Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Kamil Hala was born on August 1, 1914 in Most, Czechoslovakia. During the late Fifties he led his own orchestra. He was a member of the Czechoslovak Radio Dance Orchestra beginning in 1960, starting as a pianist and later as its  arranger and conductor. After the orchestra split in 1963 he was the conductor of the Czechoslovak Radio Jazz Orchestra until the 1990s.

Pianist composer, arranger, and conductor Kamil Hala passed away on October 29, 2014 in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Karel Krautgartner was born on July 20, 1922 in Mikulov, Moravia into the family of a postmaster. He began studying clarinet on a private basis with Stanislav Krtička, and performed a demanding part of the Concertino by Leoš Janáček at the composer’s request at the festival of contemporary music in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1926. Acquiring the necessary skills of clarinet playing, and a fanatic passion for clarinet construction and components – reeds, mouthpieces, and barrels, which he later used his knowledge of wind instruments as a lecturer at German universities in Cologne and Düsseldorf.

In 1930 he began playing piano and by 1935 after moving to Brno, Czech Republic he became interested mainly in jazz radio broadcasts. 1936 saw Karel founding the student orchestra Quick band. In 1942, he signed his first professional contract as a saxophonist in the Gustav Brom orchestra in the hotel Passage in Brno. A year later he created Dixie Club and started to arrange in the Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller styles. From 1945 – 1955, the core of the Dixie Club moved to Prague and became a part of the Karel Vlach Orchestra.

He achieved a privileged position as the leader of the saxophone section and started to contribute with his own compositions. In 1956,along with Karel Velebný he put together the Karel Krautgartner Quintet, performed with the All Star Band, and with Studio 5. During the Sixties he became the head of the Dance Orchestra of Czechoslovakia Radio, renamed the Karel Krautgartner Orchestra. In 1968 he emigrated to Vienna, Austria and became the chief conductor of the 0RF Bigband. He eventually moved to Cologne, Germany. Clarinetist, saxophonist, arranger, composer, conductor and educator Karel Krautgartner passed away on September 20, 1982.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Giorgio Gaslini was born on October 22, 1929  in Milan, Italy and began performing aged 13 and recorded with his jazz trio at 16. In the 1950s and 1960s, Gaslini performed with his own quartet. He was the first Italian musician mentioned as a “new talent” in the Down Beat poll and the first Italian officially invited to the New Orleans Jazz Festival in 1976-77. He collaborated with leading American soloists, such as Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd, Max Roach, but also with the Argentinian Gato Barbieri and Frenchman Jean-Luc Ponty.

Adapting the compositions of Albert Ayler and Sun Ra for solo piano, issued on the  Soul Note label, he also composed the soundtrack of Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte, The Night, in 1961. In the early Seventies, he was the first holder of jazz courses at the Santa Cecilia Academy of Music in Rome.

As to contemporary music, he composed symphonic works, operas and ballets represented at the Scala Theatre in Milan and other Italian theatres. In addition from 1970 to 1977 he scored nine films, including Your Hands On My Body, Cross Current, and Kleinhoff Hotel. From 1991 to 1995, Gaslini composed works for Carlo Actis Dato’s Italian Instabile Orchestra.

Pianist, composer and conductor Giorgio Gaslini passed away on July 29, 2014 at age 84 in Borgo Val di Taro, Parma, Italy, where he had been living for years together with his longtime wife and fourteen dogs and cats.

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The Quarantined Jazz Voyager

We have not yet recognized when or how we will emerge from this pandemic, but as we collectively continue to navigate our way maintaining social distancing it is the perfect time to put on some headphones, earbuds, or just turn up the volume and listen to some big band. So today, this Quarantined Jazz Voyager is not going to the big band standards of yesteryear, nor is he choosing to feature one of the many led by men but is selecting the perfect album released this year by vocalist Lenora Zenzalai Helm & Tribe Jazz Orchestra. It is titled For The Love Of Big Band.

The album was recorded over a two day period in March 26th ~ 27th in front of a live audience and employed 20 musicians, a dozen music and music business professionals, four generations of renowned veteran musicians, as well as emerging and student musicians. It has been released under the Zenzalai Music label.

1. Blues For Mama (N. Simone) ~ 4:42
2. Bebop (d. Gillespie/D. Brown) ~ 6:22
3. Chega de Saudade/No More Blues (A. Jobim, J. Cavanaugh, V. de Moraes, J. Hendricks) ~ 6:39
4. It Could Happen To You (J. Van Huesen, J. Burke) ~ 5:26
5. Soul Eyes (M. Waldron) ~ 5:24
6. Everything But You (D. Ellington, H. James) ~ 4:30
7. I Didn’t Know About You (D. Ellington, B. Russell) ~ 5:50
8. Sandu (C. Brown, D. Townsend) – 9:00
9. But Not For Me (G. Gershwin, I. Gershwin) ~ 5:26
10. A Conversation With God (Dear Lord) (J. Coltrane, L. Helm, M. Myers) ~ 7:25
11. Mississippi Goddam (N. Simone) ~ 6:06
12. Stella By Starlight (V. Young, N. Washington) ~ 8:23

• Lenora Zenzalai Helm ~ Voice
• Ernest Turner, Lydia Salett Dudley, Ed Paolantonio ~ Piano
• Baron Tymas ~ Guitar
• Ginnae Koon ~ Bass
• Thoma Taylor, Dorien Dotson,  ~ Drums
• James “Saxmo” Gates, Sam King, Brian Miller, Matt York, Ariel Kopelove, Shaena Ryan Martin ~ Reeds
• Lynn Grissett, Al Strong, Zoe Smith, Tyler Perske ~ Trumpets
• Robert Trowers, Isrea Butler, Tenay Harrell, Reggie Greenlee, Cameron MacManus ~ Trombones
• Brian Horton ~ Conductor, Composer, Arranger, Saxophone

• Lenora Zenzalai Helm ~ Conductor, Voice
• Ed Paolantonio ~ Piano
• Baron Tymas ~ Guitar
• Timothy Holley ~ Cello
• Salome Serena Wiley ~ Tenor Saxophone
• Lance E. Scott, Jr. ~ Acoustic Bass
• Thoma Taylor ~ Drums
• NCCU Vocal Jazz Ensemble ~ Guest Artist

• Joey Calderazzo ~ Piano
• Ameen Saleem ~ Acoustic Bass
• Maurice Myers ~ Special Guest Vocal Soloist | A Conversation With God

As you listen and enjoy this wonderful addition to the jazz catalog, continue to social distance and stay healthy. During this sabbatical from flying and investigating jazz around the globe, enjoy the listen and know that the world and I will be back.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Cliff Smalls was born Clifton Arnold on March 3, 1918  and was raised in Charleston, South Carolina. His father, a carpenter, performed piano and organ for Charleston’s Central Baptist Church. He taught Smalls classical music at an early age. He left home with the Carolina Cotton Pickers and also recorded with them, for instance, Off and on Blues and “Deed I Do, which he arranged and featured Cat Anderson in 1937 when he was 19.

With his career coinciding with the early years of bebop, from 1942 to 1946 he was a trombonist, arranger and also backup piano-player for band-leader and pianist Earl Hines, alongside Dizzie Gillespie and Charlie Parker. While in the Hines band he performed often during broadcasts seven nights a week on open mikes coast-to-coast across America. Hines also used Teddy Wilson, Jess Stacy and Nat “King” Cole as backup piano-players but Smalls was his favorite. He also played in the Jimmie Lunceford and Erskine Hawkins bands.

After the inevitable post-World War II breakup of the Hines big-band, Cliff went on to play and record in smaller ensembles with his former Earl Hines band colleagues, singer and band-leader Billy Eckstine, trombonist Bennie Green, saxophonist Earl Bostic and singer Sarah Vaughan. In 1949 he recorded with JJ Johnson and Charlie Rouse. He was the pianist on Earl Bostic’s 1950 hit Flamingo along with John Coltrane but had a serious automobile accident, with Earl Bostic, in 1951 and laid in bed all of 1952, till March of 1953.

Recovering, Smalls shifted his musical career to serve as music director/arranger for singers Eartha Kitt, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis, Jr., Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Clyde McPhatter, Roy Hamilton and Brook Benton. He recorded Bennie Green with Art Farmer in 1956 and was, for many years, a regular with Sy Oliver’s nine-piece Little Big-Band from 1974-1984, a regular stint in New York’s Rainbow Room.

In the 1970s he returned to jazz-recording, including four solo tracks for The Complete Master Jazz Piano Series in 1970, with Sy Oliver in 1973, Texas Twister with Buddy Tate in 1975, Swing and Things in 1976 and Caravan in France in 1978. In 1980 Smalls was featured playing piano in The Cotton Club, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Trombonist, pianist, conductor and arranger Cliff Smalls, who worked in the jazz, soul and rhythm & blues genres, passed away in 2008.

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