Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Bobby Durham was born on February 3, 1937 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and learned to play drums while a child. He played with The Orioles at age 16, and was in a military band between 1956 and 1959. After his discharge, he played with King James and Stan Hunter.

1960 saw Durham moving to New York City, where he played with Lloyd Price, Wild Bill Davis, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Slide Hampton, Grant Green, Sweets Edison, Tommy Flanagan, Jimmy Rowles, and the Duke Ellington Orchestra, in which he played for five months. While working with Basie, he met Al Grey, and was a member of several of Grey’s small ensembles.

He accompanied Ella Fitzgerald for more than a decade, and worked with Oscar Peterson in a trio setting. Bobby played in trios with organists such as Charles Earland and Shirley Scott, and there was a resurgence in interest in his work during the acid jazz upswing in the 1990s. Many of his projects, both as sideman and as leader, came about because of his association with producer Norman Granz, who used him in performances with Fitzgerald, Basie, Edison, Flanagan, and Joe Pass.

He led his own combos, is noted for scat singing along with his drum solos. He recorded with Monty Alexander, Shawn Monteiro, Red Holloway, Milt Jackson, Clifford Jordan, and Jay McShann. He also performed often with pop and soul musicians such as Frank Sinatra, James Brown, Ray Charles, and Marvin Gaye.

Drummer Bobby Durham, who recorded five albums as a leader and twenty~three as a sideman, transitioned from lung cancer in Genoa, Italy at 71 on July 6, 2008.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

James Norbert Black was born on February 1, 1940 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He played piano and trumpet during his youth and studied music at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He first started working in R&B ensembles as a drummer in the late 1950s, but took a job drumming with Ellis Marsalis in the New Orleans Playboy Club, leading to further work in jazz idioms.

A move to New York City in the mid-Sixties and worked in jazz idioms during the decade with Nat Perrilliat, Roy Montrell, Ellis Marsalis, Nat Adderley and Cannonball Adderley, Joe Jones, Horace Silver, Lionel Hampton, Yusef Lateef, Freddie Hubbard, and Eric Gale.

Returning to New Orleans near the end of the 1960s, playing there with Dr. John, James Booker, Fats Domino, Professor Longhair, Charles Neville, James Rivers, Earl Turbinton and the Dukes of Dixieland. Scram Records brought James on as a session musician, and can be heard on Eddie Bo’s single Hook and Sling. In the 1980s he worked with Cassandra Wilson, Wynton Marsalis, and Germaine Bazzle.

Black was a composer and received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Among his works are Monkey Puzzle and Dee Wee, both of which were recorded by Ellis Marsalis’s ensemble in the early 1960s. Recordings under his name were compiled by Night Train Records and released on CD as I Need Altitude: Rare and Unreleased New Orleans Jazz and Funk, 1968-1978.

Drummer James Black, closely associated with the New Orleans jazz scene, transitioned on August 30, 1988.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Bob Harrington was born Robert Maxon Harrington in Marshfield, Wisconsin on  January 30, 1912. He played piano with Charlie Barnet in the early 1950s and worked with both Red Nichols and Bud Freeman during that decade as a drummer.

On vibraphone, he played with Georgie Auld, Buddy DeFranco, Vido Musso, Ben Webster, Ann Richards, and Harry Babasin’s Jazzpickers. He released one solo album, Vibraphone Fantasy in Jazz, on Imperial Records in 1957, which is now a collector’s item.

Vibraphonist Bob Harrington, who was adept on drums and piano, transitioned on August 20, 1983 in Kona, Hawaii.

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LOUIS HAYES QUINTET

The Louis Hayes Quintet With Steve Nelson~vibraphone, Abraham Burton~tenor saxophone, Allyn Johnson~piano & Gerald Cannon~bass

For more than forty years, drummer and NEA Jazz Master Louis Hayes has been a catalyst for energetic, unrelenting swing in his self led bands, as well as in those whose respective leaders reads like an encyclopedia of straight ahead post-bop modern jazz. His iconic jazz drumming style graced and elevated the music of Cannonball Adderley, Horace Silver, John Coltrane, Oscar Peterson, & countless others.

Hayes himself an authentic architect of post-bop swing, began his professional activities at the tender age of 18. He started with tenor saxophonist, flautist and oboist Yusef Lateef who like Hayes is a Detroit native. After the stint with Lateef, Hayes went on to rhythmically propel groups led by pianist Horace Silver, legendary saxophonist Cannonball Adderley and pianist Oscar Peterson. These positions were augmented by countless recordings on the Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside and other labels with the likes of John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, J.J. Johnson, Jackie McLean, Wes Montgomery, Cedar Walton, Dexter Gordon, Woody Shaw, George Benson, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, McCoy Tyner and the list goes on.

For the last twenty-plus years, Louis has led or co-led some of the most uncompromisingly swinging groups in all of jazz. Each unit has displayed tight-knit harmonic cohesion and hard-driving consistency as part of its signature.

Native Washingtonian, Allyn Johnson, is a multi-talented musician, composer, arranger and producer whose trademark sound gives brilliance and fortitude to the art of jazz improvisation. Allyn is one of the nation’s most sought after musicians in the jazz community. He is revered by musical giants as well as the “young lions” of his generation. He was chosen for the highly competitive Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program in 2001 and returned to teach in the program in 2002.

Friday & Saturday: 7:00pm & 9:30pm | $35~$45 + fee
Sunday: 5:00pm & 7:30pm | $35~$45 + fee

Streaming: $10 + fee

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Paul F. Murphy was born on January 25, 1949 in Worcester, Massachusetts and began playing drums at a very early age and made the acquaintance of Gene Krupa at age six. He went on to study with Krupa, Louis Bellson, and Joseph Levitt, the principal percussionist of the National Symphony Orchestra and director of the Peabody Conservatory.

At age sixteen, Murphy began playing in the Washington, D.C. area with Duke Ellington’s bassist Billy Taylor, who exposed him to the music of pianist Cecil Taylor. At Taylor’s advice he moved to San Francisco, California where he established himself as a bandleader. While there, he met and befriended Cecil Taylor and Jimmy Lyons. At the suggestion of Lyons, he then moved to New York, where he managed Ali’s Alley, a club run by drummer Rashied Ali, and began playing and recording with Lyons’ groups as well as his own quintet. While in New York, Murphy immersed himself in both the experimental jazz and punk rock scenes.

Following Lyons’ untimely death in 1986, Murphy spent time playing drums in Las Vegas, Nevada before returning to San Francisco, where he formed Trio Hurricane with saxophonist Glenn Spearman and bassist William Parker. A move back to the Washington, D.C. area in 1990, and has since collaborated with pianists Joel Futterman and Larry Willis, poet Jere Carroll, and others.

Percussionist, bandleader and composer Paul Murphy, best known for leading a variety of small jazz ensembles, continues to perform and record.

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