Daly Dose Of Jazz…
Mulgrew Miller was born August 13, 1955 in Greenwood, Mississippi. Growing up in a home with a piano he played tunes on the piano from the age of six, playing by ear. He had piano lessons from the age of eight and during his childhood he played blues and R&B for dances, and gospel music in a church. His principal influence on piano at this stage of his life was Ramsey Lewis.
While in high school, Miller formed a trio that played at cocktail parties and around the age of fourteen after hearing Oscar Peterson on the Joey Bishop Show he decided to become a jazz pianist. After graduating from Greenwood High School, he attended Memphis State in 1973 on a band scholarship. He played euphonium and met pianists Donald Brown and James Williams who introduced him to the music of well-known players such as Wynton Kelly, Bud Powell, and McCoy Tyner.
He would go on to study with Madame Margaret Chaloff but left her tutelage to play with Ricky Ford and Bill Pierce. By 1976 he was the substitute for the regular pianist in the Duke Ellington Orchestra but left in in 1980 after being recruited by vocalist Betty Carter, then joined Woody Shaw’s band from 1981 to 1983, with whom he made his 1981 he made his studio recording debut, on Shaw’s United. During the early 1980s he also accompanied vocalist Carmen Lundy and played and recorded with saxophonist Johnny Griffin.
Mulgrew joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1983 under the recommendation of Terence Blanchard and Donald Harrison. Although struggling to fit in with the dominating rhythm section his playing matured during his tenure. His recording career as a leader began in 1985, with Keys to the City, the first of Miller’s several Landmark Records recordings. He left Blakey to become Tony Williams’ pianist in 1986 and remained busy forming his own bands Wingspan and later Trio Transition with Reggie Workman and Freddie Waits
He would go on to work with Wallace Roney, Frank Morgan, Benny Golson, Steve Nelson and Donald Byrd, and toured internationally and domestically with the New York Jazz Giants with Jon Faddis, Tom Harrell, Lew Tabackin, Bobby Watson, Ray Drummond and Carl Allen. He continued to accompany and record with vocalists including Dianne Reeves and Cassandra Wilson, and played and recorded with saxophonist Joe Lovano.
For several years after he had turned 40, Miller concentrated on composing and playing his own music. In 1997 he toured Japan with 100 Golden Fingers, a troupe of 10 pianists, then joined bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pederson in 1999 to record duets based on 1940s performances by Duke Ellington and Jimmy Blanton. He signed with Maxjazz producing albums as a leader with Derrick Hodge, Rodney Green, Karriem Riggins, as well as trio projects and touring with bassist Ron Carter and guitarist Russell Malone, and as sideman with John Scofield, Kluvers Big Band, Yusef Lateef and Archie Shepp.
As an educator Mulgrew became heavily involved in music education as the Director of Jazz Studies at William Patterson University from 2005, and was the Artist in Residence at Lafayette College, from which he was awarded an honorary doctorate in Performing Arts. Pianist Mulgrew Miller’s list of accomplishments continued with his recording as a leader, working with his own trio and quintet until his passing on May 29, 2013 in Allentown, Pennsylvania from a stroke at the age of 57.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bill Heid was born August 11, 1948 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and came of age hanging out in the clubs that proliferated the Hill District like the Hurricane Bar and the Crawford Grill. With all the jazz greats regularly playing in town during the Sixties he took every opportunity to sit in on piano and learn from these masters. In addition he had hometown natives Ahmad Jamal, Art Blakey, Errol Garner, George Benson, Eddie Jefferson, Mary Lou Williams and Stanley Turrentine to learn from.
Bill took these lessons and experiences and headed West to Detroit and on to Chicago, building a solid blues resume, touring and recording as a pianist with Jimmy Witherspoon, Koko Taylor, Alberta Adams and Fenton Robinson amongst many others. He also played jazz piano on two major Impulse/MCA recordings for Chicago guitarist Henry Johnson.
As an organist Heid has produced several jazz albums as a leader during the mid to late Nineties for Muse/Westside and Savant labels. He spent a number of years in Japan and has toured all over the world as a Jazz Ambassador for the U.S. State Department. Soul jazz and hard bop pianist and organist Bill Heid currently performs at different venues in the Washington, DC area.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ellyn Rucker was born in Des Moines, Iowa of July 29, 1937 and she started playing piano when she was eight, discovered jazz at 13, and studied classical piano at Drake University. However, it wasn’t until 1979 that she decided to become a full-time musician.
Rucker toured Europe several times both with and without Spike Robinson, recorded a small catalogue of several albums for Capri Records, has a full-length video Live In New Orleans on Leisure Jazz label, and has performed at festivals and clubs around the U.S. and Europe.
Though she is not a household name to jazz fans around the globe Ellyn Rucker is a fixture on the Denver, Colorado jazz scene. The Bill Evans influenced hard bop and bop-based pianist and vocalist continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Patti Bown was born on July 26, 1931 in Seattle, Washington and began playing piano at age two. She studied piano while attending the university in Seattle and played in local orchestras toward the end of the 1940s. From 1956 she moved to New York and worked as a soloist, playing early on in sessions with Billy Eckstine and Jimmy Rushing.
Bowen released one album in 1958 as a leader titled Patti Bown Plays Big Piano for Columbia Records. The following year, she recorded in a trio with Ed Shaughnessy and then was part of the Quincy Jones Orchestra touring Europe. While there she also played with Bill Coleman in Paris.
By the 1960s Patti was working extensively in the studios, recording with Gene Ammons, Oliver Nelson, Cal Massey, Duke Ellington, Roland Kirk, George Russell, Etta Jones, Art Farmer and Harry “Sweets” Edison. Stretching outside the jazz genre, she also recorded with Aretha Franklin and James Brown, and for a period of time she was the musical director for the bands that were accompanying Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan.
The 1970s saw Bown working as a pianist in orchestras on Broadway and composing for film and television. She lived in Greenwich Village for the last 37 years of her life and played regularly at the nightclub Village Gate. Pianist, composer and music director Patti Bown passed away on March 21, 2008 in Media, Pennsylvania.
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William “Billy” Taylor was born July 24, 1921 in Greenville, North Carolina but his family moved to Washington, DC when he was five years old. Growing up in a musical family, learning to play guitar, drums and saxophone as a child but most successfully on the piano. He took classical piano lessons with Henry Grant, who had educated Duke Ellington a generation earlier.
His first professional appearance was playing keyboard at the age of 13 and was paid one dollar. He attended Dunbar High School, the U.S.’s first high school for African-American students. He went to Virginia State College, majored in sociology but pianist Dr. Undine Smith Moore noticed young Taylor’s talent on piano, changed his major to music, graduating with a degree in music in 1942.
After graduation a move to New York City saw Billy playing piano professionally from 1944, first with the Ben Webster Quartet on 52nd Street. He met Art Tatum the same night, who became his mentor. He went on to perform with Machito developing his love for Latin music, a tour of Europe with the Don Redman Orchestra, and remained to work Paris and the Netherlands. Retuning to New York he worked with Bob Wyatt, Sylvia Sims and Billie Holiday in a successful show called Holiday on Broadway. A year later, he became the house pianist at Birdland performing with Charlie Parker, J. J. Johnson, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. He would become the longest playing pianist ever in the history of the club.
In 1949, Taylor published his first book, a textbook about bebop piano styles. In 1952 Taylor composed one of his most famous tunes, I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free, which subsequently achieved more popularity with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Nina Simone covered the song in her 1967 album Silk & Soul and the instrumental is used by the BBC for it’s long running television Film program.
Billy made dozens of recordings in the 1950s and 1960s, had a thriving broadcast career and in 1958, he became the Musical Director of NBC’s The Subject Is Jazz, the first ever television series focusing on jazz. The then new National Educational Television Network (NET) produced the 13-part series that hosted Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, Jimmy Rushing and Langston Hughes and others.
He founded the Jazzmobile in 1961 providing an arts education program via workshops, master classes, lecture demonstrations, arts enrichment programs, outdoor summer mobile concerts, special indoor concerts and special projects. Taylor worked as a DJ and program director on New York radio station WLIB, his trio was a regular feature of the Hickory House on West 55th Street, and from 1969 to 1972 became the first Black American to be musical director and lead a talk show band on The David Frost Show.
By the Eighties the Jazzmobile was producing shows for National Public Radio, receiving a Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting Programs. In 1981, after being profiled by CBS News Sunday Morning he was hired as an on-air correspondent and conducted more than 250 interviews with musicians. He received an Emmy Award for his segment on Quincy Jones. These are just two of the many awards he has received over the course of his career.
By the end of the decade he formed his own “Taylor Made” record label to document his own music. In 1997, he received the New York state governor’s art award. Suffering from a stroke in 2002 that affected his right hand did not stop him from performing almost until his death. He died after a heart attack on December 28, 2010, in Manhattan, at the age of 89. His legacy was honored in a Harlem memorial service on January 11, 2011, featuring performances by Taylor’s final working trio – bassist Chip Jackson, drummer Winard Harper and long-time Taylor associates Jimmy Owens, Frank Wess, Geri Allen, Christian Sands and vocalist Cassandra Wilson.
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