Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cecil Payne was born December 14, 1922 in Brooklyn, New York. He received his first saxophone at age 13, asking his father for one after hearing Count Basie’s version of Honeysuckle Rose performed by Lester Young and took lessons from Pete Brown, a local alto sax player.
Payne began his professional recording career with J. J. Johnson on the Savoy label in 1946. During that year he played with Roy Eldridge, through whom he met Dizzy Gillespie. His earlier recordings would largely fall under the “swing” category, until Gillespie hired him, a relationship that lasted until 1949.
By the early 50s, Cecil found himself working with Tadd Dameron, Illinois Jacquet, James Moody, Machito, Woody Herman, Count Basie and freelancing around New York, frequently performing with Randy Weston. Throughout his fifty plus year career baritone saxophonist he recorded as a leader and a sideman for Decca, Savoy, the Charlie Parker label, Muse, Spotlite and Strata East, and regularly for Delmark Records in the nineties, when he was in his seventies, and on into the new millennium.
Cecil Payne, baritone and alto saxophonist and flautist, passed away on November 27, 2007. Although largely unknown to the public he was one of the pioneers in adapting the baritone saxophone to bebop and post-bop.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gigi Gryce was born George General Grice, Jr. on November 28, 1925 in Pensacola, Florida but grew up in Hartford Connecticut. He studied classical composition at the Boston Conservatory, studied with private teachers, then won a Fulbright scholarship and continued his studies in Paris.
His performing career was relatively short in comparison to other musicians of his generation, his work little known, however, several of his compositions have been covered extensively – “Minority,” “Social Call,” and “Nica’s Tempo” are frequently heard in mainstream jazz venues. Gigi’s compositional bent includes harmonic choices similar to those of Benny Golson, Tadd Dameron and Horace Silver in the contemporaneous period. Gryce’s playing, arranging, composing is consonant with the hard bop classic period was generally considered to be 1953-1965.
During the 1950s he achieved some renown for his innovative bebop playing, his primary instrument being the alto saxophone. Among the musicians with whom Gryce performed were Thelonious Monk, Tadd Dameron, Lionel Hampton, D, Howard McGhee, Clifford Brown, Art Farmer, Lee Morgan, Max Roach, Oscar Pettiford, Teddy Charles and Benny Golson. In 1955, Gryce formed the Jazz Lab Quintet, which included trumpeter Donald Byrd.
In the mid-1950s he converted to Islam and adopted the name Basheer Qusim. By the 60s he stopped using the name Gigi Gryce partly due to personal problems that took their toll on his financial and emotional state, withdrawing from performing. During this last period of his life he taught at a series of public schools in Long Island and New York City and the Community Elementary School 53 on 168th Street in the Bronx, the last school renamed the Basheer Qusim School in his honor.
Gigi Gryce, saxophonist, flautist, clarinetist, composer, arranger, educator, and big band leader died of an apparent epileptic seizure on March 14, 1983 in Pensacola, Florida.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jerome Richardson was born November 15, 1920 in Oakland, California and started on alto saxophone at the age of eight. In his teens Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges and Willie Smith were his idols. He became a professional musician at the age of fourteen, and had a brief stint with Lionel Hampton, and worked with Bay Area bands until 1941, during which time he also studied music at San Francisco State College. The flute was added to his working compliment in 1940. Both this and his alto sax were used to advantage in a Navy band, under the direction of Marshall Royal, at St. Mary’s Pre-Flight from 1942 to 1945. He joined the Lionel Hampton band again in 1949, with whom he recorded what is widely regarded as the first modern jazz solo played on flute on “Kingfish”, and was also a member of the Earl Hines big band.
Settling in New York in 1954 he began a very active session career, but continued to make his mark in a purely jazz context. He worked with bands led by Lucky Millinder and Cootie Williams, led his own quartet at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem in 1955 and was part of Oscar Pettiford’s group that summer.
Over the next decade Jerome continued to lead his quartet, work the Roxy pit orchestra, regularly worked with Quincy Jones, toured Europe with Harold Arlen’s blues opera, was a founder member of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, organizing and performing many Thad Jones tribute concerts. He played with a number of other notable big bands during his long career, including bands led by Jimmy Lunceford, Gerald Wilson, Gil Evans and Charles Mingus.
His standing as a superbly accomplished soloist on a range of reed and wind instruments was complemented by an equally strong reputation as an accompanist of singers, including the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Nancy Wilson, Billy Eckstine, and Lena Horne. Richardson performed with practically every significant post-war jazz artist, including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Lionel Hampton, Herbie Hancock, Milt Jackson, Oliver Nelson, Art Farmer, Clifford Jordan, Slide Hampton, Horace Silver, Gerry Mulligan, Jimmy Smith, Wes Montgomery, Cal Tjader, and Antonio Carlos Jobim, as well as a whole range of blues, soul and pop artists.
Jerome Richardson played tenor, alto, baritone saxophone, clarinet, piccolo, and flute passed away in Englewood, New Jersey on June 23, 2000 recorded sparingly as a leader but was one of the most sought after session musicians for more than half a century was probably the most recorded saxophonist of his generation.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eddie Daniels was born on October 19, 1941 in New York City and grew up in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn. He became interested in jazz as a teenager when impressed by listening to the recordings of the musicians accompanying singers, such as Frank Sinatra. Eddie’s first instrument was the alto saxophone, started on clarinet at 13 and later received his Masters in Clarinet from Julliard. By 15 he would add the Newport Jazz Festival Youth Competition to what would become a long list of credits. By the time he entered college, he was playing alto, clarinet and adding tenor saxophone to his arsenal.
Daniels has led a variety of bands from small combos to orchestras and has toured worldwide, recorded and appeared on television. Since the 1980s he has focused mainly on the clarinet and in 1989 he won one of many Grammy awards for playing on the Roger Kellaway arrangement of “Memos From Paradise”.
Over the course of his career he has captured Down Beat Magazine’s International Critics New Star on Clarinet Award, played and recorded with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra at the Village Vanguard, George Benson, Joe Farrell, Johnny Hammond, Richard Davis, Yusef Lateef, Airto Moreira and Don Patterson Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band. Clarinetist Eddie Daniels, who also plays saxophone, flute and piccolo, performs commissioned classical compositions, has revolutionized the blend of classical and jazz and continues to tour and record.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Abdullah Ibrahim was born October 9, 1934 in Cape Town, South Africa, formerly known as Adolph Johannes Brand, and as Dollar Brand. He first received piano lessons at age seven, was an avid consumer of jazz records brought by American sailors, and was playing jazz professionally by 1949. In 1959 and 1960, he played alongside Kippie Moeketsi and Hugh Masekela with The Jazz Epistles in Sophiatown, later recording the first jazz LP by Black South African musicians in 1960. Ibrahim then joined the European tour of the musical King Kong.
Moving to Europe in 1962, it was in the following year that Duke Ellington heard the Dollar Brand Trio at Zurich’s Africana Club at the request of Brand’s wife-to-be Sathima Bea Benjamin. As a result, Duke Ellington presents The Dollar Brand Trio was recorded at Reprise followed by a second session of the trio with Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn also on piano performing with Sathima as the vocalist. The recording, A Morning In Paris, remained unreleased until 1996 and then under Benjamin’s name. This led to wider appearances of the Dollar Brand Trio at many European festivals, as well as on radio and television.
Ibrahim has toured mainly in Europe, the United States, and South Africa, the band performing mainly in concert and club settings, and sometimes playing solo piano. Mainly playing the piano, he also plays the flute, saxophone, and cello, performing mostly his own compositions, although he sometimes performs pieces composed by others.
Abdullah Ibrahim to date has recorded more than forty albums as a leader, has written the soundtracks for a number of films, Chocolat and No Fear, No Die; and was a part of the 2002 documentary Amandla! – A Revolution in Four Part Harmony where he and others recalled the days of apartheid. He has ventured into orchestral performances with the inauguration of Nelson Mandela and the later initiation of the 18-piece Cape Town Jazz Orchestra in 2006.
A pianist and composer, Abdullah Ibrahim’s music reflects many of the musical influences of his childhood in the multicultural port areas of Cape Town, ranging from traditional African songs to the gospel of the AME church and ragas, to more modern jazz and other Western styles reflecting the influences of Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington. He continues to perform, record and tour.