Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Monty Alexander was born Montgomery Bernard Alexander on June 6, 1944 in Kingston, Jamaica. Discovering the piano at the age of 4, Alexander began taking classical music lessons at 6 and became interested in jazz at the age of 14. He started playing in clubs, and on recording sessions by Clue J & His Blues Blasters, deputizing for Aubrey Adams. Two years later, he directed his dance orchestra Monty and the Cyclones and played in the local clubs. Performances at the Carib Theater in Jamaica by Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole left a strong impression on the young pianist.
In 1961 Alexander and his family moved to Miami, Florida, he went to New York in 1962 and started to play at the jazz club Jilly’s. In addition to performing with Frank Sinatra there, he also met and became friends with bassist Ray Brown and vibist Milt Jackson. In 1964, he went to California and recorded his first album “Alexander the Great” for Pacific Jazz at the age of 20.
He has recorded with Milt Jackson, Ernest Ranglin and Ed Thigpen, toured with Ernestine Anderson, steel pan player Othello Molineaux, Mary Stallings, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Golson, and Frank Morgan among others. In some of successive trios he has collaborated with Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, Mads Vinding, and Niels-Henning Orsted Pederson.
Alexander married the late great jazz guitarist Emily Remler in 1981, a union that would last only three years. In the 90s, Alexander formed a reggae band featuring all Jamaican musicians, releasing several reggae albums, including “Yard Movement” and “Stir It Up”, a collection of Bob Marley songs. Monty Alexander, pianist and melodica player, influenced by Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Wynton Kelly and Ahmad Jamal and the strong Caribbean influence and swinging feeling is consistently representative in his 67 albums as a leader and his numerous sideman collaborations as he continues to record, perform and tour.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Oliver Edward Nelson was born on June 4, 1932 in St. Louis, Missouri. His brother played sax with Cootie Williams and his sister sang and played piano. He began playing the piano when he was six, the saxophone by eleven and by age 15 he was playing in territory bands around St. Louis. In 1950 he joined Louis Jordan’s big band, playing alto saxophone and arranging.
After military service Nelson returned to Missouri to study music composition and theory at Washington and Lincoln University graduating in 1958. He married, had a son, divorced, moved to New York City, and began playing with Erskine Hawkins and Wild Bill Davis, and arranged for the ApolloTheatre. In 1959 he briefly worked the West coast with Louie Bellson’s big band and played tenor for Quincy Jones.
After six albums as leader between 1959 and 1961 for Prestige with Kenny Dorham, Johnny Hammond Smith, Eric Dolphy, Roy Haynes and others. Oliver’s big break came with his Impulse album The Blues and The Abstract Truth featuring his now classic standard “Stolen Moments”. Propelling him into prominence as a composer and arranger, it opened up opportunities to arrange for Cannonball Adderley, Irene Reid, Sonny Rollins, Billy Taylor, Wes Montgomery, Johnny Hodges and many others.
Moving to Los Angeles in 1967 Nelson spent a great deal of time composing for television shows like Colombo, Ironside, Bionic Woman and films like Death of a Gunfighter and Last Tango In Paris. He produced for Nancy Wilson, James Brown, the Temptations and Diana Ross.
Less well-known is the fact that Nelson composed several symphonic works, and was also deeply involved in jazz education, returning to his alma mater, Washington University, in the summer of 1969 to lead a five-week long clinic that also featured such performers as Phil Woods, Mel Lewis, Thad Jones, Sir Roland Hanna, and Ron Carter.
Oliver Nelson, saxophonist, clarinetist, pianist, arranger and composer died of a heart attack on October 28, 1975, aged 43.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hilton Ruiz was born in New York City on May 29, 1952 of Puerto Rican heritage. He began playing piano at the age of eight, and gigged with Freddie Hubbard and Joe Newman when he was young. Later, he was Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s main pianist from 1974 to 1977 and was featured on such records as The Case of the 3 Sided Dream in Audio Color and The Return of the 5000 Lb. Man.
Hilton recorded several solo albums between the 1980s and 2000s. On May 19, 2006, found unconscious on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, police concluded that he stumbled and fell and was not attacked. As a result of the accident, he remained in a coma until eventually passing away on June 6, 2006 at the age of 54.
Hilton Ruiz, jazz pianist steeped in Afro-Cuban music, was also a talented bebop musician.
More Posts: piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Allen “Al” Tinney was born on May 28, 1921 in Ansonia, Connecticut. As a child he was taught piano, worked in local dance bands and as a stage actor/dancer in several Broadway plays and was an original cast member in the production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. His piano playing was so good that he became rehearsal pianist and assistant to Gershwin.
From 1939 to 1943 he held sway in the house band at Monroe’s Uptown House playing with young musicians who gravitated to him like Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Little Bennie Harris, George Treadwell and Victor Coulsen. An influential bebop pianist his playing was light, flowing and occasionally percussive, while his improvisations were harmonically advanced for the period and his style can be heard in the playing of Bud Powell, George Wallington, Al Haig, and Duke Jordan.
Abhorring the connection between jazz and drugs, by 1946 Tinney began to play less jazz and more in other styles. He was a member of The Jive Bombers who were one hit wonders with “Bad Boy” in 1957. He moved to Buffalo in 1968, played local jazz clubs, worked in the state prison music program, and lectured at SUNY Buffalo. He recorded one album as a leader with Peggy Farrell titled Peg & Al in 2000.
Pianist Allen Tinney passed away on December 11, 2002 in Buffalo, New York at age 81.
More Posts: piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sun Ra was born Herman Poole Blount in Birmingham, Alabama on May 22, 1914 and as a child was a skilled pianist. By twelve he was writing original songs and could sight read sheet music. With Birmingham being an important stop for touring musicians, during his childhood he was able to see famed musicians like Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington and Fats Waller.
By his teenage years he was producing from memory full transcriptions of big band songs he had heard and began playing semi-professional solo piano in ad hoc jazz bands. Attending Birmingham Industrial High School he took lessons the tutelage of John T. “Fess” Whatley, a demanding disciplinarian and producer of many professional musicians.
Claiming that he was of the “Angel Race” and not from Earth, but from Saturn, Sun Ra developed a complex persona of “cosmic” philosophies and lyrical poetry that made him a pioneer of “afro-futurism” as he preached awareness and peace above all. He abandoned his birth name and took on the name and persona of Sun Ra (Ra being the ancient Egyptian god of the sun).
From the mid-1950s to his death, Sun Ra led “The Arkestra”, an ensemble with an ever-changing lineup and names, asserting that the ever-changing name of his ensemble reflected the ever-changing nature of his music. His mainstream success was limited, but Sun Ra was a prolific recording artist and frequent live performer with music ranged from keyboard solos to big bands of over 30 musicians and music touching on virtually the entire history of jazz, from ragtime, swing, bebop, free improvisation, electronic and space music.
Sun Ra had several music periods during his lifetime – late 30s creating a conservatory workshop in his family home, conscientious objector during the war years, Chicago playing blues and jazz with Fletcher Henderson, Coleman Hawkins and Stuff Smith, New York Monday night gig at Slug’s Saloon and praise from Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk, and Philadelphia that would be the base of operations for the Arkestra until his death.
Sun Ra known for his “cosmic philosophy, musical compositions and performances was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1979. The prolific Jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher passed away on May 30, 1993, at 79.