Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Annie Whitehead was born on July 16, 1955 in Oldham, Lancashire, England and learned the trombone in high school and participated in rock and jazz bands. At 16, she left school and became a member of a female big band led by Ivy Benson, playing with the band for two years before moving to Jersey.

Unhappy with the life of a musician, she quit music for almost six years, only to return in 1979 and start a ska band. Taking an interest in jazz again after moving to London two years later, Whitehead began performing in pubs. During the 1980s she toured with Brotherhood of Breath, a big band led by South African pianist Chris McGregor.

Over the course of her career, Annie has worked with …And the Native Hipsters, Blur, Carla Bley, Charlie Watts Orchestra, Jah Wobble, Jamiroquai, John Stevens, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Smiley Culture, Spice Girls, and Working Week. She was a member of The Zappatistas, a Frank Zappa tribute band led by guitarist John Etheridge.

Trombonist Annie Whitehead, who has recorded five albums, her first, Mix Up in 1984 to The Gathering, her last in 2000, continues to compose and perform.

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Conversations About Jazz & Other Distractions

WABE’s City Lights With Lois Reitzes Interviews Carl Anthony

The Hammonds House Museum in Atlanta’s West End continues to offer rich content through its virtual programming. The latest addition to the museum’s arts and culture programming is “Conversations about Jazz and Other Distractions” with former jazz radio host and founder of Notorious Jazz, Carl Anthony.

This virtual, bi-monthly series is free and open to the public every other Thursday evening through December. Anthony will discuss the history of jazz, its involvement with protesting and racial justice, among other topics. He will also offer artist talks, workshops, and listening sessions. “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes spoke via Zoom with Hammonds House director Leatrice Ellzy and with Anthony about the upcoming conversations.

Anthony’s July 9 show looked at the tradition of protest in jazz and how contemporary jazz continues this practice.

When asked what Anthony believed was the future of jazz, he said, “The future is actually now. The streets have always been important to the sound of jazz. I think what is going on right now is going to be a platform for what’s to come. There’s a social consciousness right now that a lot of the musicians are taking into account as they perform because of what’s going on in regards to police violence, and Black Lives Matter, and the protester movements. A lot of the music that’s going to be created is going to have some element of social consciousness to it.”

Ellzy continued, “Jazz has always been a unifier. It provides us with a space that we can all come in and speak a common language and then from that space of commonality we’re able to branch off into our issues and talk about our issues and deal with our issues in a different kind of way.”

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Joseph Arthurlin Harriott was born in Kingston, Jamaica on July 15, 1928. Harriott was educated at Alpha Boys School, an orphanage in the city where he learned to play the clarinet, the instrument that was assigned to him shortly before his tenth birthday. He took up the baritone and tenor saxophone while performing with local dance bands before settling on the alto saxophone.

Moving to London, England as a working musician in the summer of 1951 at the age of 23 as a member of Ossie Da Costa’s band, he initially began as a bebopper, and also became a pioneer of free-form jazz. Harriott was part of a wave of Caribbean jazz musicians who arrived in Britain during the 1950s, including Dizzy Reece, Harold McNair, Harry Beckett and Wilton Gaynair.

Deeply influenced by Charlie Parker, he developed a style that fused Parker with his own Jamaican musical sensibility, most notably the mento and calypso music he grew up with. During the 1950s, he had two long spells with drummer Tony Kinsey’s band, punctuated by the membership of Ronnie Scott’s short-lived big band, occasional spells leading his own quartet and working in the quartets of drummers Phil Seamen and Allan Ganley.

Harriott began recording under his own name in 1954, releasing a handful of E.P. records for Columbia, Pye/Nixa and Melodisc throughout the 1950s. However, the majority of his 1950s recordings were as a sideman with the musicians previously mentioned, also backing a diverse array of performers, from mainstream vocalist Lita Roza to traditional trombonist George Chisholm to the West African sounds of Buddy Pipp’s Highlifers. Harriott also appeared alongside visiting American musicians during this period, including a “guest artist” slot on the Modern Jazz Quartet’s 1959 UK tour.

Forming his own quintet in 1958, Joe’s hard-swinging bebop was noticed in the United States, leading to the release of the Southern Horizons and Free Form albums on the Jazzland label. By now firmly established as a bebop soloist, in 1960 Harriott turned to what he termed “abstract” or “free-form” music. During the late 1960s he and violinist John Mayer developed Indo-Jazz Fusion – an early attempt at building on music from diverse traditions. His work in 1969 was to be the last substantial performance of his career.

While he continued to play around Britain wherever he was welcome, no further recording opportunities arose. He was virtually destitute in his last years and ravaged by illness. Alto saxophonist and composer Joe Harriott passed away from cancer on January 2, 1973.

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Three Wishes

Freddie Hubbard told Pannonica that if given his three wishes would be: 

1. 1. “Happiness.”

   2. “Musical success. ”

   3. “I can’t get that third one. I’m trying to find that third one. I know I want a baby.”

*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

William Osborne Kyle was born on July 14, 1914 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began playing the piano in school. By the early 1930s, he was working with Lucky Millinder, Tiny Bradshaw, and later the Mills Blue Rhythm Band. In 1938, he joined John Kirby’s sextet but was drafted in 1942. After the war, he worked with Kirby’s band briefly and also worked with Sy Oliver. He then spent thirteen years as a member of Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars, performing in the 1956 musical High Society.

A fluent pianist with a light touch, Kyle never achieved much fame, but he always worked steadily. He had a few opportunities to record as a leader, seventeen songs in all, just some octet and septet sides in 1937, two songs with a quartet in 1939, and outings in 1946 with a trio and an octet.

He is credited as the co-author of the song Billy’s Bounce recorded by the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1992 with Bobby McFerrin on the album MJQ and Friends. He didn’t record during his Armstrong years, however, he recorded with Al Hibbler and Buck Clayton.

Pianist Billy Kyle, best known as an accompanist, passed away on February 23, 1966  in Youngstown, Ohio.

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