Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Louis Nelson was born September 17, 1902 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Both parents and his sister played the piano, his brother played the saxophone. In December 1902, his parents moved to Napoleonville, Louisiana because his father couldn’t get medical patients after the July 1900 Robert Charles Race Riots in New Orleans.

At the age of fifteen he started playing the valve trombone and switched to the slide trombone, studying under Professor Claiborne Williams. Graduating high school in 1919, Louis’ first band was Joe Gabriel’s band playing in dance halls for a dollar a night.

While in New Orleans in the 1920s, Nelson played jazz with Buddy Petit, Kid Rena, Kid Punch Miller, Sam Morgan, Chris Kelly, Papa Celestin, Willie Pajeaud, Kid Howard, Sidney Cates, and Kid Harris’ Dixieland Band. He would go on to join the Sidney Desvigne Orchestra. During the Depression, he joined the Works Progress Administration and became first chair in the WPA band, then volunteered for the U.S. Navy during WWII. Post Navy he played with Sidney Desvigne’s Orchestra, Kid Thomas Valentine, and Herbert Leary Orchestra. To make ends meet he took numerous day jobs from the post office to a janitor.  In 1949, made his first recording with clarinetist and leader Big Eye Louis Nelson Delisle. This recording, by jazz historian Bill Russell of AM Records, marked the beginning of an extensive recording career for him.

Preservation Hall gave Louis permanent work, exposure to a new audience, and provided numerous opportunities for travel abroad as both a soloist and band member of the Billie and De De Piece and Kid Thomas Valentine’s bands.

He toured extensively from 1963, beginning with the George Lewis Band in Japan, Eastern and Western Europe, South America, Australia, Canada, and Mexico, as well as throughout the United States. Nelson appeared at every New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, joined the Legends of Jazz and was featured in many New Orleans jazz documentaries.

Trombonist Louis Nelson, who in 1981 received a NEA grant and developed a program in which he played for New Orleans public school students and discussed New Orleans jazz history, passed away on April 5, 1990 of injuries suffered from a March 27 hit-and-run automobile accident. The driver was never caught.

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The Quarantined Jazz Voyager

A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina) is a perfect album to listen to as this country continues to play the stupid card and not take this pandemic or its remedy serious. So as those of us who are vaccinated, wearing masks and social distancing. This studio album was recorded in 2007 by the Terence Blanchard Quintet at Conway Recording Studios, Los Angeles, California and Bastyr University, Kenmore, Washington. It was released on August 14, 2007 by Blue Note Records. Blanchard won the Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album, and was nominated for Best Jazz Instrument Solo for his work on the song Levees.

The album was produced by Blanchard, with Robin Burgess as the associate producer, the engineers were Brian Valentino and Frank Wolf, Seth Waldman was the assistant engineer, and mastering by Gavin Lurssen. Lolis Eric Elie, Blanchard, Brice Winston, Derrick Hodge,and Aaron Parks each contributed to the liner notes.

Spike Lee commissioned Terence Blanchard to compose the score for his 2006 four-hour HBO documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, to show the agony of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2007 Blanchard recorded “A Tale of God’s Will”, which contains The Water, Levees, Wading Through, and Funeral Dirge heard in Lee’s documentary. His mother Wilhelmina survived but lost her Pontchartrain Park home.

1. Ghost of Congo Square (Blanchard, Hodge, Scott) ~ 3:01
2. Levees ~ 8:07
3. Wading Through ~ 6:27
4. Ashé (Aaron Parks) ~ 8:18
5. In Time Of Need (Brice Winston) ~ 7:53
6. Ghost Of Betsy ~ 1:58
7. The Water ~ 4:07
8. Mantra Intro (Kendrick Scott) ~ 3:22
9. Mantra (Kendrick Scott) ~ 9:49
10. Over There (Derrick Hodge) ~ 7:43
11. Ghost Of 1927 ~ 1:38
12. Funeral Dirge ~ 5:51
13. Dear Mom ~ 3:39

• Terence Blanchard ~ conductor, trumpet, orchestration, producer, liner notes
• Brice Winston ~ soprano sax, tenor sax, liner notes
• Derrick Hodge ~ double bass, bass guitar, liner notes
• Aaron Parks ~ piano, orchestration, liner notes,
• Kendrick Scott ~ drums, percussion, orchestration
• Zach Harmon ~ tabla and happy apple

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Larry Binyon was born on September 16, 1908 in Urbana, Illinois and his mother shared some of her musical knowledge. By age eighteen he was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,playing E flat soprano flute in the school’s concert band as well as flute and piccolo in its first regimental band during the 1926-27 school year.

After spending one year at college by 1927 he was already playing professionally in Chicago as part of Beasley Smith’s band, which also included drummer Ray McKinley and clarinetist Matty Matlock. Flute may have been his first instrument, or his primary one at school, but tenor saxophone became his main instrument for dance bands.

Later that year Binyon joined bandleader Ben Pollack when he returned to Victor’s Chicago studio after a five-month hiatus. History does not reveal him as a bandleader as there is little evidence of him having led his own bands, and no recordings were ever issued under his own name. He certainly has a load of credits as a band member, however, and was adept in both big band and small group settings.

Working a variety of radio jobs during the day, one eye glued open to help recover from the previous night’s late-ending gig.During the 1920s he worked with Irving Mills’ Hotsy-Totsy Gang, Roger Wolfe Kahn & His Orchestra, and Mildred Bailey with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra to name a few.

His widest exposure on recording is his backup work on records by the Boswell Sisters, Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Fats Waller & His Buddies sessions, Henry “Red” Allen, Eddie Condon, Toby Hardwicke, Gene Krupa. Saxophonist, clarinetist, and flutist Larry Binyon passed away on February 10, 1974.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Arvell Shaw was born on September 15, 1923 in St. Louis, Missouri and learned to play tuba in high school, but switched to bass soon after. In 1942 he worked with Fate Marable on the Mississippi riverboats before serving in the Navy from 1942 to 1945. After his discharge he played with Louis Armstrong in his last big band, from 1945 to 1947. He and Sid Catlett then joined the Louis Armstrong All-Stars until 1950, then he broke off to study music. Returning to play with Armstrong in 1952, he performed with vocalist Velma Middleton, and in the 1956 musical, High Society.

He then worked at CBS with Russ Case, did sometime in Teddy Wilson’s trio, and played with Benny Goodman at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. After a few years in Europe, he played again with Goodman on a tour of Central America in 1962. From 1962–64 Arvell again joined Armstrong, and occasionally accompanied him through the end of the decade. The Seventies saw him mostly freelancing in New York City.

Bassist Arvell Shaw, who recorded only once as a leader, a live 1991 concert of his Satchmo Legacy Band, kept playing until he passed away on December 5, 2002 in Roosevelt, New York.

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Three Wishes

When Pannonica inquired about three wishes if given to Art Simmons he answered with his the following: 

1. 1. “Sex.”
   2. “Music. I can’t think of anything else but those two!Well, there really isn’t anything else but those two. What else is there?”
   3. “Music takes more than just music: to me it’s God! What is God? All the beauty there is in the world. All the love. God is music, and sex, too! I don’t mean sex the way Americans mean it _ not the rabbit kind. The Americans don’t understand about sex, not the way they do in France. I very soon found that out. Sex and music, and everything that is beautiful, it is all the same thing, really.And that is all that matters.”

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