Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mike Elliott was born on May 18, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois to a studio musician father and a blues singer mother. Raised in Colorado he learned guitar at a young age and was playing professionally by the time he was sixteen. It was in Colorado where he studied guitar with Johnny Smith.
He formed his first jazz group and in 1964 was on the road. He moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota two years later, and in the Seventies he helped found the jazz fusion group Natural Life, which included saxophonist Bob Rockwell, bassist Billy Peterson, pianist Bobby Peterson, and drummers Bill Berg and Eric Kamau Gravatt.
The 1980s saw him moving to Nashville, Tennessee and becoming manager of Gibson Professional Musical Services and holding clinics with Les Paul, Howard Roberts, and Elliot Easton. Mike did session work, engineering, producing, arranging, and songwriting. In the middle of the decade he teamed up with songwriter musician Jim Pasquale to form Magic Tracks Recording Studio.
Remaining in Nashville until 1998 he worked with Johnny Cash, Mickey Newbury, Chubby Checker, Emmylou Harris, Trisha Yearwood, Joe Diffie, Earl Klugh, Vic Damone, Steve Earle, Crystal Gayle, and Tennessee Ernie Ford.
Gruitarist Mike Elliott died on September 14, 2005. A Mike Elliott Scholarship Award for excellence in guitar was established in his honor.
More Posts: bandleader,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Theodore McCord was born May 17, 1907 in Birmingham, Alabama and was the twin brother of Castor McCord, also a reedist. While both brothers played tenor saxophone and clarinet, in addition Ted played alto saxophone.
As a student at Wilberforce University in the 1920s, he played in a student group led by Horace Henderson. He also played in Edgar Hayes’s group, the Blue Grass Buddies, and the McKinney’s Cotton Pickers and the Mills Blue Rhythm Band.
He can be heard playing on their sessions with Louis Armstrong. Other credits include recordings with King Carter and the singer Ollie Shepard.
Roping out of music in the Forties, saxophonist Ted McCord, who was principally active in the 1920s and 1930s, his date and place of his death is unknown.
More Posts: clarinet,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hanna Richardson was born on May 16,1956 in Alexandria, Virginia and as the daughter of a foreign service officer, much of her childhood was spent overseas. At the age of seven, while living in South America, she began piano lessons and also sang at home with the family. 1965 saw her father retiring to Geneva, New York where she met bass player Phil Flanigan while in high school.
College saw her singing professionally, first rock and folk music, then hearing an Ella Fitzgerald record she turned to singing jazz. However, it was the singing style of Maxine Sullivan that was to have the greatest impact upon her. After college, Richardson moved to Rochester, New York and continued to pursue her interest in both folk music and jazz and she also taught herself to play the mandolin.
A move to Syracuse, New York had her working at Syracuse University and becoming Assistant Dean in the School of Management. She sang professionally during this period as a session back-up singer. Connecting again with Flanigan who had toured and recorded with Sullivan, and began singing with him. They married and recorded their debut album, Something To Remember You By, in 2002.
Vocalist Hanna Richardson, who has released a half dozen albums, continues to regionally perform, record and educate.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Randy Sutin was born on May 14, 1958 in Great Falls, Montana where he studied piano starting at age four and guitar when he turned eight. By the time he was ten he began study of the drums. He began playing mostly rock and some country professionally with local groups at age thirteen. At 20, he began to study mallet percussion, in particular the vibraphone, which became the main staple of his professional life as a musician.
In 1985, Randy relocated to Trenton, New Jersey, then to the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area four years later. He was a regular member of the Bill Hollis Quartet and soon began working regularly and recording with the Barry Sames Jazz Ensemble. A regular member of the late pianist Eddie Green’s group, he was featured on Eddie’s last recording, Shades of Green. He has also played and recorded with Walter Bell and the Latin Jazz Unit.
Over the last fifteen years, Sutin has continued playing as a regular member of the Barry Sames Jazz Ensemble, which does jazz arrangements of Christian music. He is featured as a soloist on both of Barry Sames’ recordings, Awaiting the Spirit and Celebration. This association with playing jazz for spiritual purposes and a desire to do a project with his wife, Marianne, who is an experienced yogi, led to his latest musical endeavor.
In 2007 they released Meditations for Percussion and Flute, a suite of compositions based on yoga practice blending a mixture of styles, but always falling back to jazz as its core. Together they created their record label, Balanced American Music. Recent work has focused on The Birdhouse Project, a trio with Jim Miller and Tyrone Brown, performing the compositions of Charlie Parker.
His most current project is with The Tyrone Brown String Ensemble. Randy is featured on both of their 2008 releases, The Magic Within and Moon of the Falling Leaves.
Vibraphonist Randy Sutin, who also plays marimba, continues to perform and record.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,vibraphone
On The Bookshelf
WAITING FOR DIZZY | GENE LEES
The story of jazz is a story of individuals–enormously gifted, dedicated, sometimes driven, yet often gentle people.
In this volume, Gene Lees, continues his richly entertaining and informative chronicle of the lives and times of jazz with a new collection of fourteen memorable essays drawn from his renowned Jazzletter. Waiting for Dizzy adds to the insights of his two previous collections, where the lyricist, essayist, and music historian draws on a lifetime of experience, and in many cases friendships in the jazz world to bring fresh insights to the lives and work of these magnificent artists, whether he is discussing why any guitarists have unsteady time or the complex role of race in jazz history.
The heart of Waiting for Dizzy is its exquisitely crafted character studies, warm pictures of the men and women who created and continue to create this music. Beginning in the era of its first great flowering, the 1920s, he weaves a story of discrimination against Black Americans to the tragic, determined, gifted guitarist Emily Remler who sought to break the sex barrier and her own drug habit, only to die all too young in a far-away place.
The stories continue through the final essay: a day spent in the recording studio with Dizzy Gillespie, surrounded by brilliant younger musicians who are his spiritual children, among them Art Farmer and Phil Woods. It is a lyrical, affectionate, and affecting portrait of one of the three or four most important figures–and the most loved– in jazz history.
Waiting For Dizzy: 1991 | Gene Lees
Oxford University Press