Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Francy Boland was born François Boland on November 6, 1929 in Namur, Belgium. He first gained notice in 1949 and worked with Belgian jazz greats like Bobby Jaspar. In 1955 he joined Chet Baker’s quintet before moving to the US where he began arranging for Count Basie, Benny Goodman , Woody Herman and Dizzy Gillespie.
Boland set up an octet with drummer Kenny Clarke before returning to Europe and becoming Kurt Edelhagen’s chief arranger. In 1961, based around a rhythm section featuring Clarke, Jimmy Woode and himself, he founded Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band, which rapidly became one of the most noted Big Bands assembled outside the United States. A decade later in 1972 the band broke up and he mainly concentrated on composing.
Francy primarily lived in Switzerland, from 1976 wrote musical arrangements for Sarah Vaughan among others, and played as a sideman with Johnny Griffin. He was also part of One World One Peace, an effort involving Pope John Paul II. He recorded some three-dozen albums and Carola covered his song “Just Give Me Time” in 1966,
Belgian composer and pianist Francy Boland passed away on August 12, 2005 in Geneva, Switzerland.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ralph Earl Sutton was born on November 4, 1922 in Hamburg, Missouri. A stride pianist in the tradition of James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, he had a stint as a session musician with Jack Teagarden‘s band before joining the Army during World War II.
After the war, he played at various venues in Missouri, eventually ending up in New York City at Eddie Condon‘s club in Greenwich Village. Relocating to San Francisco in 1956, Sutton recorded several albums with Bob Scobey‘s Dixieland band.
Ralph recorded for Riverside and Arbors Record labels as a leader and played and recorded with Jay McShann, Johnny Varro, Ruby Braff and Dick Cary as a sideman. From the 1960s onward, he worked mostly on his own up until the time of his death on December 30, 2001 in Evergreen, Colorado. The following year pianist Ralph Sutton was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
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LIZZ WRIGHT & KENNY BANKS SR.
The singer Lizz Wright — who owns one of the most spellbinding voices of her generation, regardless of genre —remembers the first time she heard her dear pianist Kenny Banks Sr. perform. It was at the Atlanta Jazz Festival, where Banks was onstage with the vocalist Audrey Shakir, a regional legend. Wright was a freshman at Georgia State University; the daughter of a minister, she was raised on the music of the Black American church. Banks was already a respected player on the Atlanta scene who was working toward his master’s in jazz studies from GSU.
At a jam session at the original Churchill Grounds in Atlanta, Wright sat in while Banks was on the keys and sang a couple of jazz standards — at the time, the only ones she knew. But the crowd wanted more, so the band settled on “Amazing Grace” off the cuff. “He played it as a blues, and he kind of scared me because I’d never sang like that in my life,” Wright says. “I’d never sung a blues. I’d never felt prayer and longing and lust and confusion at the same time. And the sound came out with all those things.” “It was bananas,” Banks recalls, beaming. “I think that’s why we still have that in our repertoire.”
But what of that voice —that spectacular instrument the New York Times once described as “a smooth, dark alto possessed of qualities you might associate with barrel-aged bourbon or butter-soft leather”? Was it already in place at that formative jam session? “Absolutely. One-hundred percent,” Banks says. “You know when you hear people say, ‘You’ve got that thing’? She always had that thing. She’s just got a presence that commands your attention.”
Thus began a quarter-century-long adventure in which Banks became one of Wright’s most trusted collaborators, appearing on her 2003 major-label debut, Salt, and then on such acclaimed albums as The Orchard, Fellowship, Freedom & Surrender, Grace and Shadow. Now comes Nearness, from Blues & Greens Records and Candid Records, the most thrillingly intimate expression of their kinship yet. The new LP, produced by longtime musical director and esteemed guitarist Chris Bruce, features just Wright and Banks, on piano and organ, traversing 11 jazz standards and spirituals.
Following that first Churchill Grounds jam session, Banks essentially took Wright under his wing, helping her to learn the etiquette around jazz performance, develop her repertoire and even lead a group. Wright aspired to perform within the band rather than out front, to deliver her melodies and improvisations with the same fiery spontaneity as her sidemen. “Kenny was the one who showed me how to relate to a band in a way where you could be respected,” she says. (In recent years, Wright has studied piano with Banks. His lessons, she says, allow her to find passion and enjoyment in practice, “taking joy into the depths of discipline.”)
They bonded quickly and profoundly, on the strength of their shared background in the church — including improvisation-rich testimony services — and their interests in swinging jazz, R&B and other music. In Banks, Wright found the ideal ally, whose personality and approach offered the best kinds of dualities: He was both a hyper-organized, immensely gifted arranger and a bold, wide-open performer who loved to discover new pathways on the spot.
The album title comes from the opener, Hoagy Carmichael’s “The Nearness of You,” one of Wright’s favorite standards. “I’m excited to be able to use that one word to explore concepts of love and closeness that are not often mentioned,” Wright says. “I’m celebrating not just a teacher here, but a great platonic love.”
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carmen Lundy was born November 1, 1954 in Miami, Florida and at the age of six began to study the piano. After joining her church junior choir, she decided to become a singer when she was 12 years old. While an opera major at the University of Miami she sang with a jazz band and her decision to sing vocal jazz was cemented.
Moving to New York in 1978 Carmen was hired by the Mel Lewis/Thad Jones Big Band and performed her first engagement at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village. Two years later she formed her own trio, performing with pianists John Hicks and Onaje Allan Gumbs. She has also performed with Walter Bishop Jr. Don Pullen, Mulgrew Miller, Geri Allen, Terri Lyne Carrington, Courtney Pine, Bill O’Connell, Steve Berrios, Marian McPartland, Kenny Kirkland and numerous others.
Lundy recorded her first album of original compositions Good Morning Kiss in 1985 followed by her sophomore project Night and Day the next year featuring musicians Kenny Kirkland, Alex Blake, her brother Curtis Lundy, Victor Lewis, Rodney Jones and Ricky Ford.
Carmen played the lead role in the European tour of Duke Ellington’s Broadway musical, Sophisticated Ladies. Off-Broadway she portrayed Billie Holiday in Lawrence Holder’s They Were All Gardenias. She made her television debut in 1990 as the star of the CBS pilot-special Shangri-La Plaza in the role of Geneva.
A composer, arranger, producer, actress, painter, and sophisticated vocalist well known for her progressive bop and post-bop styling’s, Lundy has composed and published forty songs with favorites such as Quiet Times, Forgive Me, The Out Crowd, and Never Gonna Let You Go that have been recorded by Kenny Barron, Ernie Watts and Straight Ahead. With thirteen albums to her credit Carmen Lundy continues to focus on original material as she moves her three-decade career forward.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Wallington was born Giacinto Figlia on October 27, 1924 in Palermo, Italy but his family moved to the United States in 1925. He didn’t arrive on the New York scene until the 40s at around 18 years old, but from 1943 to 1953 he played with Joe Marsala, Charlie Parker, Serge Chaloff, Allen Eager, Terry Gibbs, Zoot Sims, Red Rodney, Kai Winding, Annie Ross, Al Cohn, Gerry Mulligan, and a host of other musicians.
He was Dizzy Gillespie’s pianist in his first bop band at the Onyx club in 1944, where his contributions reflected his innate creative ability, a talent that established him as one of the best composers in the progressive field. His astonishing, fast-moving eloquence as a pianist, contrasted strangely with his introvert, laconic manner as a person.
Wallington recorded as a leader for Savoy and Blue Note and led groups in New York that included newcomers Donald Byrd, Jackie McLean and Paul Chambers, Art Taylor and Phil Woods from 1954 to 1960. He would record with these groups for Prestige and Atlantic record labels. In 1960 he retired to work in the family business, but returned to music in 1984 and recording three albums. His style is often compared to the legendary Bud Powell.
George’s best known compositions are the bop standards “Lemon Drop”, played by Woody Herman‘s band, and “Godchild”, played for The Birth of the Cool recordings led by Miles Davis. He sat in on the recording of Lady Fair on the Verve release Metronome All-Stars 1956 and was closely associated with the progressive jazz movement in Harlem and on 52nd Street during the 1940s.
Bop pianist, arranger and composer George Wallington, one of the first bop pianists alongside Al Haig and Bud Powell, who left music in 1960 and moved to Florida, then returned in 1984 to record three albums, passed away in New York City on February 15, 1993. He left a ten record discography as a leader with several more as a sideman.
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