Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gerhard Rochus “Gerd” Dudek was born September 28, 1938 in Wrocław, Poland. He studied clarinet privately and attended music school in the 1950s before joining a big band led by his brother Ossi until 1958.
During the early 1960s, Dudek played in the Berliner Jazz Quintet, in Karl Blume’s group and in Kurt Edelhagen’s orchestra until 1965. He then became interested in free music and joined Manfred Schoof’s quintet. He took part in the first sessions of The Globe Unity Orchestra in 1966, and played with them at various times into the 1980s.
He also worked with many other European free musicians and composers, including Alexander von Schlippenbach, Loek Dikker and The Waterland Ensemble And European Jazz Quintet.
He is best known for his work with Manfred Schoof, Wolfgang Dauner, Lala Kovacev, the Globe Unity Orchestra, Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, Albert Mangelsdorff, Don Cherry and George Russell. Tenor and soprano saxophonist, clarinetist and flautist Gerd Dudek continues to be involved in music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Wallace Carter was born on September 24, 1929 in Fort Worth, Texas and attended I.M. Terrell High School, and played music with schoolmates Ornette Coleman and Charles Moffett in the 1940s. Earning a Bachelor of Arts from Lincoln University in Jefferson, Missouri in 1949 and a Master of Arts from the University of Colorado in 1956. He also studied at the North Texas State and University of California at Los Angeles, California.
From 1961, Carter was based mainly on the West Coast. There he met Bobby Bradford in 1965, with whom he subsequently worked on a number of projects, notably the New Jazz Art Ensemble. He also played with Hampton Hawes and Harold Land. In the 1970s Carter became well known on the basis of his solo concerts.
At the New Jazz Festival Moers in 1979, he and the German clarinet player Theo Jörgensmann performed for three days. Carter received complimentary reviews and wide recognition from around the world. He and Jörgensmann met again in 1984, and played the Berlin JazzFest, both as a soloist and in duo.
Between 1982 and 1990, John composed and recorded Roots and Folklore: Episodes in the Development of American Folk Music. It was a five album set that focused on African Americans and their history, and was acclaimed by jazz critics as containing some of the best releases of the 1980s.
He recorded seventeen albums as a leader and thirteen albums with Tim Berne, Clarinet Summit, Vinny Golia, Richard Grossman, John Lindberg, James Newton and Horace Tapscott. Carter planned a clarinet quartet with Perry Robinson, Jörgensmann and Eckard Koltermann was planned for 1991, but it never came to fruition.
Clarinetist, saxophonist, and flutist John Carter passed away from a non-malignant tumor on March 31, 1991. Later that year he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alberto Socarrás Estacio was born in Manzanillo, Cuba on September 19, 1908 and started learning the flute at age seven with his mother and later joined the provincial music conservatory at Santiago de Cuba. He completed his studies at the Timothy Music Conservatory in New York, gaining the equivalent title to a doctorate in music. In the middle 1920s he moved to Havana to join the theatre orchestra of Arquimedes Pous, where his sister Estrella was playing the violin. He also played in one or two early Cuban jazz bands before moving to the United States in 1927.
Once stateside he recorded with Clarence Williams with his first flute solo taking place on Shooting the Pistol on the Paramount label, making him the earliest known jazz flute soloist. He played with The Blackbirds revue between 1928 and 1933, and played on Lizzie Miles’s 1928 recording You’re Such a Cruel Papa to Me.
During the Thirties he played with Benny Carter, led the all-female Cuban band Anacaona on a tour of Europe, played with Sam Wooding and Erskine Hawkins. He made one recording in 1935, with four numbers, then went on to record for RCA Victor, SMC Pro-Arte and Decca.
In the 1950s he took part in Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, concerts of cult music at the Carnegie Hall in New York, and in the 60s he dedicated himself to teaching.
Flautist Alberto Socarras, who in 1983 was filmed by Gustavo Paredes playing the flute in a TV documentary Música, passed away on August 26, 1987 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Larry Binyon was born on September 16, 1908 in Urbana, Illinois and his mother shared some of her musical knowledge. By age eighteen he was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,playing E flat soprano flute in the school’s concert band as well as flute and piccolo in its first regimental band during the 1926-27 school year.
After spending one year at college by 1927 he was already playing professionally in Chicago as part of Beasley Smith’s band, which also included drummer Ray McKinley and clarinetist Matty Matlock. Flute may have been his first instrument, or his primary one at school, but tenor saxophone became his main instrument for dance bands.
Later that year Binyon joined bandleader Ben Pollack when he returned to Victor’s Chicago studio after a five-month hiatus. History does not reveal him as a bandleader as there is little evidence of him having led his own bands, and no recordings were ever issued under his own name. He certainly has a load of credits as a band member, however, and was adept in both big band and small group settings.
Working a variety of radio jobs during the day, one eye glued open to help recover from the previous night’s late-ending gig.During the 1920s he worked with Irving Mills’ Hotsy-Totsy Gang, Roger Wolfe Kahn & His Orchestra, and Mildred Bailey with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra to name a few.
His widest exposure on recording is his backup work on records by the Boswell Sisters, Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Fats Waller & His Buddies sessions, Henry “Red” Allen, Eddie Condon, Toby Hardwicke, Gene Krupa. Saxophonist, clarinetist, and flutist Larry Binyon passed away on February 10, 1974.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Barbara Gracey Thompson was born on July 27, 1944 in Oxford, England. She studied saxophone and classical composition at the Royal College of Music, but it was the music of Duke Ellington and John Coltrane that made her shift her interests to jazz and saxophone.
Around 1970, Thompson was part of Neil Ardley’s New Jazz Orchestra and appeared on albums by Colosseum. Beginning in 1975, she was involved in the foundation of three bands: United Jazz and Rock Ensemble, a group of bandleaders; Barbara Thompson’s Jubiaba, a nine piece Latin/rock band; and Barbara Thompson’s Paraphernalia, her most recent band with pianist Peter Lemer, vocalist Billy Thompson, bassist Dave Ball, and the late Jon Hiseman on drums.
Awarded the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1996 for her services to music, due to Parkinson’s disease diagnosed in 1997, she retired as an active saxophonist in 2001 with a farewell tour. After a period of working as a composer exclusively, she returned to the stage in 2003.
Following hospitalization with atrial fibrillation, she landed a role in an accident and emergency department featured in an episode of the Channel 4 fly-on-the-wall television documentary “24 Hours in A&E” in October 2020.
Thompson has worked closely with Andrew Lloyd Webber on musicals such as Cats and Starlight Express, his Requiem, and Lloyd Webber’s 1978 classical-fusion album Variations. She has written several classical compositions, music for film and television, a musical of her own and songs for the United Jazz and Rock Ensemble, Barbara Thompson’s Paraphernalia and her big band Moving Parts.
She played the incidental music in the ITV police series A Touch of Frost starring David Jason, and flute on Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. Saxophonist and flutist Barbara Thompson remains active.
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