Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Bishop was born in Seattle, Washington on April 5, 1956 and raised in Germany, Washington, DC, San Antonio, Texas and Eugene, Oregon. He started playing drums at 9 in Washington, DC with the Patriots drum corps and performed regularly throughout high school and college in Oregon, studying with Mel Brown and Charles Dowd. Attending the University of Oregon, he later transferred to the jazz program at North Texas State University.
Moving to Seattle in 1981 he had an extended engagement with the band Glider and never left. An unusually creative and fertile scene at the time, the city offered performances with top touring artists and the opportunity to create long and substantial musical relationships with inspired Northwest musicians. 1983, saw Bishop helping to form the fusion group Blue Sky, which released two national Top 10 albums and toured throughout the west coast and Canada over the next 9 years.
He was a twenty-year member of the piano trio New Stories with pianist Marc Seales and bassist Doug Miller, releasing 4 CDs of their own, 6 with the late be-bop saxophonist Don Lanphere, and Song for the Geese with Mark Murphy. They were a house trio for 17 years at Bud Shank’s Pt. Townsend Jazz Festival, headlined the 1993 JVC Jazz Festival in Vladivostok, Russia, appeared in concert with Tom Harrell, Julian Priester, Charles McPherson, Vincent Herring, Nick Brignola, Conte Condoli, Bobby Shew and Larry Coryell.
They regularly appeared around the country by themselves or touring with Mark Murphy, Ernie Watts or Don Lanphere. He has performed in concerts and clubs with Lee Konitz, Slide Hampton, Benny Golson, George Cables, Kenny Werner, Bobby Hutcherson, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Sonny Fortune, Herb Ellis, Buddy DeFranco, Bobby McFerrin, Joe Locke, Jerry Bergonzi, Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, Larry Coryell, and countless others.
John has taught drums privately for forty years, was on the faculty at the University of Washington from 2005-2009, regularly holds drum and jazz workshops throughout the country with the Hal Galper Trio, and co-founded The Reality Book, a web-based, HD Video Play-Along education system for jazz musicians of all levels.
Drummer, educator, record label owner, graphic designer, and festival presenter John Bishop continues to perform, record, tour and educate. has been one of the primary voices in Northwest Jazz for over 35 years. He’s appeared on more than 100 albums, was inducted into the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame in 2008, and was named a “Jazz Hero” by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2019.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gary Smulyan was born on April 4, 1956 in Bethpage, New York. He studied at Hofstra University before working with Woody Herman. His biggest influence is Pepper Adams. When Adams died, he recorded an album titled Homage, which featured eight pieces composed by Adams. He has recorded for Criss Cross Jazz and Reservoir Records, including the critically acclaimed High Noon: The Jazz Soul of Frankie Laine, featuring arrangements by Mark Masters.
He has recorded with Jimmy Knepper, Mulgrew Miller, Tommy Flanagan, Dick Oatts, Cedar Walton, Bob Stewart, John Clark, Joe Lovano, Joe Magnarelli, Mike LeDonne, Dennis Irwin, Christian McBride, Billy Drummond, Steve Johns, Peter Bernstein, Dominic Chianese, Gary Versace, Joseph Brent, Martin Wind, and Matt Wilson.
He has worked with an orchestra, as well as with Benny Green, Riccardo Fassi, Gerald Wilson, and Michael Benedict. Since 2006, Smulyan has served as artistic director at the Berkshire Hills Music Academy in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
Baritone saxophonist Gary Smulyan has consistently been ranked best baritone saxophone player in the annual Down Beat magazine readers’ and critics’ polls, continues to lead a trio with bassist Ray Drummond and drummer Kenny Washington.
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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.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roy Palmer was born on April 2, 1892 in the Carrollton neighborhood of uptown New Orleans, Louisiana. He learned to play violin, guitar, and trumpet and began his career in 1906 in the Big Easy as a guitarist with the Rozelle Orchestra. Leaving the orchestra he began playing the trombone in Storyville with Papa Celestin, Richard M. Jones, Freddie Keppard, Willie Hightower, during the DepressionTuxedo Brass Band, and Onward Brass Band.
In 1917 he left New Orleans and moved to Chicago, Illinois where he worked with King Oliver, Lawrence Duhe, and Doc Cook. From the 1920s on Palmer recorded with Johnny Dodds, Jelly Roll Morton, Ida Cox, the Alabama Rascals, and the State Street Ramblers. By the 1930s during the Depression, he curtailed his performing worked in a factory and began his career as a music teacher, which included students Preston Jackson and Albert Wynn.
Trombonist Roy Palmer passed away on December 22, 1963, in Chicago, Illinois.
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Hollywood On 52nd Street
Senza Fine which translates in English to Endless was written by Italian singer-songwriter Gino Paoli, inspired by collaboration partner Ornella Vanoni, who was signed to Memory Records. The label wanted to rebrand the singer with a new sexy image, detaching her from her previous one. The song was composed in 1961, and not specifically for the movie Avanti! but was chosen to be the soundtrack.
Senza Fine is performed in the 1972 film Avanti!, an American/Italian comedy film produced and directed by Billy Wilder. The film stars Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills. The screenplay by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond is based on the play of the same name by Samuel Taylor, which had a short run on Broadway in 1968. It was produced at a time when the censors were more lenient, allowing her naked breasts and his and her naked backside to appear in the film.
The Story Ten years have elapsed since Baltimore industrialist Wendell Armbruster, Sr. first began spending a month at the Grand Hotel Excelsior in the Island of Ischia on the Bay of Naples, in Italy allegedly to soak in the therapeutic mud baths for which the resort island is known. When he is killed in an automobile accident, his straitlaced son Wendell Armbruster, Jr. flies to Italy to claim his father’s body. Upon arrival, he discovers his father had a British mistress, whose free-spirited London shop girl daughter, Pamela Piggott, was fully aware of their parents’ clandestine romance. Wendell’s plan was to return his father’s body back to Baltimore in time for burial in just three days’ time for a huge funeral service. Complications arise including kidnapping, blackmail, murder, a host of government forms and an affair, but with the assistance of hotel manager Carlo Carlucci, they attempt to smooth things over, as he takes on all the arrangements for the body to be taken. J.J. Blodgett of the State Department gets a call from Jr.’s wife and flies in from Rome to come to the rescue. He moves to get the body back to the States for the funeral under the guise of Sr. being a diplomat. In the end, all works out and a new rendezvous is created.
The Cast starred Jack Lemmon as Wendell Armbruster, Jr., Juliet Mills as Pamela Piggott, Clive Revill as Carlo Carlucci, Edward Andrews as J.J. Blodgett, and Gianfranco Barra as Bruno. The supporting cast was Franco Angrisano as Arnoldo Trotta, Franco Acampora as Armando Trotta, Giselda Castrini as Anna, the waitress, Pippo Franco as Matarazzo, Janet Agren as Nurse, Giacomo Rizzo as Barman, Antonino Faà di Bruno as Concierge, Raffaele Mottola as Passport Officer, Harry Ray as Dr. Fleischmann, Ty Hardin as U.S.Navy first helicopter pilot.
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