Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gary Tole was born on July 26, 1951 and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and began playing the trombone at the age of twelve. By the age of sixteen, he was working with all the shows that came into the Pittsburgh area. After attending Duquesne University School of Music, he was offered the first trombone position with the world renowned Glenn Miller Orchestra. After four years of world tour he then toured with Harry James, Tex Beneke, Les Brown and Jimmy Dorsey, the latter he served as road manager and featured trombonist.
By 1978 he relocated and made his permanent residence in Southern California. Whether on stage or in the recording studio, Gary’s smooth, dynamic style has him in constant demand having performed with Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Bernadette Peters, Kenny Rogers, Rita Moreno, Melissa Manchester, James Ingram, and Phil Collins. He has backed television appearances of Diana Ross, Sammy Davis Jr., Bob Hope, Pia Zadora, Sheena Easton, Peabo Bryson, The Pointer Sisters, and many more.
As an active clinician for Yamaha, he finds time to participate in music education programs as a judge for jazz festivals, band and orchestra festivals, private teaching of the low brass instruments and traveling throughout the country conducting various clinics.
Trombonist Gary Tole, who also plays bass trombone and euphonium, continues to perform, compose, tour and record.
More Posts: educator,history,instrumental,jazz,music,trombone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alan Gaumer was born on July 25, 1951 in Bethelehem, Pennsylvania. He began playing the trumpet when he was eight and was a member of Kal’s Kid’s that appeared on the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour as well as numerous other television shows. Throughout elementary, junior and high school he participated in band, orchestra, and stage bands and graduated from Freedom High School in 1969.
He studied with John Nero and Willard Schissler and performed with the Allentown Band before attending the U.S. Navy School of Music. Upon graduation he spent the next three years living in Gaeta, Italy touring Europe, Africa and Asia with the Navy Show Band. Offered the jazz trumpet position at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis before his discharge, from 1973-75 he toured first as trumpeter and later as drummer with the well known group KATO.
Settling back in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania he was an integral part of a popular group P.F. & the Flyers and his own A.G.Q. After attending Rutgers University, Alan spent two years touring South America and West Africa with the U.S. Navy Show Band. When he got out in 1982, he worked for several years at well known hotels and resorts.
He has performed with a long list of jazz musicians which include Randy Brecker, Phil Woods, Al Cohn, George Young, Bob Dorough, Tom Harrell, Bill Watrous, Urbie Green, Kim Parker, Vic Jurris, Charles Fambrough, Bill Washer, John Swanna, David Leonhardt, Steve Gilmore, Bill Goodwin, Bobby Routch, Tom Schuman of Spyro Gyra and others.
As an educator Gaumer has been the jazz trumpet Artist/Lecturer at Moravian College since 1994 and served as Fusion ensemble director in 1998-99, 2003-04 and 2005-06. He is Artistic Director of the Pennsylvania Jazz Collective, a Lehigh Valley based non-profit jazz organization.
Trumpeter and educator Alan Gaumer continues to perform, teach and produce jazz events.
More Posts: bandleader,educator,history,instrumental,jazz,music,trumpet
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Larry Washington was born on July 24, 1956 in Detroit, Michigan. His passion for music began in the Motor City and he started playing drums at a very young age. He knew even then that music and performing would become his career. Graduating from Southwestern High School in 1974, the following year he went on to matriculate through Wayne County Community College District.
Larry has recorded, performed and toured throughout the United States and internationally. He has performed on MTV, BET, ABC, NBC, Billboard Music Awards, Trumpet Awards, Diversity Awards, The Princess Diaries, Showgirls, The Whitehouse, and The Apollo (London), just to name a few.
Building on his success as a drummer, as a producer he has been featured in commercials, television and film. As a music composer, sound designer, and foley artist. The History Detectives, America’s Most Wanted, Drive, Social Studies, Fox Sports, Section 8, Sister Act 2 (Back in the Habit), Good Burger, Rainbird Sprinklers, Hotel Planner.com, Urban Combat,
In the studio he has worked with Louis Gossett Jr., Deniece Williams, Jeffrey Osborne and several Los Angeles, California based charities. Larry is actively developing and participating in drum clinics and music workshops for educational institutions throughout the country. He is focused on reaching out to younger musicians, and sharing his knowledge and experiences in a positive and motivational workshop environment.
Drummer, sound designer, music producer, composer, recording artist and educator Larry Washington currently lives in Los Angeles, California and continues to compose, perform, record and produce.
More Posts: bandleader,composer,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music,producer
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Clarence Holiday was born Clarence Halliday on July 23, 1898 in Baltimore, Maryland and attended a boys’ school with the banjo player Elmer Snowden. Both of them played banjo with various local jazz bands, including the Eubie Blake band. At the age of 16, he became the unmarried father of Billie Holiday, who was born to 19-year-old Sarah Fagan, but rarely visited them. He moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania when he was 21 years old.
Holiday played rhythm guitar and banjo as a member of the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra from 1928 to 1933. He went on to record the following year with Benny Carter, then Bob Howard in 1935 and worked with Charlie Turner, Louis Metcalf, and the Don Redman Big Band between 193 and 1937.
Exposed to mustard gas while serving in World War I, he later fell ill with a lung disorder while on tour in Texas. Refused treatment at a local hospital when he finally managed to see a doctor, Clarence was only allowed in the Jim Crow ward of the Veterans Hospital. By then pneumonia had set in and without antibiotics, the illness was fatal.
Guitarist and banjoist Clarence Holiday died in Dallas, Texas on March 1, 1937.
On The Bookshelf
Duke Ellington: Music Is My Mistress
My favorite tune? The next one. The one I’m writing tonight or tomorrow, the new baby is always the favorite. The author of these words has created some of the best loved music in the world: Mood Indigo, Sophisticated Lady, Caravan, Take The A Train, Solitude.
Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one.” This is the story of Duke Ellington, the story of Jazz itself. Told in his own way, in his own words, a symphony written by the King of Jazz and published by Doubleday & Company, Inc. His story spans and defines a half-century of modern music. This man who created over 1500 compositions was as much at home in Harlem’s Cotton Club in the 1920s as he was at a White House birthday celebration in his honor in the 1960s.
For Duke knew everyone and savored them all. Passionate about his music and the people who made music, he counted as his friends hundreds of the musicians who changed the face of music throughout the world: Bechet, Basie, Armstrong, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Sinatra, to name a few of them.
In this 522 page volume are 100 photographs to give us an intimate view of Duke’s world, his family, his friends, his associates. What emerges most strongly in his commitment to music, the mistress for whom he saves the fullest intensity of his passion.
”Lovers have come and gone, but only my mistress stays,” he says. He composed not only songs that all the world has sung, but also suites, sacred works, music for stage and screen and symphonies. This rich book, the embodiment of the life and works of the Duke, is replete with appendices listing singers, arrangers, lyricists and the symphony orchestras with whom the Duke played. There is a book to own and cherish by all who love jazz and the contributions made to it by the Duke.