Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edward Inge born May 7, 1906 in Kansas City, Missouri and played clarinet from age 12. By 18 he was playing with George Reynolds’s Orchestra, then in the 1920s worked with Dewey Jackson, Art Sims & His Creole Roof Orchestra, and Oscar Young.
In 1930, he became a member of McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, then was offered a spot in Don Redman’s band in 1931, where he played until 1939. From there he replaced Don Byas in Andy Kirk’s band, remaining with Kirk until 1943.
By the mid~1940s Inge became more in demand as an arranger, writing charts for Louis Armstrong, Redman, and Jimmie Lunceford among many others over the course of his career. He led his own band in Cleveland, Ohio in the middle of the 1940s, then worked out of Buffalo, New York in the 1950s and 1960s.
In the 1960s he played with Cecil Johnson, and in the 1970s with C.Q. Price. His recording credits include work with The Mills Brothers, Cab Calloway, and The Boswell Sisters. Clarinetist and arranger Edward Inge passed away on October 8, 1988.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Louis Landon was born on May 6, 1931 in Yonkers, New York and began studying piano at age five, playing classical compositions. Shortly afterward his parents got him piano lessons. In 1960 his family relocated to Studio City, California where his father, Leo De Lyon, is the voice actor best known as Brain and Spook in the popular television cartoon, Top Cat.
In the early 1970s, Landon transferred from Stony Brook University to Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts to pursue his studies in jazz. While playing in and around Boston, Landon met saxophonist, John Payne, and toured with the John Payne Band for three years from 1974 to1977. During that period they recorded four albums, to which he contributed his songwriting skills, and incorporate a jazz fusion style into their sound and opened for Weather Report, The Tony Williams Lifetime, John McLaughlin.
Leaving Boston for Manhattan, he formed a jazz fusion band called Nightfire, and did studio work and freelanced around New York City. During the late 1970s, Landon auditioned for and landed the position of the keyboardist in the John Hall band. Appearing on Hall’s Columbia Records LP, Power, he subsequently began touring with composer and pop singer Rupert Holmes. He toured extensively during the course of the next few years across the country with Hall and Holmes as well as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers.
He has also performed with The Doobie Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, and John Hall at the 1979 No Nukes concert that produced a triple live album released in 1980 that Landon is credited on as a keyboard player.
Composer, solo pianist for peace, singer-songwriter, recording artist, and touring musician from New York City, Louis Landon currently resides in Sedona, Arizona.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Patrick Mungo Smythe was born on May 2, 1923 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of a solicitor. Educated at Winchester College he went on to study law at Oxford University. When World War II interrupted his studies, he enlisted with the Royal Air Force, serving for five years as a night-fighter pilot. After the war, he resumed his legal studies, this time at the University of Edinburgh where he was also recognized as a talented classical and jazz pianist.
Upon graduation, he spent several years in his father’s law firm, before leaving Edinburgh for London in the late Fifties in search of a professional career in music. For a brief time, Pat worked with Jamaican trumpeter Dizzy Reece, and in 1960 he joined the quintet led by another Jamaican, alto saxophonist Joe Harriott, who was beginning playing his revolutionary brand of free jazz. Smythe’s pivotal role highlighted one of the principal differences between Harriott and his American counterpart Ornette Coleman, who viewed the harmonic qualities of the piano as incompatible with his own brand of free improvisation.
The Harriott quintet stayed together until 1965, recording three ground-breaking albums ~ Free Form, Abstract and Movement, while also holding a long-term residency at the Marquee Club in Soho. Smythe stayed with Harriott after the dissolution of the quintet, becoming a key member of the group Indo-Jazz Fusions, co-led by Harriott and the Indian composer and violinist John Mayer. This double quintet of five Indian and five jazz musicians aimed to fuse Indian raga structures with jazz improvisation, performing and recording extensively until Harriott’s departure ended the project in 1969. With his knowledge of Indian ragas, Smythe was considered by Mayer to be the bridge between the two camps.
Over a diverse career, he worked and recorded with many other great names in jazz when they passed through Britain, including Stan Getz, Paul Gonsalves, Ben Webster, Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Zoot Sims and Bob Brookmeyer. He worked mainly as an accompanist in the London clubs throughout the 1970s, helping bring Scottish jazz vocalist Carol Kidd to prominence.
After a long illness, pianist Pat Smythe passed away on May 6, 1983 in London, England. The Pat Smythe Memorial Trust was established two years later, as a registered charity to provide financial awards to young jazz musicians of outstanding talent. It was funded entirely from benefit concerts and gave awards to such musicians as Julian Arguelles and Jason Rebello. The trust is now defunct.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dick Twardzik was born Richard Henryk Twardzik on April 30, 1931 in Danvers, Massachusetts. He trained in classical piano as a child and made his professional debut at the age of fourteen. He was taught by Margaret Chaloff, the mother of baritone saxophone player Serge Chaloff.
Twardzik recorded with Serge Chaloff and with Charlie Mariano. He worked with Charlie Parker on several occasions toward the end of Parker’s life. He played with Chet Baker and Lionel Hampton and recorded with Baker and Chaloff in 1954 and 1955.
It was during his teen years, that he became addicted to heroin. Bebop pianist Dick Twardzik who worked in Boston for most of his short career passed away from a heroin overdose while on tour with Chet Baker in Europe on October 21, 1955 in Paris, France. He was 24.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Krzysztof Komeda was born Krzysztof Trzciński on April 27, 1931 in Poznań, Poland and grew up in Częstochowa and Ostrów Wielkopolski. He took music lessons from early childhood and became a member of the Poznań conservatorium at the age of eight, but World War II thwarted his plans. He explored the theory of music, and learned to play piano during this period.
While attending the Liceum for Boys, where he graduated from in 1950, he participated in the Music and Poetry Club. After high school he entered the Medical Academy in Poznań to study medicine. He finished his six-year-long studies and obtained a medical doctor diploma in 1956. He chose to specialize as a head and neck surgeon.
Komeda was interested in light and dance music and met Witold Kujawski, a graduate of the same school and already a well-known swinging bass player. He introduced him to jazz and took him to Kraków where the romantic period of Polish jazz, called the catacombs, was in the spotlight. Jam sessions with famous musicians as Matuszkiewicz, Borowiec, Walasek, and Kujawski took place in Witold’s legendary small apartment in Kraków.
Fascinated with be-bop performed by Andrzej Trzaskowski, his fascination with jazz and the friendship with famous musicians strengthened his connections with the music. He worked for some time with the first, postwar, pioneer Polish jazz band called Melomani. Later, he played with various pop groups, a Dixieland band before turning his attention to modern jazz and the creation of the Komeda Sextet.
Trzciński used the stage name ‘Komeda’ for the first time to protect his medical profession from the scutiny of those of Polish society who regarded jazz as a cheap suspicious music of night clubs. The sextet became the first Polish jazz group playing modern jazz, and its pioneering performances opened the way for jazz in Poland. He played jazz that related to European traditions and which was the synthesis of the two most popular groups at that time: The Modern Jazz Quartet and the Gerry Mulligan Quartet.
He would go on to tour Moscow, Grenoble, Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Prague, Blend, Koenigsberg, Bulgaria and both West and East Germany. He was a part of a show called Jazz and Poetry, began scoring films and overall, Komeda composed more than 70 soundtracks. While staying in Los Angeles, California in 1968 he composed the film music for Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and Kulik’s The Riot.
In 1968, in Los Angeles, while having a friendly rough-and-tumble with writer Marek Hłasko he was pushed over an escarpment and suffered a haematoma of the brain. Medical treatment in the US hospital did not save his life. After being transported home to Poland in a coma and in a terminal state. Pianst Krzysztof Komeda, who is credited with creating an original style, often described as the Polish school of jazz, hung on until passing away on April 23, 1969 at the age of 37.
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