Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Bill Harris was born on April 14, 1925 in Nashville, North Carolina He studied guitar in Washington, D.C. at the Columbia School of Music and in 1950 began playing with the R&B vocal group The Clovers. He remained with the group through 1958, playing on many of their most successful hit records.

During this time he also recorded as a jazz musician, including two LPs for EmArcy Records, his 1956 self-titled Bill Harris and The Harris Touch In 1957. Through the Sixties, he played in the DC area and in the 1970s taught music, and published several books on guitar technique.

He was awarded a compositional fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1972. Moving to France he performed there for much of 1972-1973, and after returning to the States, Harris began managing his own jazz club, Pigfoot, in the DC, but by 1981 the club was repossessed by the Internal Revenue Service due to back taxes.

Guitarist Bill Harris worked as an impresario late in life, organizing and presenting concerts in a variety of genres until passing away on December 6, 1988, Washington, D.C.

More Posts: bandleade,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Phillip Robert Lee was born on April 8, 1943 in London, England and studied guitar with Ike Isaacs as a teenager. He was a member of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, including their performance in the 1960 Antibes Jazz Festival. By the 1960s he was playing with John Williams and Graham Collier, was resident at Ronnie Scott’s Old Place, and in a band that included Bob Stuckey, Dudu Pukwana, and John Marshall.

During the 1970s, he played in jazz-rock bands such as Gilgamesh and Axel with Tony Coe and with Michael Garrick, Henry Lowther, and John Stevens. He recorded Twice Upon a Time in 1987 with Jeff Clyne.

Later in his career, he worked with Gordon Beck, Andres Boiarsky, Benny Goodman, Lena Horne, Marian Montgomery, Annie Ross, Dardanelle, Harry Edison, Ken Peplowski, Eddie Daniels, Jimmy Smith and the London Jazz Orchestra.

Phil Lee began playing jazz in the 1960s and. Since then he has recorded and appeared live with a vast range of musicians. including Pat Smythe, Duncan Lamont, Norma Winstone, Michael Garrick, Jimmy Hastings and Martin Speake. Phil has toured with Charles Aznavour, Michel Legrand, Gordon Beck and recently Jessye Norman.

In the 1970s he was a member of the fusion band Gilgamesh. His musicianship is held in high regard not only by fellow jazz players but also by musicians in other genres. His film credits include brief appearances in Eyes Wide Shut and Alan Plater’s TV film Misterioso and his playing featured in The Last of the Blonde Bombshells. Guitarist Phil Lee continues to perform, record and tour.

More Posts: guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music

Daily Dose Of Jazz

Paul James Abler was born April 3, 1957 in Saginaw, Michigan but grew up in Pontiac, Michigan. He first came into contact with jazz as a child when his grandfather played drums on recordings of Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington. Influenced by Jimi Hendrix, he turned to the guitar and in 1982 he moved to Los Angeles, California where he studied with Joe Diorio, Carl Schroeder and Ron Eschete at the Musicians Institute (Guitar Institute of Technology). In 1988 he moved to Boston, Massachusetts where he took improvisation lessons with Jerry Bergonzi.

1990 saw Paul moving back to Michigan where he played in Detroit with Marcus Belgrave, Harold McKinney, James Carter, David McMurray, Roy Brooks, Straight Ahead, and Leonard King. By 2003 he was living in New York permanently and has worked with Cindy Blackman, Allen Farnham, Joe Lee Wilson, Charles Davis, Cameron Brown, Guilherme Franco, Yusef Lateef, the Mingus Big Band, Ted Curson, David Ruffin and The Funk Brothers, among others.

In 2005, Abler released the album In the Marketplace as a leader under his own name, in which Marion Hayden, Cindy Blackman, William Evans, and Robert Pipho had worked. In addition, he worked with his own formations, which in various formations, among others Bobby Battle, Gerald Cleaver, Craig Taborn, Ugonna Okegwo, Helio Alves, Santi Debriano, Adriano Santos and Harvie S belonged.

Abler wrote over 150 compositions, some of which were used in films and television series such as Madam Secretary, Breaking Bad, 20/20, The Big Bang Theory and Mad Men. Abler, who most recently lived in New Jersey, was involved in six recording sessions from 1991 to 2013. On March 3, 2017 in Livingston, New Jersey guitarist and film composer Paul Abler passed away at the age of 69.

More Posts: bandleader,composer,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Chuck Wayne was born Charles Jagelka on February 27, 1923 in New York City to a Czechoslovakian family. As a boy, he learned banjo, mandolin, and balalaika. By the early 1940s he was playing in jazz bands on 52nd Street and after two years in the Army, he returned to New York City, joined Joe Marsala’s band, and settled in Staten Island until a 1991 move to New Jersey. He changed his musical style after hearing Charlie Parker, recording with Dizzy Gillespie in 1945. Frustrated with the difficulty of getting the sound he wanted, he considered switching to saxophone.

Wayne was a member of Woody Herman’s First Herd, the first guitarist in the George Shearing quintet, worked with Coleman Hawkins, Red Norvo, Bud Powell, Jack Teagarden, George Shearing, Lester Young, and Barbara Carroll. During the 1950s, he played with Tony Bennett, Gil Evans, Brew Moore, Zoot Sims, and George Wallington. In the Sixties, CBS hired him as a staff guitarist and for the next two decades, he played on Broadway, accompanied vocalists, and performed in guitar duos with Joe Puma and Tal Farlow.

He wrote Sonny in honor of Sonny Berman. Years later, Miles Davis took the song, renamed it Solar, and claimed he wrote it. His Butterfingers and Prospecting have been incorrectly attributed to Zoot Sims. Chuck was known for a bebop style influenced by saxophone players of his time and he developed a technique not widely adopted, and also developed a comprehensive approach to guitar chords and arpeggios.

Over the course of his career, he recorded eight albums as a leader beginning with his 1953 album The Chuck Wayne Quintet on the Progressive label. He worked as a sideman with Gil Evans, Anthony Perkins, Dick Katz, Duke Jordan, and Frank Wess, among others. Guitarist Chuck Wayne, one of the first jazz guitarists to learn bebop, passed away on July 29, 1997.

More Posts: bandleader,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Floyd George Smith was born on January 25, 1917 in St. Louis, Missouri and learned to play the ukulele as a child before taking up guitar. As a teenager he studied music theory and spent his early career in territory bands, playing in groups such as Eddie Johnson’s Crackerjacks, the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra, the Sunset Royal Orchestra, the Brown Skin Models, and Andy Kirk’s 12 Clouds Of Joy. His composition Floyd’s Guitar Blues, recorded with Andy Kirk’s orchestra in 1939, has been claimed as the first hit record to feature a blues solo on electric guitar.

Enlisting during World War II, Floyd was stationed in Britain as a sergeant and he had the fortune to meet and play with Django Reinhardt in Paris. Following the war, he rejoined Andy Kirk’s band before forming his own small ensembles. He went on to play with Wild Bill Davis in the 1950s, recorded occasionally with drummer Chris Columbo’s bands during the late 1950s and early 1960s. He would later settle in Indianapolis, Indiana and formed his own jazz trio.

The 1970s, had Smith moving into writing songs and record production, working with Dakar/Brunswick Records in Chicago, for which he recorded a few singles. He produced two albums with R&B star, Loleatta Holloway for Aware Records of Atlanta, as well as two unreleased with John Edwards, who later became the lead singer of the Detroit Spinners. He produced two Top 10 R&B hits on Aware with Edwards and Holloway.

In the late 1970s, he produced tracks on several albums with Loleatta Holloway for Gold Mine/Salsoul Records, managed and later married her. Guitarist Floyd Smith, sometimes credited as Floyd Guitar Smith passed away in Indianapolis, Indiana on March 29, 1982 at the age of 65.

More Posts: composer,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music,producer