Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Oliver Jackson was born in Detroit, Michigan on April 28, 1933. He played in the 1940s with Thad Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Wardell Gray, and had a variety show with Eddie Locke called Bop & Locke. After working with Yusef Lateef from 1954 until 1956, he moved to New York City, where he played regularly at the Metropole in 1957 and 1958.
Following his stint at the club he worked with Teddy Wilson, Charlie Shavers, Buck Clayton, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Kenny Burrell, Earl Hines and the JPJ Quartet with Budd Johnson through the Sixties.
Later in life he played with Sy Oliver from 1975 to 1980, Oscar Peterson, and then George Wein’s Newport All-Stars. As a bandleader, Jackson led a 1961 date in Switzerland, and recorded at least five albums for Black & Blue Records between 1977 and 1984.
His brother and bassist Ali Jackson performed with him both at the beginning and towards the end of their careers. Drummer Oliver Jackson, who was also known as Bops Junior, transitioned from a heart failure on May 29, 1994 in New York City at the age of 61.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pierre Courbois was born on April 23, 1940 in Nijmegen, Netherlands and after studying percussion at the Hogeschool der Kunsten in Arnhem, he left for Paris, France which was the center of jazz in Europe in the early 1960s. He worked with pianist Kenny Drew, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, saxophonists Eric Dolphy, Ben Webster, Stan Getz, and Johnny Griffin, and guitarist René Thomas.
Courbois was one of the first musicians in Europe to experiment with free jazz. In 1961 he became the drummer and leader of the original Free Jazz Quartet. In 1965 he started another group, the Free Music Quintet, composed of international musicians. He also played and recorded with Gunter Hampel’s Heartplants Group with Manfred Schoof and Alexander von Schlippenbach.
Founding the first European jazz-rock group, Association P.C. in 1969, they won the Down Beat poll and stayed together until 1975. In 1982 Pierre put together the group New Association, and played with pianists Mal Waldron and Rein de Graaff, horn players Willem Breuker, Hans Dulfer and Theo Loevendie, and Ali Haurand’s European Jazz Quintet with Gerd Dudeck, Leszek Zadlo and Alan Skidmore.
In 1992 Courbois started a quintet and for the first time in his career performed pieces all composed by himself. This ensemble pleasantly surprised both the critics and the public with a return to the Charles Mingus tradition – thematic, melodic ensemble jazz and an experimentation with linear improvisation. Consistently reinventing himself he has gone on to create the Double Quintet, and the Five Four Sextet.
Drummer, bandleader and composer Pierre Courbois, who was awarded the Bird Award, the highest in the Dutch Jazz World and is a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau, continues to perform, record and compose.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Born near Kyiv, Ukraine on April 22, 1920 Benjamin “Buzzy” Drootin moved to Boston, Massachusetts with his family when he was five. His father played the clarinet, and two of his brothers and his nephew were musicians. He began playing drums professionally as a teenager. At age twenty, he toured with the Jess Stacy All-Stars, a band that includeded Lee Wiley.
In 1940, he also toured with Ina Ray Hutton, then joined the Wingy Manone band. From 1947 until 1951, he worked as the house drummer at Eddie Condon’s night club in New York City. He was a bandleader at El Morocco club in New York City, and a member of the house band with his brother Al at George Wein’s Storyville club in Boston. During these years he worked with Doc Cheatham, Vic Dickenson, Bobby Hackett, Ruby Braff, Claude Hopkins, Jimmy McPartland, Pee Wee Russell, and Arvell Shaw.
Drootin recorded with Tommy Dorsey, Bobby Hackett, Jack Teagarden, Eddie Condon, Ruby Braff, Anita O’Day, George Wein, the Newport All-Stars, Lee Konitz, Sidney Bechet, PeeWee Russell and The Dukes of Dixieland. In 1968–69, he toured and recorded with Wild Bill Davison’s Jazz Giants and then formed Buzzy’s Jazz Family, borrowing some of Davison’s sidemen, Herb Hall and Benny Morton, plus added Herman Autrey on trumpet and his nephew, Sonny Drootin, on piano.
In 1973, after touring Europe and America, he returned to his hometown of Boston, where he and his brother Al and nephew Sonny formed the Drootin Brothers Band. They played at the Newport Jazz Festival. He played at the first Newport festival and at many festivals after that. He also played at the Los Angeles Classic Jazz Festival in the 1980s.
Drummer Buzzy Drootin transitioned on May 21, 2000 from cancer at the age of 80 at the Actors Fund Retirement and Nursing Home in Englewood, New Jersey.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Czesław Kazimierz Bartkowski was born April 19, 1943 in Łódź, Poland and has been dealing with music since the age of 6. A percussion class graduate of the Secondary Music School in Wrocław, he made his official debut in 1960 as a drummer for Jerzy Pakulski ‘s Far Quartet.
In 1963, he met Zbigniew Namysłowski and became a musician in his band Zbigniew Namysłowski Quartet. He also played with other well-known jazz groups, e.g. with Czesław Niemen’s Niemen Enigmatic or Michał Urbaniak’s Group, and in trios with various musicians. He has also collaborated with the Polish Radio Jazz Studio and Sławomir Kulpowicz’s Mainstream and InFormation bands .
In addition, he participated in the recording of such singers as Ewa Bem, Urszula Dudziak and Stanisław Sojka, and such foreign musicians as: Freddie Hubbard, Clark Terry, Joe Newman, Art Farmer, Ben Webster, and the Polish band Novi Singers.
Not only has he performed in Poland, but abroad in India, USA, New Zealand, Australia and numerous European countries. In the winter of 1976, he took part in the jazz workshop Radost ’76 in Mąchocice, Poland near Kielce, which was immortalized in the documentary titled We’re Playing Standard!.
In 1993 he became a lecturer at the Secondary School of Music. Fryderyk Chopin in Warsaw, Poland and the Warsaw Jazz Studio. Drummer and pedagogue Czesław Bartkowski continues his endeavors in music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Derek Hogg was born April 8, 1928 in Oldham, England and started playing early in his career with marching bands. He began working in professional ensembles in the Fifties, including those of Freddy Randall, Don Rendell, Joe Saye, Ken Moule, Buddy Featherstonhaugh, Kenny Baker, Sandy Brown and Al Fairweather’s All Stars group.
He played with Vic Lewis in 1959-1960, then with The Squadronaires and Dudley Moore in the first few years of the decade. In 1962 he began working with Danny Moss, with whom he would continue to perform until the end of his career. Hogg went on to perform with Rosemary Clooney, Tony Coe, Digby Fairweather, Budd Johnson, Colin Purbrook, Benny Waters and Teddy Wilson.
Drummer Derek Hogg retired from active performance in 1987.
Confer a dose of an Oldham drummer to those seeking a greater insight about the musicians around the world who are members of the pantheon of jazz…
Derek Hogg: 1928 | DrumsMore Posts: drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music