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Paul Bollenback was born on June 6, 1959 in Hinsdale, Illinois. The guitarist first got his hands on a nylon stringed guitar when he was seven years old. It was a gift from his dad, who played trumpet, adored music as much as the his son. He developed a taste for the exotic over the course of the three-year period his family lived in India at the age of 11 years old.
At the age of 14, the budding guitarist returned to the states with his family, where he discovered the delights of rock & roll. Around this time he started to play the electric guitar, but it was when Paul discovered Miles Davis that his musical development took a major turning point.
Bollenback studied music at the University of Miami then went on to eight more years of private instruction under the tutelage of Asher Zlotnik in Baltimore. By 1993 he embarked on a European tour and received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in conjunction with the Virginia Commission on the Arts, for New Music for Three Jazz Guitars.
He was named 1997 Musician of the Year by The Washington Area Music Awards, SESAC honored two of his original pieces, Romancin’ the Moon and Wookies’ Revenge, both of which were included on the album Reboppin’ by Joey DeFrancesco. He joined the music faculty at American University, has been an artist-in-residence at the Litchfield Jazz Festival Summer Music School and is a featured artist on the bill of the Summer Guitar & Bass Workshop offered by Duquesne University. T
Throughout his career Paul has performed on among others Entertainment Tonight, The Tonight Show, The Today Show, Joan Rivers, and Good Morning America. He has shared the stage with a long list of musical artists, including Charlie Byrd, Arturo Sandoval, Herb Ellis, Stanley Turrentine, Spyro Gyra’s Scott Ambush, Della Reese, Carol Sloane and Gary Thomas among others.
Guitarist Paul Bollenback, who uses modern quartal harmony, and has eight albums under his name as a leader to date since his debut of Original Vision in 1995, continues to teach, record and perform as both leader and sideman.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dave Barbour was born May 28, 1912 in Long Island, New York and started off as a banjoist with Adrian Rollini in 1933 and then Wingy Manone in 1934. He switched to guitar in the middle of the decade and began playing with Red Norvo in 1935-1936.
Through the rest of the decade and the Forties he found a sizable amount of work as a studio musician and played in ensembles with Teddy Wilson and Billie Holiday, Artie Shaw, Lennie Hayton, Charlie Barnet, Raymond Scott, Glenn Miller, Lou Holden, Woody Herman, André Previn and Benny Goodman.
While performing with Goodman’s ensemble, he fell in love with lead singer Peggy Lee, and they quit the group to marry and moved to Los Angeles, California where Johnny Mercer put them to work as a songwriting team, writing a number of Lee’s hits, such as Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me) and It’s a Good Day. Unfortunately Dave’s alcoholic and domestic troubles with Lee eventually split apart their marriage.
His orchestra had the best-selling US version of the peppy song Mambo Jambo and though his remaining career was far less successful thanhis ex-wife’s, his songwriting royalties sustained him, as the tunes he co-wrote with Lee were covered by many hitmakers of the 1950s. He acted in the films The Secret Fury and Mr. Music, and occasionally performed, including with Benny Carter in 1962. Guitarist Dave Barbour passed away on December 11, 1965 of a hemorrhaged ulcer in Malibu Beach, California, aged 53.
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Charlie Hunter was born on May 23, 1967 in Rhode Island but by age four his mom packed him and his younger sister in an old yellow school bus and headed west. After several years living on a commune in Mendocino County they settled in Berkeley, California and graduating from Berkeley High School and taking lessons from guitar teacher Joe Satriani. At eighteen he moved to Paris, becoming a professional busker, working 8 to 12 hours a day to make ends meet.
Returning to the Bay area, he played a seven-string guitar and organ in Michael Franit’s political rap group, The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. Since the 1993 debut of his self-titled Charlie Hunter Trio with John Ellis on sax and Jay Lane on drums, he has recorded seventeen albums. He co-founded Garage A Trois, a jazz fusion band with Stanton Moore and Sherik, has collaborated with Bobby Previte on the ongoing project Groundtruther, and has recorded and toured with Previte’s The Coalition of the Willing.
Charlie has recorded with Christian McBride, has played in the band T.J. Kirk, that merged the music of Thelonious Monk, James Brown and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. He is an inaugural member of the Independent Music Awards judging panel to support independent artists, and over the years has performed and recorded with Erik Deutch, Tony Mason, Eric Kalb, Ben Goldberg, Ron Miles, Scott Amendola, and Curtis Fowlkes, continuing to perform, compose and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jerome Harris was born April 5, 1953 in Flushing, New York and was already a skilled musician by the time he entered Harvard University with the intent of becoming a psychiatrist. During his college years he became known as a guitarist on campus who played in a variety of bands, from R&B to free jazz, including a fusion band with fellow student, drummer Akira Tana.
After graduation he decided to focus on music full-time and first began appearing on recordings during the late ’70s. He came to prominence in 1978 playing bass guitar and guitar with tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, with whom he would perform and record intermittently until the mid-1990s. Jerome went on to work with drummers Jack DeJohnette, Paul Motian, Bob Moses, David Krakauer, Ray Anderson, Amina Claudine Myers, Don Byron and Marty Ehrlich among others.
He has recorded four albums as a bandleader for Muse, Polygram, New World and Stereophile record labels. His recording sideman duties have been wth Robert Dick, Bill Frisell, Julius Hemphill, Hank Roberts, Pheeroah Aklaff, Kenny Werner, Malias, Ned Rothenberg, George Russell and Bob Stewart, to name a few.
In addition to performing he played a major role in a 1999 New York City tribute concert to Joni Mitchell, in which he wrote many of the transcriptions and arrangements. He has toured internationally in various ensembles to Japan with Rollins, the Middle East and India with Jay Hoggard, Africa with Oliver Lake and the United States with Bob Previte’s Latin for Travelers. Guitarist and bassist Jerome Harris continues to perform, record and tour.
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Jackie King was born on March 22, 1944 in San Antonio, Texas and took his first music lessons from his guitarist father, starting on mandolin and quickly switching to guitar, playing left handed. By the time he was 12, he was performing professionally around his hometown.
In the 1960s, childhood friend Doug Sahm convinced him to join him in San Francisco’s burgeoning psychedelic music scene. With saxophonist Martin Fierro, he formed the Shades of Joy, a jazz-rock fusion group that released a pair of albums, including music for the soundtrack of the cult film El Topo.
In demand as a sideman and session player, King backed Chet Baker and Sonny Stitt and recorded on albums by Merl Saunders and other artists. At the invitation of jazz guitarist and educator Howard Roberts, he joined the teaching staff of the Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles, California. A year later he started his own Southwest Guitar Conservatory in San Antonio. And after seven years, he closed the school to devote more time to his performing career as a soloist and with Nelson’s band.
Jackie received an honorary master’s degree from San Francisco State University, served on the board of the Music Teachers’ Association of California, taught jazz guitar clinics, lectured at the Berklee School of Music and was featured in a series of instructional books and DVDs. He also wrote articles in Jazz Times, All About Jazz and Just Jazz Guitar.
During his career, he shared stages with such guitarists as Jerry Garcia, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Les Paul, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, Pat Martino, Herb Ellis and Lenny Breau. In 1999, he released the solo album “Moon Magic” and recorded an as yet unreleased album with jazz pianist Marian McPartland.
Guitarist, songwriter and educator Jackie King, who was equally at home playing jazz, rock or country music, passed away on January 27, 2016 after suffering a heart attack at his home in San Rafael, California. He was 71.
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