlem as well as with other ensembles.
Hooper served for some time as the house pianist for Ajax Records and accompanied many blues singers on record, including Martha Copeland, Rosa Henderson, Lizzie Miles, Monette Moore, and Ethel Waters. He participated in the Blackbirds Revue of 1928.
In 1932 returning to Canada he played in Mynie Sutton’s dance band, the Canadian Ambassadors. Lou did local work solo and in ensembles for the next two decades, then was brought back into the limelight by the Montreal Vintage Music Society in 1962. He released an LP of ragtime piano tunes in 1973 entitled Lou Hooper, Piano.
As an educator he taught at the University of Prince Edward Island late in his life and appeared regularly on CBC television in Halifax. His papers, which include unpublished compositions and an autobiography, are now held at the National Library of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario. Pianist Lou Hooper passed away on September 17, 1977, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frederick Roach was born on May 11, 1931 in The Bronx, New York. He made his record debut in 1960 with saxophonist Ike Quebec on the albums Heavy Soul and It Might as Well Be Spring and played with Willis Jackson.
>From 1962-64 he recorded five albums as a leader for the Blue Note Records label. He also recorded with Donald Byrd on the album I’m Tryin’ to Get Home. His original writing, steady basslines, and highly musical fleet-fingered right hand set him apart.
1966-67 saw Freddie recording three more albums as a leader for Prestige Records, which are in a more commercial vein than his Blue Note dates. He left the music business in 1970 and became involved in theater, playwriting and film.
Roach was a soulful organist, certainly influenced by Jimmy Smith, but with a distinct sound and a quite original concept, which was perhaps best heard on “Good Move” for Blue Note. His Blue Note albums are critically acclaimed
Soul jazz Hammond B3 organist Freddie Roach, who moved to California for the film industry, suffered a heart attack and passed away on October 3, 1980.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kamil Běhounek was born March 29, 1916 in the Southern Bohemian section of Blatná, Czech Republic. An autodidact on accordion, having learned to play by imitating recordings and BBC broadcasts, he studied law in Prague, Czech Republic and began performing in clubs. His first recordings on solo accordion date from 1936 and in the late 1930s he worked with the Blue Music Orchestra, Rudolf Antonin Dvorsky, Jiří Traxler, and Karel Vlach.
In 1943, he was forcibly compelled by the Nazis to go to Berlin, Germany where he created arrangements for the bands of Lutz Templin and Ernst van’t Hoff. Upon returning to Czechoslovakia in 1945, he used some of these arrangements for his own band. Kamil returned to Germany the following year and continued arranging for bandleaders Adalbert Luczkowski, Willy Berking, Heinz Schönberger, and Werner Müller.
He played with his own ensemble in Bonn, Germany and, after 1948, in West Germany for American soldiers’ clubs. Between 1968 and 1977, Běhounek recorded several albums of folk music, but continued to play swing with his own groups. He wrote an autobiography, Má láska je jazz (Jazz Is My Love), which was published posthumously in 1986.
Accordionist, bandleader, arranger, composer, and film scorer Kamil Běhounek, who also occasionally played tenor saxophone, passed away on November 22, 1983 in Bonn.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lavere “Buster” Harding was born on March 19, 1917 to Benjamin and Ada Harding in North Buxton, Ontario, Canada. Raised in Cleveland, Ohio as a teenager he started on his own band.
In 1939 Buster went to work for the Teddy Wilson big band, and then in the early 1940s joined the Coleman Hawkins band. This was followed by his playing with Cab Calloway. He became a freelance arranger and worked with Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, and Count Basie, among others.
In 1949 he became the musical director for Billie Holiday recording sessions. In the early 1960s Harding played with Jonah Jones, though he was known primarily as an arranger and composer.
Pianist, composer and arranger Buster Harding, who never recorded as a leader, passed away on November 14, 1965, in New York City.
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