Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Magnus Öström was born in Västerås, Västmanland, Sweden on May 3, 1965. The son of an artist couple, he was influenced by the musical tastes of his older brother who was into Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. By the age of eight years he had built his first drum set and soon played music with a friend, Esbjörn Svensson.
He attended the musical grammar school in Västerås in 1981 and played with the Svensson trio. Between 1983 and 1985, he studied at the adult education center in Sjövik, Sweden before he continued his studies at the Music Academy Stockholm, Sweden. During this time, he played with various bands on the Stockholm scene and between 1987 and 1992 he was a member of singer Monica Borrfors band.
In 1989 Magnus was back with Svensson, initially in the group Stock Street B , then again in a trio with the bassist Dan Berglund with an album released in 1993. e.s.t. released twelve albums, toured internationally with great success, and played until the accidental death of Svensson.
Öström has worked with Bobo Stenson, Lennart Åberg, Palle Danielsson, Nils Landgren, Stina Nordenstam, Peter Gullin and Steve Dobrogosz as well as numerous American musicians such as Michele Hendricks, Benny Golson, Mulgrew Miller, Stefon Harris, Pat Metheny or Alan Pasqua. In 2010, he founded his own quartet and released their first album Thread of Life, which received an Echo Jazz.
In 2019, the ACT label released Live in Gothenburg for the first time. Drummer Magnus Öström, known for being part of the first Esbjörn Svensson Trio (e.s.t.), continues to perform and record.
More Posts: bandleader,composer,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jesse Price was born on May 1, 1909 in Memphis, Tennessee and began on drums at age 14, and played locally with blues singers, including Ida Cox, and in the Palace Theater pit orchestra, early in his career.
A move to Kansas City, Missouri in 1934 saw him playing with George E. Lee, Thamon Hayes, Count Basie, and Harlan Leonard into the early Forties. He then moved to Los Angeles, California where Jesse worked with Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Stan Kenton, Basie again, Benny Carter, and Slim Gaillard through the decade.
He recorded with Jay McShann when he was back in Kansas City in the 1950s. He led a band at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1971, which included Harry Edison, Jimmy Forrest and Big Joe Turner.
Price recorded twenty-three tracks as a leader between 1946 and 1948, most of them for Capitol Records. All are published on a Blue Moon CD, The Singing Drummer Man; Jesse Price. The Complete Recordings 1946–1957.
Drummer Jesse Price transitioned on April 19, 1974 in Los Angeles.
More Posts: bandleader,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music
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.
More Posts: bandleader,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music
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.
More Posts: bandleader,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music
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.
More Posts: bandleader,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music