Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Phineas Newborn, Jr. was born into a musical family on December 14, 1931 in Whiteville, Tennessee. His father Phineas Sr. was a blues musician and his younger brother Calvin, a jazz guitarist. He studied piano as well as trumpet, tenor and baritone saxophone. His principal influences were Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson and Bud Powell.
Newborn first played in an R&B band led by his father on drums, his brother Calvin on guitar, bassist Tuff Green, Ben Branch and Wilie Mitchell before moving on to work with Lionel Hampton, Charles Mingus and others. From 1947 to ’51 they recorded B.B. King’s first recording, toured with Jackie Brenston, recorded Sam Phillips Roclet 88 which became the first #1 record for Chess Records.
His earliest Fifties recordings for Sun Records with blues harmonica player Big Walter Horton, We Three with drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Paul Chambers, and his debut as a solo artist with Phineas’ Rainbow for RCA Victor. By 1956, Phineas was in New York City performing in trio and quartet form with Oscar Pettiford, Kenny Clarke, George Joyner and Philly Joe Jones. He created enough interest internationally to work as a solo pianist in Stockholm and Rome towards the ned of the decade.
In 1960, the 29-year-old Newborn replaced Thelonious Monk and performed It’s Alright with Me on the ABC-TV series, Music for a Spring Night. A move to Los Angeles, California saw him recording a sequence of piano trio albums for the Contemporary label, however, some critics found his playing style rather facile. He developed emotional problems as a result an during certain periods pent time at Camarillo State Mental Hospital. He also suffered a hand injury which hindered his playing.
Newborn’s later career was intermittent due to ongoing health problems. During the mid-1960s to mid-1970s Newborn faded from view, underappreciated and under-recorded. He made a partial comeback in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, although this return apparently failed to benefit his financial situation.
Pianist Phineas Newborn, Jr. recorded twenty-three albums as a leader and another seven as a sideman before he passed away on May 26, 1989 after the discovery of a growth on his lungs. He is buried in Memphis National Cemetery. It is said that his financial and medical plight spurred the founding of the Jazz Foundation of America in 1989.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Toshiko Akiyoshi was born 12 December 1929 in Liaoyang, Manchuria in the Republic of China to Japanese emigrants. Losing their home after WWII her family returned to Japan where a local record collector introduced her to jazz through Teddy Wilson playing Sweet Lorraine. Immediately loving the sound she began to study jazz
In 1952, during a tour of Japan, pianist Oscar Peterson discovered Akiyoshi playing in a club on the Ginza. So impressed he convinced record producer Norman Granz to record her and in 1953 she dropped her debut album with the Peterson rhythm section, bassist Ray Brown and drummer J.C. Heard. The album was released as Toshiko’s Piano in the U.S. and as Amazing Toshiko Akiyoshi in Japan.
Toshiko went on to study at Berklee School of Music under a full scholarship and in 1956 she became the first Japanese student to attend. She married saxophonist Charlie Mariano in ’59, had a daughter, divorced in ’67, married Lew Tabackin in ’69 and moved to Los Angeles, California in ‘72. Tgether they formed the a 16-piece big band comprised of studio musicians. She composed and arranged the music and he was featured soloist on sax and flute, recording their first album Kogun in 1974. With commercial success in Japan the band began receiving critical acclaim.
Moving to New York City in 1982, a new big band was assembled called the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra featuring Lew Tabackin. Though BMG released her big band projects in Japan, to her dismay she could never get distribution in the States and after several decades she disbanded the band after the final concert of a seven year run at Birdland in New York City.
Over the course of a fifty year career since her debut recording for Granz in 1954, pianist, composer and arranger Toshiko Akiyoshi has recorded continuously – almost exclusively as a leader of small jazz combos and of her big bands – averaging one studio album release per year for well over 50 years. She has been honored as an NEA Jazz Master, been named a winner in Down Beat Magazine Critic and Reader Polls for album, big band, arranger and composer, and has been nominated for several Grammy awards among other accolades. She continues to compose, arrange, record and perform.
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Dave Brubeck was born David Warren Brubeck on December 6, 1920 in Concord, California and grew up in Ione. His father, a cattle rancher, his mother Studied piano with intention to become a concert pianist, taught he son to play. He could not read music during these early lessons, attributing this difficulty to poor eyesight, but faked his way well enough that this deficiency went mostly unnoticed.
Brubeck entered the College of the Pacific studying veterinarian science but changed his major to music at the best of the head of zoology. Discovered that he could not read music he was almost expelled but his ability with counterpoint and harmony more than compensated.
In 1942, Brubeck was drafted into the U.S. Army, and serving in Europe played piano at a Red Cross show and was such a hit that he was spared from combat service and ordered to form a band. He created one of the U.S. armed forces’ first racially integrated bands, The Wolfpack. It was here that he met Paul Desmond in early ’44. He returned to college after discharge, completed his studies, worked with an octet and with an experimental trio with Cal Tjader and Ron Crotty, and often joined onstage by Desmond.
He recorded his first sessions in 1949 for Coronet Records, soon to become Fantasy Records owned by the Weiss Brothers. In 1951 he organized the Dave Brubeck Quartet with Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, taking up a long residency at San Francisco’s Black Hawk nightclub. During this period he recorded a series of albums and gained great popularity touring college campuses.
Dave signed with Fantasy Records, worked as an A&R man and brought in Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker and Red Norvo. Discovering he only owned half interest in his own recording and not the label he moved to Columbia Records.
In 1959, the Dave Brubeck Quartet recorded Time Out, a seminal album that featured unusual time signatures that quickly went platinum and was the first jazz album to sell more than a million copies. A high point for the group was their 1963 live album At Carnegie Hall, arguably his greatest concert.
Over the next several decades Brubeck would record many albums, develop a jazz musical, The Real Ambassadors, working with Louis Armstrong, Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, and Carmen McRae, perform at the Monterey Jazz Festival, did a series of Jazz Impressions albums, and was the program director of all-jazz format WJZZ-FM radio.
Of his many honors pianist Dave was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, was honored with a Time Magazine cover that he felt should have gone to Duke Ellington, and received an honorary Doctor of Music degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Berklee College of Music and George Washington University.. He was honored by the Kennedy Center, was awarded the Miles Davis Award and Bruce Ricker and Clint Eastwood produced the documentary Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way.
Pianist and composer Dave Brubeck, considered to be one of the foremost exponents of cool jazz, passed away of heart failure, ironically, on his way to a cardiology appointment, on December 5, 2012, in Newark, Connecticut, one day before his 92nd birthday.
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Scott Joplin was November 24, 1867 or 1868 in Northeast Texas into a musical family of railway laborers and developed his musical knowledge with the help of local teachers. Growing up in Texarkana, he formed a vocal quartet, and taught mandolin and guitar. During the late 1880s he left his job as a laborer with the railroad, and travelled around the Southern states as an itinerant musician.
By 1893 he was in Chicago, Illinois for the World’s Fair and played a major part in making ragtime a national craze by 1897. Joplin moved to Sedalia, Missouri in 1894, earned a living as a piano teacher and taught future ragtime composers Arthur Marshall, Scott Hayden and Brun Campbell. He began publishing music in 1895, and publication of his “Maple Leaf Rag” in 1899 brought him fame. This piece had a profound influence on subsequent writers of ragtime and brought the composer a steady income for life. Though he never reached this level of success again, he would frequently have financial problems, causing him to lose a be forever lost, the score to his first opera A Guest of Honor for non-payment of bills.
Joplin moved to St. Louis in 1901, continued composing and publishing music, and regularly performed in the St. Louis community. In 1907, a move to New York City had him searching for a producer for a new opera, Treemonisha, which, went beyond the limitations of his then famous music and was not well received when partially staged in 1915.
In 1916 he descended into dementia as a result of syphilis. He was admitted to a mental institution in January 1917, and died there three months later on April 1st at the age of 49. Scott Joplin death is widely considered to mark the end of ragtime as a mainstream music format, and in the next several years it evolved with other styles into stride, jazz and eventually big band swing. His music was rediscovered and returned to popularity in the early 1970s with the release of a million-selling album recorded by Joshua Rifkin. Several of his compositions including The Entertainer were featured in the Academy Award winning 1973 movie The Sting, and his opera Treemonisha was finally produced in full to wide acclaim in 1972. In 1976, Joplin was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize. During his lifetime her composed 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet and two operas.
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Hoagy Carmichael was born Howard Hoagland Carmichael on November 22, 1899 in Bloomington, Indiana. He was named Hoagland after a circus troupe “The Hoaglands” who stayed at the Carmichael house during his mother’s pregnancy. His mother was a versatile pianist who played accompaniment at silent movies and for parties and by age six, he started to sing and play the piano, easily absorbing his mother’s keyboard skills.
Never having formal piano lessons by high school, the piano was the focus of his after-school life, and for inspiration he would listen to ragtime pianists Hank Wells and Hube Hanna. By eighteen he was living in Indianapolis, working in manual jobs in construction, a bicycle chain factory, and a slaughterhouse to help out the family’s income. During this period he befriended the Black bandleader and jazz pianist Reg DuValle, the elder statesman of Indiana and Rhythm King, who taught his jazz improvisation.
Carmichael went on to attend Indiana University and Indiana University School of Law graduating with a bachelor degree and law degree, respectively. He played with Bix Beiderbecke who introduced him to future collaborator, Louis Armstrong.
He began to compose song like Washboard Blues, Boneyard Shuffle and Riverboat Shuffle. In 1927 Hoagy composed and recorded Stardust, one of his most famous songs. His first major song with his own lyrics was Rockin’ Chair recorded by Armstrong and Mildred Bailey. He recorded it himself in 1930 with Beiderbecke, Bubber Miley, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Bud Freeman, Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti and Gene Krupa.
He would go on to team up with Johnny Mercer and Frank Loesser, composing Georgia On My Mind, Up A Lazy River, In The Still Of The Night, Skylark, I Get Along Without You Very Well, The Nearness Of You and Baltimore Oriole among some many other jazz standards.
With his financial and social condition improved dramatically he began hobnobbing with George Gershwin, Fred Astaire, Duke Ellington and other music giants in the New York scene. He appeared in fourteen films, always performing one of his songs, appeared in numerous television roles, hosted musical variety radio and television programs, received Academy Awards for Best Original Song, was awarded an honorary doctorate in music by Indiana University, inducted into the Gennett Records Walk of Fame, recorded with Annie Ross and Georgie Fame, and penned two autobiographies.
Composer, pianist, singer, songwriter and actor, Hoagy Carmichael, passed away of heart failure in Rancho Mirage, California on December 27, 1981.
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