Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Marshall Belford Allen was born in Louisville, Kentucky on May 25, 1924. During World War II he enlisted in the 92nd Infantry Division and was stationed in France. He studied alto saxophone in Paris, France and played in Europe with Art Simmons and James Moody.
Best known for his mastery of explosive, jarring, chaotic sound effects on the alto saxophone, the opportunity came to create a long association with Sun Ra, with whom he performed almost exclusively from 1958 to Ra’s death in 1993. Marshall recorded with Paul Bley in 1964 and Olatunji during the mid-1960s.
Since Sun Ra death Allen has led the Arkestra and has recorded two albums. Allen often appeared in New York-area collaborations with bassist Henry Grimes, and participated in the Innerzone Orchestra with Francisco Mora Catlett, Carl Craig and others in an appreciation of Sun Ra’s music.
In 2022, the building at 5626 Morton Street known as the Arkestral Institute of Sun Ra was listed as a historic landmark in the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places. Free and avant-garde jazz alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, who also plays flute, oboe, piccolo, and EWI, at the age of 99 continues to live at the Institute, which has been his home since 1968.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Makanda Ken McIntyre was born Kenneth Arthur McIntyreon on September 7, 1931 in Boston, Massachusetts to a father whoplayed mandolin. He started his musical life on the bugle when he was eight years old, followed by piano. In his teens he discovered the music of Charlie Parker and began playing saxophone at nineteen, then clarinet and flute two years later. Serving in the Army in 1953, for two years he played saxophone and piano in Japan.
Following his discharge Ken attended the Boston Conservatory where he studied with Gigi Gryce, Charlie Mariano, and Andy McGhee. In 1958 he received a degree in flute and composition with a master’s degree the next year in composition. He also received a doctorate (Ed.D.) in curriculum design from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1975.
1960 saw McIntyre recording as a leader with Eric Dolphy. The following year and for the next six he taught music in public schools. He took oboe lessons in New York before playing with Bill Dixon, Jaki Byard, and the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra. He went on to spend three years with pianist Cecil Taylor. During the 1970s he recorded with Nat Adderley and Beaver Harris and in the 1980s with Craig Harris and Charlie Haden.
In 1971, he founded the first African American Music program in the United States at the State University of New York College at Old Westbury, teaching for 24 years. He also taught at Wesleyan University, Smith College, Central State University, Fordham University, and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.
In the early 1990s, while performing in Zimbabwe, a stranger handed him a piece of paper with the word “Makanda” written on it, which translates to many skins in the Ndebele language and many heads in Shona. He changed his name to Makanda Ken McIntyre. At the age of 69 on June 13, 2001 he transitioned from a heart attack in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Philip L. Bodner was born June 13, 1917 in Waterbury, Connecticut and played in the Forties and 1950s as a sideman for studio recordings in New York City. He played on jazz sessions with Benny Goodman, with Miles Davis and Gil Evans in 1958.
Organizing The Brass Ring, a group modeled after Herb Alpert, in the mid-1960s they had popular success. Bodner also played with Oliver Nelson and J.J. Johnson during that decade. His associations in the 1970s included Oscar Peterson, Yusef Lateef, Peanuts Hucko, Wild Bill Davison, Ralph Sutton and he also played the signature piccolo part on the disco hit The Hustle by Van McCoy. Other work in the 1970s included playing with Ralph Sutton and Johnny Varro, working with Mingus Epitaph, and arranging Louie Bellson’s tribute to Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige.
The 1980s saw him working in a swing style with Marty Napoleon, Mel Lewis, George Duvivier, Maxine Sullivan, and Barbara Carroll. He released an album under his own name, Jammin’ at Phil’s Place, on Jazzmania Records in 1990, with Milt Hinton, Bobby Rosengarden, and Derek Smith as sidemen.
Multi-instrumentalist and studio musician Philip Bodner, active in jazz and popular music idioms. Best known as a reedist, he played clarinet, saxophone, oboe, English horn, piccolo, flute, conductor and arranger passed away on February 24, 2008 at age 90 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Giuseppi Logan was born on May 22, 1935 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who taught himself to play piano and drums before switching to reeds at the age of 12. At the age of 15 he began playing with Earl Bostic and later studied at the New England Conservatory. In 1964 he relocated to New York and became active in the free jazz scene.
Giuseppi played alto and tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, flute, piano and oboe. He collaborated with Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders and Bill Dixon before forming his own quartet made up of pianist Don Pullen, bassist Eddie Gómez and percussionist Milford Graves. After Pullen’s departure, pianist Dave Burrell joined the group. A member of Byard Lancaster’s band, he also toured with and appeared on recordings by Patty Waters. He recorded two albums for the ESP-Disk record label and later appeared on an album by Roswell Rudd on the Impulse! label.
Beset with personal problems, Logan vanished from the music scene in the early 1970s and for over three decades his whereabouts were unknown. In 2008 he was filmed by a Christian mission group just after he had returned to New York City after years in and out of institutions in the Carolinas. Around this same time filmmaker Suzannah Troy made the first of many short films of Logan practicing in his preferred hangout, Tompkins Square Park. Subsequently, he was the subject of a major piece by Pete Gershon in the spring 2009 edition of Signal to Noise Magazine, which detailed the events surrounding Logan’s “comeback” gig at the Bowery Poetry Club in 2009.
The same year he performed with a group in NYC as part of the RUCMA performance series. Later in the year he appeared in the short documentary film Water in the Boat by David Gutiérrez Camps, where his music improvisations formed the soundtrack of the film. In 2010 Giuseppi began recording again and released an album announcing his return to music on Tompkins Square Records with Matt Lavelle, Dave Burrell, Warren Smith and Francois Grillot. This group performed a concert in Philadelphia with Dave Miller playing for Warren Smith at the Ars Nova Workshop. He went on to record six songs with a group of younger experimental musicians.
Around 2011 he was shot and ended up in a home in Far Rockaway, Queens. Still living in New York and performing as a street musician, reedist Giuseppi Logan passed on April 17, 2020 at a nursing facility in Far Rockaway, Queens from COVID-19.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charlie Holmes was born on January 27, 1910 near Boston, Massachusetts. He began playing alto saxophone at age 16 and emulated the style of his childhood friend, Johnny Hodges. He began playing professionally a week later and after moving to New York City he worked for a variety of groups, including Luis Russell in 1928.
Between 1929 and 1930 he recorded with Red Allen and is best known for composing Sugar Hill Function. He would work with Russell again a few times and in 1932 joined the Mills Blue Rhythm Band. He was a member of John Kirby’s Sextet, Cootie Williams’ Orchestra, and Louis Armstrong’s band for much of the next two decades. He left music in 1951 and did not return for twenty years, only to work in Clyde Bernhardt’s Harlem Blues & Jazz Band and later played for the Swedish band Kustbandet.
Never taking on the role of a leader in any recording or group, swing era saxophonist Charlie Holmes, who also played clarinet and oboe for the Boston Civic Symphony Orchestra, passed away on September 19, 1985 in Stoughton, Massachusetts.
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