Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Page Cavanaugh was born Walter Page Cavanaugh on January 26, 1922 in Cherokee, Kansas and began on piano at age nine. By the time he turned 16 he was playing with Ernie Williamson’s band for a year before moving to Los Angeles, California and joining the Bobby Sherwood band at age 20.

While serving in the military during World War II, he met guitarist Al Viola and bassist Lloyd Pratt, and they formed a trio. After the war’s end they performed together in the style of the Nat King Cole Trio, scoring a number of hits in the late 1940s, including The Three Bears, Walkin’ My Baby Back Home, and All of Me. The trio appeared in the films A Song Is Born, Big City, Lullaby of Broadway and Romance on the High Seas. He recorded dozens of tracks with Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, June Christy, Mel Torme and other legendary singers.

During the early Fifties he had a program, Page Pages You, on the short-lived Progressive Broadcasting System, the trio played on Frank Sinatra’s radio program, Songs by Sinatra, and on The Jack Paar Show. Cavanaugh played in Los Angeles nightclubs through the 1990s, both in a trio setting and as a septet, the Page 7. He recorded with Bobby Woods & Les Deux Love Orchestra, and as a bandleader with MGM, Capitol, RCA, Star Line, Tiara, and Dobre Records over the course of his career, releasing his final trio album, Return to Elegance, in 2006.

Pianist, vocalist, and arranger Page Cavanaugh transitioned from kidney failure on December 19, 2008 in Los Angeles, California.

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Three Wishes

Baroness de Koenigswarter presented Eddie Thompson with the inquiry of three wishes and he responded by telling her:

1. “I wish I could jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and make it! You want a serious wish? I wish I could make a record album I’d be satisfied with.”
2. “Oh God, this is hellishly difficult! I wish I could live like a millionaire. I don’t want to be one. I want to live like one.”
3. “I hope I’ll still be playing when I’m a hundred.”

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Charles Theodore Straight was born on January 16, 1891 in Chicago, Illinois. He started his career in 1909 at 18 accompanying singer Gene Greene in Vaudeville. In 1916, he began working at the Imperial Piano Roll Company in Chicago, where he recorded dozens of piano rolls.

Becoming a popular bandleader around town during the Jazz Age, his band, the Charley Straight Orchestra, had a long term engagement at the Rendezvous Café from 1922 to 1925 and recorded for Paramount Records and Brunswick Records during the decade.

This period also saw Straight working with Roy Bargy on the latter’s eight Piano Syncopations. Besides working as a pianist or leading an orchestra, he also composed and arranged music, both ragtime and jazz.

Pianist, bandleader and composer Charley Straight transitioned on September 22, 1940 in Chicago after being struck by an automobile while  working as a city sanitary inspector. He was emerging from a manhole in the street.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Ojārs Raimonds Pauls was born January 12, 1936 in Iļģuciems, Riga, Latvia  and is the second child of a glass blowing factory worker and a seamstress. His father played drums and his grandfather played the violin, and following in his grandfather’s footsteps he is enrolled into Riga’s institute of Music kindergarten branch. Being too young and his fingers unfit for playing violin, he started on the piano.

By 1943 he was studying at Riga’s 7th Elementary school while continuing piano lessons with professor Valerijs Zosts and teachers Emma Eglīte and Juta Daugule. 1946 saw Raimonds admitted to the Secondary Musical School of Emīls Dārziņš, combining his studies at the elementary school for three years.

When he turns 14, Pauls was playing piano at restaurants and clubs with a violin and saxophone virtuoso Gunārs Kušķis. Five years later he completed his studies at the Riga’s 7th Elementary school, however, during this time, he independently developed a liking for playing jazz by studying and imitating various jazz records.

He would go on to compose for musicals, ballets, theater performances, puppet shows, films, choirs, and instrumentals, He has received several honors from his home country, the USSR, Sweden, Japan and Armenia.

Composer, arranger and pianist Raimonds Pauls, who was the Minister of Culture of Latvia from 1988 to 1993, continues to record and perform.

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CURTIS LUNDY PRESENTS ERIC LEWIS

Curtis Lundy an American double bass player, composer, producer, choir director and arranger. Lundy is best known for his work as part of jazz vocalist Betty Carter band.  Over the years, he has brought some of the most legendary jazz legacies to The Velvet Note, including Bobby Watson and, most recently, Cyrus Chestnut.  This month, he travels in with pianist Eric Lewis and Terreon Gully.

Popularly known as ELEW, jazz pianist Eric Lewis has found cross-over success playing rock and pop music. He is known for his unconventional and physical playing style, which eschews a piano bench and includes reaching inside the piano lid to pull at the strings directly, as well as the creation that he calls “Rockjazz”, a genre that takes the improvisational aspect of jazz and threads it through the eye of the needle of rock.

His distinctive style has helped him to amass a large following of celebrity fans, including Barack and Michelle Obama (for whom he has played at the White House), Leonardo DiCaprio, Donna Karan, Téa Leoni, David Duchovny, Hugh Jackman, Forest Whitaker, and Gerard Butler. Throughout his career, he has performed with musicians such as Sting, The Roots, Natalie Cole, and Esperanza Spalding. In the spring of 2011, he joined singer-songwriter Josh Groban as the opening act on the American leg of the singer’s Straight to You Tour.

Hailing from East St. Louis, Illinois, Terreon Gully has performed with various musicians and genres, including the Christian McBride Band, saxophonist Ron Blake, vibraphonist Stefon Harris, vocalist Dianne Reeves and Latin band Yerba Buena among numerous others. He was the Professor of Drumset at University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada from 2008 until 2010

Showtimes: Friday & Saturday ~ 7:30pm | 9:30pm

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