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…
Harry Gold, born Hyman Goldberg on February 26, 1907 in Leytonstone, London, England the eldest of six children to a Romanian/Polish heritage. Raised in the East End of London, he decided on a career in music after his father took him to see the Original Dixieland Jazz Band during their famous visit to Britain in 1919–1920.
He studied saxophone, clarinet, oboe and music theory under Louis Kimmel, a professor at the London College of Music. Harry began working professionally as a musician in the early 1920s playing with the Metronomes, Vic Filmer, Geraldo, Ambrose and many other bands. It was, however, his tenure as the star tenor saxophonist with the nationally popular dance band of Roy Fox from 1932 to 1937 that brought him to wide public attention.
In 1937, while working with Oscar Rabin, he formed a band within the Rabin orchestra, performing break sets as “The Pieces of Eight”. This band continued to perform throughout World War II, dodging bombs during the London Blitz and across the country. After the war Harry Gold and his Pieces of Eight became household names in Britain through the late 1940s and 1950s. During this time his Pieces of Eight accompanied the singer and composer Hoagy Carmichael on a well-received tour of the UK.
Gold carried on working into his late 80s and early 90s, playing occasionally. He left an extensive back catalogue of recordings on 78 rpm discs, Formally trained in composition and orchestration, Gold also wrote and arranged music outside of the jazz genre, and most of his career was spent actively in union duties and in efforts to promote the welfare of other musicians.
Dixieland jazz saxophonist and bandleader Harry Gold, whose career spanned almost the whole history of jazz in Britain in the 20th century, died on November 13, 2005.
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Jazz Poems
ALMOST BLUE
Chet Baker, 1929-1988
If Hart Crane played trumpet
he’d sound like you, your horn’s dark city
miraculous and broken over and over,
scale-shimmered, every harbor-flung hour
and salt-span of cabled longing,
every waterfront, the night-lovers’ rendezvous
This is the entrance
to the city of you, sleep’s hellgate,
and two weeks before the casual relinquishment
of your hold—light needling
on the canal’s gleaming haze
and the buds blaming like horns—
two weeks before the end, Chet,
and you’re playing like anything,
singing stay little valentine
stay
and taking so long there are worlds sinking
between the notes, this exhalation
no longer a voice but a rush of air,
brutal, from the tunnels under the river,
the barges’ late whistles you only hear
when the traffic’s stilled
by snow, a city hushed and
distilled into one rush of breath,
your, into the microphone
and the ear of that girl
in the leopard-print scarf,
one long kiss begun on the highway
and carried on dangerously,
the Thunderbird veering
on the coast road glamor
of a perfectly splayed fender,
dazzling lipstick, a little pearl of junk,
some stretch of road breathless
and traveled into… Whoever she is
she’s the other coast of you,
and just beyond the bridge the city’s
long amalgam of ardor and indifference
is lit like a votive
then blown out. Too many rooms unrented
in this residential hotel,
and you don’t want to know
why they’re making that noise in the hall;
you’re going to wake up in any one of the
how many ten thousand
locations of trouble and longing
going out of business forever everything must go
wake up and start wanting.
It’s so much better when you don’t want:
nothing falls then, nothing lost
but sleep and who wanted that
in the pearl this suspended world is,
in the warm suspension and glaze
of this song everything stays up
almost forever the long
glide sung into the vein,
one note held almost impossibly
almost blue and the lyric takes so long
to open, a little blood
blooming: there’s no love song finer
but how strange the change
from major to minor
everytime
we say goodbye
and you leaning into that warm
haze from the window, Amsterdam,
late afternoon glimmer
a blur of buds
breathing in the lindens
and you let go and why not
MARK DOTY
from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
LaVerne Butler was born on February 25, 1962 in Shreveport, Louisiana. The daughter of saxophonist Scott Butler, she was extensively exposed to jazz and rhythm and blues music and with a lot of encouragement from her father.
Leaving Shreveport for New Orleans, Louisiana she attended the University of New Orleans. During this period LaVerne became a fixture in the city’s Dixieland and bebop venues singing with Ellis Marsalis, Alvin Batiste, Henry Butler ( no relation) and James Black, among others. A move to New York City in 1984 had her working as an English teacher, singing in clubs and studying with jazz veteran Jon Hendricks.
Her musical influences were Nancy Wilson and Sarah Vaughan. In 1992 she recorded her debut album No Looking Back for Chesky Records. Her sophomore album for the label was Day Dreamin’ , then planned on signing with Herbie Mann’s Kokopelli label in 1997, but that fell through when the company experienced financial problems. She then was brought into the MaxJazz label for two albums and finally landed with HighNote Records for her 2012 release Love Lost and Found Again.
Vocalist LaVerne Butler, who has yet to receive the recognition her talent deserves, continues to perform around the country.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Patti Wicks was born Patricia Ellen Chappell on February 24, 1945 and began playing the piano at the age of three. She later attended the Crane School of Music at the State University of New York at Potsdam.
Influenced by Bill Evans, she began to perform professionally and moved to New York City, where she played in small ensembles. She founded her own trio featuring bassists such as Sam Jones, Richard Davis, Brian Torff, and Mark Dresser, and drummers Curtis Boyd, Louis Hayes, Mickey Roker, and Alan Dawson.
In the 1970s, Wicks moved to Florida where she worked as a musician with, among others, Clark Terry, Larry Coryell, Frank Morgan, Ira Sullivan, Flip Phillips, Anita O’Day, Rebecca Parris, Roseanna Vitro and Giacomo Gates.
As an educator she taught jazz piano at colleges and gave private lessons. In 1997, Patti released her debut album Room at the Top: The Patti Wicks Trio. She was a guest on Marian McPartland’s NPR program Piano Jazz.
Vocalist and pianist Patti Wicks died on March 7, 2014.
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