Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alice Coltrane, née McLeod, was born on August 27, 1937 in Detroit, Michigan. She studied classical music and also jazz with Bud Powell and began playing professionally in Detroit, with her own jazz trio and as a duo with vibist Terry Pollard. It was while playing with the Terry Gibbs Quartet in 1962 that she met John Coltrane. Replacing McCoy Tyner as pianist with Trane’s group in 1965, the two married the following year and continued playing together until his death in 1967. She is the mother of daughter Michelle, drummer John Jr., and saxophonists Oran and Ravi.
After her husband’s death she continued to play with her own groups, later including her children, moving into more and more meditative music. Alice was one of the few harpists in the history of jazz and her essential recordings were made in the late Sixties and early 1970s for Impulse Records.
Coltrane became a devotee of the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba in 1972, moved to California and established the Vendantic Center in 1975. By the late Seventies she had changed her name to Turiyasangitananda, became the swamini or spiritual director of Shanti Anantam Ashram established in 1983 near Malibu, California. Only on rare occasions would she perform publicly under the name Alice Coltrane.
The 1990s saw renewed interest in her work, which led to the release of the compilation Astral Meditations, and in 2004 she released her comeback album Translinear Light. Following a twenty-five-year break from major public performances, she returned to the stage for three U.S. appearances in the fall of 2006, culminating on November 4 with a concert in San Francisco with her son Ravi, drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Charlie Haden.
Alice Coltrane, pianist, organist, harpist and composer, passed away of respiratory failure on January 12, 2007 in Los Angeles, California.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Don Patterson was born July 22, 1936 in Columbus, Ohio. He started studying piano as a child, heavily influenced by Erroll Garner but by 1956 switched to organ after hearing Jimmy Smith play. Making his debut on organ in 1959 he played with various groups into the early Sixties that saw him start performing regularly with Sonny Stitt, where he made a name for himself. This led to numerous recording sessions as a leader with Prestige and later Muse Records beginning in 1964 with sidemen guitarist Pat Martino and drummer Billy James.
During the Sixties, Don recorded as a sideman with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, and Eric Kloss but his most commercially successful album was his 1964 “Holiday Soul” reaching #85 on the Billboard 200 three years later. However, with his troubles with drug addiction hobbling his career in the 70s, while residing in Gary, Indiana he would occasionally record for Muse Records.
By the 1980s organist Don Patterson had moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and made a small comeback, but his health continued to deteriorate over the course of the decade, forcing him to frequent dialysis until he passed away on February 10, 1988. He left a catalogue of twenty-one albums as a leader and thirteen as a sideman.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charles Earland was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 24, 1941 and learned to play the saxophone in high school. By age 17 he was playing tenor with Jimmy McGriff and in 1960 started his first group. He didn’t start playing the organ until after a stint with Pat Martino, then joined Lou Donaldson’s band until 1969.
Earland led a successful group in 1970 that included Grover Washington, Jr. and he eventually started playing the soprano saxophone and synthesizer but it was his simmering organ grooves the earned him the nickname “The Mighty Burner”.
In 1978 Earland hit the disco/club scene with “Let the Music Play” written by Randy Muller from Brass Construction. The record hit the U.S. charts for 5 weeks and reached number 46 in the U.K. Singles chart. From 1988 he traveled extensively performing worldwide with one of his many career highlights being to play the Berlin Jazz Festival in 1994.
He continued to perform throughout the U.S. and abroad until his death from heart failure in Kansas City, Missouri at the age of fifty-eight on December 11, 1999. Charles Earland, The Mighty Burner, was a composer, organist, and saxophonist in the soul jazz idiom.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carla Bley was born Carla Borg on May 11, 1936 is best known for her work as a jazz composer, pianist, organist and band leader in the post bop generation and free jazz movement of the 60s.
Raised in Oakland, California she was encouraged by her father, piano teacher and choirmaster, to sing and learn the piano. Giving up church to immerse herself in roller-skating at fourteen, Carla moved to New York and became a cigarette girl at Birdland. It is here that she met and married Paul Bley, who encouraged her to start composing. Her compositions would later begin to appear on recordings by George Russell and Jimmy Guiffre, with compositions being performed by Gary Burton, Art Farmer and Paul Bley.
In 1964 she was involved in organizing the Jazz Composer Guild bringing together the most innovative musicians in New York and started the JCOA record label, which released albums by Clifford Thornton, Don Cherry and Roswell Rudd, Michael Mantler and herself. With Mantler the two started the New Music Distribution Services, now defunct, that specialized in small, independent labels issuing creative improvised music.
Carla Bley has collaborated with a number of other artists, including Kurt Weill, Jack Bruce, Charlie Haden, Phil Woods, Johnny Griffin, Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Lew Soloff, Phil Woods and her current partner bassist Steve Swallow. She has continued to record frequently with her own big band and a number of smaller ensembles.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Richard Arnold “Groove” Holmes was born in Camden, New Jersey on May 2, 1931. A self-taught organist, he began his early career working along the East coast. It wasn’t until a recording session with Les McCann and Ben Webster in 1961 that widespread interest was piqued in his work.
Touring and recording throughout the 60s he achieved important recognition and acceptance amongst mainstream and post-bop jazz audiences. His landmark recording of “Misty” brought him critical acclaim and is considered by some a precursor of acid jazz.
He developed a solid relationship with Gene Ammons and their playing exemplified the soul-heavy organ-tenor playing that proliferated the decade. He played with big bands including one led by Gerald Wilson and recorded with Dakota Staton, Houston Person and Jimmy Witherspoon among others.
His sound was immediately recognizable in the upper register, but even more so because of his virtuosity in creating, undoubtedly, the most rapid, punctuating, and pulsating bass lines of all the jazz organists. He stands alongside the elite of jazz organists Jimmy Smith, Brother Jack McDuff and Jimmy McGriff for his contributions to the instrument and music.
Performing to the end of life, his last concerts in a wheelchair, organist Richard “Groove” Holmes, revered in soul-jazz circles died of a heart attack on June 29, 1991 in St. Louis, Missouri after a long struggle with prostate cancer.
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