MALA WALDRON
Mala’s music career has taken her all over the world, performing for international tours and festivals, as well in some of NYC’s most prestigious stages, including the Iridium Jazz Club, the Blue Note, the Jazz Standard, the 55 Bar, and Brooklyn’s BAM Café. Most recently she performed in Washington DC at the Kennedy Center.
Mala was a featured performer at the first annual Coltrane Day Festival, was featured in the book, Giving Birth to Sound: Women in Creative Music (Renate da Rin and & William Parker editors) and can be seen in the documentary film, ‘The Girls in the Band,” directed by Judy Chaikin.
More Posts: adventure,album,club,composer,festival,genius,jazz,museum,music,piano,preserving,restaurant,travel,vocal
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ollie “Dink” Johnson was born in Biloxi, Mississippi on October 28, 1892. He was the younger brother of double bassist William Manuel “Bill” Johnson. He worked around Mississippi and New Orleans before moving to the western United States in the early 1910s. He played around Nevada and California, often with his older brother. He played with the Original Creole Orchestra, mostly on drums.
He made his first recordings in 1922 on clarinet with Kid Ory’s Band. He made more recordings in the 1940s and 1950s, mostly on piano, although Johnson recorded some one-man band sessions, playing all three of his instruments by over-dubbing.
His piano style was influenced by his brother-in-law Jelly Roll Morton, and his clarinet playing by Larry Shields. The tunes he wrote included The Krooked Blues, recorded by King Oliver and So Different Blues.
Pianist, clarinetist, and drummer Dink Johnson, who played in the Dixieland genre, transitioned in Portland, Oregon on November 29, 1954.
More Posts: bandleader,clarinet,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hank Duncan was born Henry James Duncan on October 26, 1894 in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Little is written about his childhood, however he is better known for his work with Fess Williams, King Oliver, Tommy Ladnier, Sidney Bechet, Charles “Fat Man” Turner, and many others.
He toured extensively with Fats Waller. Duncan was sometimes referred to as The Little Man From Memory Lane.
Pianist Hank Duncan transitioned on June 7,1968 in Long Island, New York.
More Posts: history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Peck Kelley was born John Dickson Kelley in Houston, Texas on October 22, 1898. During the 1920s, he was a popular bandleader who led his own band, Peck’s Bad Boys. The group included players such as Jack Teagarden, Louis Prima, Terry Shand, Wingy Manone, Leon Roppolo and Pee Wee Russell, several would go on to have successful recording careers of their own. Despite the apparent success of this group, no recordings survive from this period.
Rarely played anywhere outside of Texas, however, early in his career he did perform in Missouri and Louisiana. Throughout his career Kelley repeatedly turned down offers by other musicians of the day to play outside of Texas like Bing Crosby, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey and Paul Whiteman. Joining the Dick Shannon Quartet with Glen Boyd on Bass Fiddle, the only studio recordings from this musician to survive were made in Houston in 1957.
He enjoyed playing at the sessions and subsequently listening to the tapes but he refused to allow them to be released. They were eventually released in 1983 by Commodore Records as the Peck Kelley Jam Sessions, Volumes 1 & 2. Some private recordings of this same period have been released on the Arkadia record label.
Throughout his career he wished to remain anonymous, a private man who did not wish fame for himself. Pianist and bandleader Peck Kelley eventually became blind, developed Parkinson’s disease, and transitioned on December 26, 1980, at 82.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Fred Hersch was born October 21, 1955 in Cincinnati, Ohio to Jewish parents and began playing the piano at the age of four, composing music by eight. By ten he won national piano competitions.
Hersch first became interested in jazz while at Grinnell College in Iowa. He dropped out of school and started playing jazz in Cincinnati, continuing his studies at the New England Conservatory under Jaki Byard and attracting attention from the press in a college recital. Upon graduation, he became a jazz piano instructor at the college.
1977 saw Fred moving to New York City, then gigged with Art Farmer in Los Angeles, California in 1978. He would play with Farmer again three years later, played for singer Chris Connor, then with Joe Henderson. He would go on to perform with Jane Ira Bloom, Jamie Baum, Toots Thielemans, Eddie Daniels, and Janis Siegel. A fortuitous firing of his pianist by Art Pepper gave Hersch the launch of his career when he filled in for the pianist.
In 1986, he taught at Berklee College of Music, performed and recorded sixty-four albums as a leader or co-leader, seventy-nine as a sideman and wrote an autobiography, Good Things Happen Slowly: A Life In and Out of Jazz.
In 1993, Hersch came out as gay and has been treated for HIV since 1984. He fell into a coma in 2008 for two months but when he regained consciousness, he had lost all muscular function as a result of his long inactivity and could not play the piano. After rehabilitation, he was able to play again. He continues to compose, perform and record.
More Posts: bandleader,composer,educator,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano