Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jerry Gray was born Generoso Graziano on July 3, 1915 in East Boston, Massachusetts. His father was a music teacher who began teaching his son violin at age seven. As a teenager he studied with Emanuel Ondříček and was a soloist with the Boston Junior Symphony. By age eighteen he had formed a jazz band and was performing in Boston clubs.
1936 saw Gray joining the Artie Shaw orchestra as lead violinist and studied musical arrangement under Shaw. A year later he became a staff arranger. Over the next two years he penned some of the band’s most popular arrangements, including Carioca, Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise, Any Old Time, and Begin the Beguine. After the band broke up in 1939, Glenn Miller offered him a job arranging
In November 1939, Shaw suddenly broke up the band and moved to Mexico. On the next day, Glenn Miller called Gray and offered him a job arranging for his band. During his time with the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Jerry produced many of the most recognizable recordings of the era, arranging Elmer’s Tune, Moonlight Cocktail, Perfidia, and Chattanooga Choo-Choo among others, while his compositions among numerous others included Sun Valley Jump, The Man In The Moon, Caribbean Clipper, Pennsylvania 6-5000, and his most famous song, A String of Pearls. Many of his compositions became best-sellers.
The war years saw Jerry in Miller’s unit and became chief arranger for Miller’s “Band of the Training Command”, better known today as the Glenn Miller Army Air Forces Orchestra. He was the full orchestra’s assistant conductor, and conducted the orchestra’s first concert in Paris after Miller’s airplane disappeared over the English Channel.
After the war for a while he did radio and studio work around Los Angeles, California, including leading the band on a radio show called Club 15 that featured Dick Haymes. In 1949 he accepted a request from Decca Records to lead his own Miller-esque orchestra that was called Jerry Gray and the Band of Today.
Violinist, arranger, composer, and leader of swing big bands Jerry Gray, who continued to lead the Fairmont Hotel band into the 1970s, passed away of a heart attack on August 10, 1976 in Dallas, Texas. He was 61.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charles Sumner Kennedy was born on July 2, 1927 in Staten Island, New York. He played with Louis Prima’s big band orchestra in the 1940s, earning himself a solo on that band’s 1943 recording of The White Cliffs of Dover. He put together his own band and after a brief stint as a leader, he joined Gene Krupa’s big band.
Over the course of his career, he also played with Terry Gibbs’s Dream Band, as well as Charlie Ventura, Flip Phillips, Chico O’Farrill, and Bill Holman. In addition to live performances and recordings with big-name bands, he also was a frequent studio musician. He played in the orchestras for popular movies including My Fair Lady and West Side Story.
By the 1970s, he gave up his career as a full-time musician in order to support his family, but continued to perform in clubs near his home in southern California. Alto saxophonist Charlie Kennedy, who was a big band-era musician, passed away of pulmonary disease on April 3, 2009 in Ventura, California at the age of 81.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sameer Gupta was born July 1, 1976 in San Francisco, California. Now based in Brooklyn, New York he is a co-founder of Brooklyn Raga Massive, the jazz ensemble The Supplicants and drummer for the Marc Cary Focus Trio.
He has also worked with vidyA, Kosmic Renaissance, Grachan Moncur III, Victor Goines, Vincent Gardner, Sekou Sundiata, Sonny Simmons, Marcus Shelby, Calvin Keys, Richard Howell, Dayna Stephens, and Julian Lage.
Percussionist, tabla player, and composer Sameer Gupta continues to compose, perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harry Shields was born on June 30, 1899 at 2319 First Street in Uptown, New Orleans, Louisiana, two doors down from Buddy Bolden’s house. He spent almost his whole career in New Orleans. He played with the bands of Norman Brownlee, Sharkey Bonano, Tom Brown, Johnny Wiggs, and others.
Many of his fellow musicians regarded Harry as a superior clarinetist to his brother Larry, who became a noted musician. Wiggs had once commented that Harry was the only clarinetist he’d heard who could always play the right note without fail. He was a part of George Girard and His New Orleans Five, and Johnny Wiggs and His New Orleans Band.
Clarinetist Harry Shields passed away in his hometown on January 19, 1971.
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Three Wishes
Queried by Pannonica as to what, if given, would be his three wishes and Illinois Jacquet told her:
1. “That people would become civilized.”
2. “That the whole world would believe in God.”
3. “That everyone would dig music.”
*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter
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