Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Donald Orlando Bailey was born on March 26, 1933 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania into a musical family. His father Morriswas a drummer, his brother Morris Jr a saxophonist and his nephew Victor is a bassist.

Bailey got his big break in the jazz world and is probably best known as the drummer in the Jimmy Smith Trio from 1956 to 1964. He also performed and recorded with The Three Sounds on the Blue Note Records label.

Known in the jazz world as Duck Bailey, he performed with John Coltrane in their early Philly years. He worked as a sideman for Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Hampton Hawes, Sonny Rollins, Freddie Hubbard, Jimmy Rowles, Blue Mitchell, Red Mitchell, Roy Ayers, George Braith, Harold Land, Jack Wilson, Kenny Burrell, Grant Green, Buster Williams and Bobby Hutcherson among others.

In the mid 70s, he moved to Japan where he lived for six years and in 1978, released an album called So in Love for Trio Records. The session featured Hideo Ichikawa, Hideyuki Kikuchi, Yoshio Ikeda, Takaaki Nishikawa and Toshihiko Ogawa. This date featured Bailey playing harmonica, received rave reviews and is a sought after jazz collectible. His last project Blueprints of Jazz Vol.3 featuring Donald Bailey had him in the company of Charles Tolliver on trumpet, pianist George Burton, and tenor saxophonist Odean Pope issued in 2009.

Settling in Montclair, California, he performed around San Francisco Bay area until his late 70s. Drummer Donald Bailey, known as The King of Organ Trio Drummers, passed away in Montclair, California on October 15, 2013 at the age of 80.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Akira Tana was born on March 14, 1952 in San Jose, California. A self-taught drummer, he played semi-professionally while still at college. He attended Harvard University where he gained a degree in East Asian Studies/Sociology. He then went on to study at the New England Conservatory of Music and took private lessons from percussionists with the Boston Symphony, the Boston Pops Orchestras and from jazz drummer Alan Dawson.

During his studies he had the opportunity of working with Helen Humes, Milt Jackson, Sonny Rollins, George Russell, Sonny Stitt and other leading jazz musicians. He also played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and several of the classical music ensembles at the New England Conservatory.

In the early 80s he continued to accompany major artists such as Al Cohn, Art Farmer, Benny Golson, Jim Hall, Jimmy Rowles, Zoot Sims and Cedar Walton. He also performed with artists outside the jazz world, including Charles Aznavour and Lena Horne. Akira recorded extensively during these years and in addition to albums with some of the foregoing but also with Ran Blake, Chris Connor, Carl Fontana, Jimmy Heath, Tete Montoliu, Spike Robinson, Warne Marsh and many others.

By early 1990 Tana worked with James Moody, Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Wess, Ray Bryant and J.J. Johnson. With Rufus Reid he formed the band TanaReid and with Reid and pianist Kei Akagi, they made up the Asian American Jazz Trio. A technically accomplished drummer, he is comfortable accompanying singers and instrumental ballads, and is equally in his element playing hard bop. In addition to playing, the drummer is also a producer and regularly conducts workshops and clinics at colleges and universities, including Berklee College Of Music, and is an adjunct professor at two colleges.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Red Saunders was born Theodore Dudley Saunders on March 2, 1912 in Memphis, Tennessee. Early in his career he played in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois playing with Stomp King. For a time, he worked with Tiny Parham at the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago.

In 1937, the Club DeLisa gave Saunders control of the house band, where he remained almost uninterrupted until the club’s closure in 1958. Among his sidemen were Leon Washington, Porter Kilbert, Earl Washington, Sonny Cohn, Ike Perkins, Riley Hampton, singer Joe Williams and Mac Easton.

Among the arrangers he employed were Johnny Pate and Sun Ra. Despite his regular gig and disinclination to go on the road, Red played with Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Woody Herman, and recorded with Big Joe Turner.

He continued to lead a band at Chicago’s Regal Theater into the Sixties, and played with Little Brother Montgomery and Art Hodes at the New Orleans Jazz Festival in the 1970s. Drummer and bandleader Red Saunders, who also played vibraphone and timpani, passed away on March 5, 1981 in Chicago.

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Harvey William Mason was born on February 22, 1947 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He began taking formal drum lessons at the age of seven, playing in various school bands and ultimately buying his first drum kit at 16. He went on to attend Berklee College of Music then on to and graduate from the New England Conservatory of Music.

While in Boston, Harvey worked at Triple A Studios recording everything from jingles to religious albums, molding him into a versatile first-call session musician. Early gigs included four months with Erroll Garner in 1970 and a year with George Shearing from 1970-1971. Soon after leaving Shearing he moved to Los Angeles, California and quickly became established in the studios and working in films and television.

In addition to his work through the years with Minnie Riperton, The Sylvers, Earth, Wind & Fire and Carlos Santana, Mason has often been part of the jazz world. He played with Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, co-composing the hit Chameleon in 1973, Gerry Mulligan, Freddie Hubbard, Donald Byrd, Grover Washington, Jr., George Benson, Gary Bartz, Bobbi Humphrey, Ralph MacDonald, Chick Corea, Lee Ritenour, Victor Feldman and Bob James, Gene Harris, Eddie Henderson, Bobby Hitcherson and Joe Henderson, among numerous others.

By 1998, Harvey was paying tribute to Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in some local Los Angeles club gigs. By the turn of the millennium he was continuing with his steady session work, releasing two albums with Trios and With All My Heart and has since revisited his ’70s Headhunters roots. He is a mainstay in the fusion genre as a member of the group Fourplay along with Chuck Loeb, Nathan East and Bob James, whose success led their debut album to hit and stay at the top of the charts for 34 weeks.

He has worked with Michael Colombier, Michel Legrand, Miles Davis, Dave Grusin, Thom Newman, John Williams, Lalo Schifrin, Isaac Hayes, Johnny Pate and Alan Silvestri on such films as Purple Rain, Dingo, Three Days of the Condor, The Fabulous Baker Boys, On Golden Pond, The Player, The Lion King, Mission Impossible 1,2 & 3, Ratatouille and Dream Girls. In addition he composed the music for the films The Color Purple, Only The Strong and Deadly Takeover.

Multi-Grammy nominated and winning drummer and composer Harvey Mason continues to stretch his musical diversity across four decades and many jazz genres.

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Frank Butler was born on February 18, 1928 in Kansas City, Missouri. A drummer from childhood he later moved west, becoming associated in large way with the West Coast school.

Never becoming well known or publicly popular Butler was highly regarded by fellow musicians. He performed and recorded with Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane and Art Pepper in the decades of the Fifties and Sixties.

In the mid-to-late 1950s, he was a member of the Curtis Counce Quintet and recorded with Joyce Collins, Ben Webster, Hampton Hawes, Elmo Hope, Fred Katz and Harold Land. By the Sixties he was co-leading a group with Curtis Amy, and recording with Phineas Newborn, Miles Davis on Seven Steps To Heaven.

However, sidelined for many years by his heroin addiction, he did not record an album under his own name until the 1970s. During this period he also recorded with Dolo Coker, Kenny Drew and Teddy Edwards. Drummer Frank Butler passed away on July 24, 1984 in Ventura, California at the age of 56.

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