Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Joseph Kelson Jr. , known professionally as Jackie Kelso, was born in Los Angeles, California on February 27, 1922. He began taking clarinet lessons at age eight, studying with Caughey Roberts. When he was fifteen his Jefferson High School classmate Chico Hamilton urged him to take up the alto saxophone, making his professional debut with Jerome Myart that same year. By the time he graduated from Jefferson, he was playing with Hamilton, Buddy Collette, and Charles Mingus at Central Avenue clubs.
The 1940s saw Jackie playing with Barney Bigard, Marshal Royal, Lucky Thompson, Kid Ory, Benny Carter, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, and Roy Milton. He enlisted in the Navy in 1942 with Marshal and Ernie Royal, and, after training at Camp Robert Smalls, he was stationed with the Royals with St. Mary’s College Pre-Flight School band.
After the war he continued playing and by the 1950s he was performing with Johnny Otis, Billy Vaughan, Nelson Riddle, Bill Berry, Ray Anthony, the Capp-Pierce Juggernaut, Bob Crosby, C.L. Burke, and Duke Ellington. Joining Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps in 1958 he was featured on several recordings from that period such as Ac-centu-ate the Positive.
Working as a studio musician between 1964 and 1984, in addition Kelso recorded with Mercer Ellington and Mink DeVille, toured worldwide with Hampton, Ellington, and Vaughan, and appeared in The Concert for Bangladesh. Semi-retiring from music in 1984, he returned to perform in 1995 with the Count Basie Orchestra, where he became a regular in 1998.
Saxophonist, flautist, and clarinetist Jackie Kelso, who reverted to his birth name Kelson. died on April 28, 2012 in Beverly Hills, California, aged 90.
Get a dose of the musicians and vocalists who were members of a global society integral in the making and preservation of jazz for over a hundred and twenty-five years…
Jackie Kelso: 1922~2012 | Saxophone, Flute, Clarinet
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Vlady Bas was born Wladimiro Bas Zabache on February 2, 1929 in Bilbao, País Vasco, Spain. He moved to Madrid in 1952 and represented Spain at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. He was one of the first Spanish jazz musicians to play free jazz.
He has been associated with The International Youth Band, Jazztet de Madrid, Juan Carlos Calderon y Su Orquesta De Jazz, Louis Armstrong Newport International Jazz Band, Manolo Gas & The Tinto Band Bang, Orquesta Blue Stars, and Pepe Nieto Y Su Orquesta.
He founded the Vlady Bas Quartet, still on the road, now with his daughter Paula Bas as singer. The quartet members are Carlos Villa, guitar; Fernando Sobrino, piano; Antonio Domínguez, string bass and Antonio Calero, drums.
Saxophonist, clarinetist and flutist Vlady Bas is still on the road.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Raymond Michael Pizzi was born January 19, 1943 in Everett, Massachusetts. His first instrument was clarinet and he attended the Boston Conservatory and Berklee College of Music in the 1960s.
Pizzi taught in Randolph, Massachusetts public schools from 1964 to 1969 before relocating to California. In the 1970s he worked with Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Frank Zappa, Shelly Manne, Willie Bobo, Moacir Santos, Mark Levine, and Dizzy Gillespie.
The Eighties saw him accompanying Nancy Wilson and was a sideman for Milcho Leviev and Bob Florence. He worked with the American Jazz Orchestra into the early-1990s. Ray recorded as a leader, including in a quartet called Windrider.
As an educator he joined the faculty at the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami in 1997.
Saxophonist, bassoonist, and flautist Ray Pizzi, nicknamed Pizza Man, died on September 2, 2021.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz..
Bernard Cash was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England on January 18, 1935. Music became his religion and he began his musical career as a trumpet player, gaining a reputation playing with different bands around the United Kingdom. At 25 he took up the double bass under the tutelage of Peter Ind. To earn a living he moved to London, England in 1961 with his wife, where he became involved in the jazz scene, and played with many musicians of note.
Returning to Yorkshire he founded the Light Music Course at Leeds College of Music. Recruiting his friend and mentor Ind, the two went about establishing the first real jazz course in the UK of which jazz guitarist Dave Cliff was an alumni. Leaving the academia of college he moved his family to Bridlington, on the East Yorkshire Coast, and worked as a peripatetic instrumental teacher. He continued to make regular trips to London to play jazz and organized jazz gigs in the North of England with many of the great players he had met.
He studied music at Hull University from 1974 to 1977 and while there Bernie organized numerous jazz gigs that included Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh. He continued to work in music education and maintained his own career. He held the position of Deputy Music Advisor for the Hull area, created the big band Great Jazz Solos Revisited, and scored some of his favourite artists’ solos, including Lester Young, Charlie Parker and Charlie Christian.
The big band enlisted the heavyweights of British jazz, Peter Ind, Peter King, Bob Burns, Art Morgan, Jim Livesey, Kathy Stobart, John Holbrooke, and Dave Cliff. He went on to create in conjunction with English playwright Alan Plater the jazz opera “Prez” based on the life of Lester Young. With the education system losing its luster he returned to London in 1986, playing jazz and being a traveling instrumental teacher.
He joined the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra, Yorkshire Opera and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and toured with them. While on tour with the Royal Philharmonic in Germany, bassist Bernie Cash, who was an accomplished flautist, saxophonist and trumpeter, collapsed and died of a heart attack on October 7th, 1988.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ronald Edward Cuber was born on December 25, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. In 1959 he was playing tenor saxophone when he joined Marshall Brown’s Newport Youth Band at eighteen, but switched to the baritone. His first notable work was with Slide Hampton in 1962 and then went with Maynard Ferguson the following year until 1965. George Benson recruited him for a year in ‘66 to 1967.
As a leader he was known for hard bop and Latin jazz, the latter with Eddie Palmieri, As a sideman he played outside the genre with B. B. King, Paul Simon, Eric Clapton, J. Geils Band, and one of his most spirited performances is on Dr. Lonnie Smith’s 1970 Blue Note album Drives. He was also a member of the Saturday Night Live Band.
Ronnie played with Frank Zappa on the live album Zappa in New York, which was recorded in 1976. He went on to gain membership in the Lee Konitz nonet from 1977 to 1979.He was a member of the Mingus Big Band from its inception in the early 1990s until his death. He performed as an off-screen musician for the movie Across the Universe.
Baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber, who also played soprano and tenor saxophones, clarinet and flute, died at the age of 80 on October 7, 2022 in his New York’s Upper West Side studio from internal injuries sustained after a fall that could not be treated due to overwhelming Covid patients at the start of the pandemic.
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