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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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Karen Street was born on December 13, 1959 in the United Kingdom (UK) and started playing the accordion at the age of 7.  She went on to study at Bath University, RWMCD and in London, England with the late Ivor Beynon, a pioneer of the classical accordion. She studied music at Welsh College of Music and Drama and Guildhall School of Music. She became the British Virtuoso Champion in 1981/2 and competed in the Coupe Mondiale World Championship in Hamburg, Germany and Folkstone, UK.

Karen has created a niche for herself in the UK jazz scene and is a regular member of Mike Westbrook’s groups, works with Tim Garland as well as part of Lammas playing alongside Geoff Keezer, Joe Locke and Avishai Cohen.

As a saxophonist Street was a member of the all girl saxophone quartet The Fairer Sax and is now a member and co-leader of Saxtet with her husband Andy Tweed.

Karen’s composing is specialized by writing music for the saxophone, from solos to large ensembles. Her composition for solo accordion, In The Ballroom With The Rope, took first prize at the London Accordion Festival, Composition Competition in 2001. The same year she released her debut recording, Finally A Beginning.

Besides jazz, Karen has played across genres with the likes of Bryan Ferry, Grace Jones, Andrea Bocelli, Kate Westbrook, BBC Philharmonic, Icebreaker, and the Strictly Come Dancing Live Tour band for three seasons.

Accordionist, saxophonist and flutist Karen Street is currently a freelance musician playing across a wide variety of genres.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Juhani Aaltonen was born December 12, 1935 in Kouvola, Finland. He began playing professionally at the end of the Fifties. He played in a sextet led by Heikki Rosendahl during that time, and then studied flute performance at the Sibelius Academy and in the U.S. at the Berklee College of Music.

Moving back to Finland, he settled in Helsinki and began working both as a session musician and with fusion groups. Late in the 1960s he formed a duo with Edward Vesala, played in the group Eero Koivistoinen and with Tasavallan Presidentti. He recorded with Thad Jones and Mel Lewis and with Heikki Sarmanto late in the decade and early 1970s. His debut album as a soloist, Etiquette, was released in 1974.

The following year Juhani became a member of the New Music Orchestra, and worked with the Nordic All Stars, Arild Andersen, and Peter Brötzmann before the end of the decade. The Eighties saw him working with the UFO Big Band, Jan Garbarek, Charlie Mariano, and others. He led a touring quartet from 1990 to 1992.

In 2001 he released a duo recording, Rise, and his trio album Mother Tongue won a Jazz-Emma in Finland. Saxophonist and flautist Juhani Aaltonen continues to perform as well as teach at the annual Nilsiä Music Camp.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

George James was born in Boggs, Oklahoma on December 7, 1906. His career didn’t begin until the late 1920s joining the bands of Charlie Creath and Johnny Neal. He moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1928, where he played with Jimmie Noone, Sammy Stewart, Ida Marples, Jabbo Smith, and Bert Hall.

In 1931 through the first quarter of 1932 he toured with Louis Armstrong, and at the end of the tour he remained in New York City. There he joined the Savoy Bearcats and later played with Charlie Turner’s Arcadians. By the middle of the decade Fats Waller assumed leadership of the Arcadians, and James played under him until 1937.

Finishing the decade playing in the Blackbirds Revue, early in the 1940s he worked with James P. Johnson, Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson, and Lucky Millinder, and led his own bandhttps://notoriousjazz.com/jazz-type/swing/daily-dose-of-jazz-3977↗ in 1943-44. Later in the decade James played with Claude Hopkins and Noble Sissle.

He was active both as a leader and a sideman into the 1970s, playing with Clyde Bernhardt and the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band in that decade. Saxophonist, clarinetist, and flautist George James died on January 30, 1995 in Columbus, Ohio.

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