Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ivy Benson was born on November 11, 1913 in Holbeck, Leeds, England. Her father Digger Benson, a musician who played with ensembles, began teaching her to play piano at the age of five. She played at working men’s clubs from the age of eight, billed as Baby Benson, and performed on BBC Radio’s Children’s Hour at nine years.
Ivy’s father had ambitions for her to become a concert pianist, but she was inspired to become a jazz musician after hearing a Benny Goodman record and learned to play clarinet and alto saxophone. Leaving school at 14, she took a job at the Montague Burton factory in Leeds, putting aside half a crown from her wages each week to save up for her first saxophone, supplementing her income by playing evenings in dance bands.
Benson joined a sextet, Edna Croudson’s Rhythm Girls in 1929, touring with them until 1935, followed by Teddy Joyce and the Girlfriends where she became a featured soloist. Moving to London in the late 1930s, she formed her own band and her first significant engagement was performing with the all-female revue Meet the Girls, starring Hylda Baker.
During World War II opportunities opened up and Ivy’s band became the BBC’s resident dance band in 1943 and was top of the bill at the London Palladium for six months in 1944. By wars end she was playing the VE Day celebration in Berlin, touring Europe and the Middle East performing for Allied troops, headlining variety theatres and performing at the 1948 Summer Olympics. Over the next thirty years the band experience much success with television appearances, a tribute on This Is Your Life, and a speaking role in the film The Dummy Talks.
The group disbanded in 1982 but she was honored as a fellow of Leeds Polytechnic, a plaque at her childhood home and a play, The Silver Lady, was based on her life. Retiring to Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, multi-instrumentalist Ivy Benson passed away on May 6, 1993 at age 79.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Francy Boland was born François Boland on November 6, 1929 in Namur, Belgium. He first gained notice in 1949 and worked with Belgian jazz greats like Bobby Jaspar. In 1955 he joined Chet Baker’s quintet before moving to the US where he began arranging for Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and Dizzy Gillespie.
Boland set up an octet with drummer Kenny Clarke before returning to Europe and becoming Kurt Edelhagen’s chief arranger. In 1961, based around a rhythm section featuring Clarke, Jimmy Woode and himself, he founded The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band, which rapidly became one of the most noted Big Bands assembled outside the United States. A decade later in 1972 the band broke up and he mainly concentrated on composing.
Francy primarily lived in Switzerland, from 1976 wrote musical arrangements for Sarah Vaughan among others, and played as a sideman with Johnny Griffin. He was also part of One World One Peace, an effort involving Pope John Paul II. He recorded some three-dozen albums and Carola covered his song “Just Give Me Time” in 1966,
Belgian composer and pianist Francy Boland passed away on August 12, 2005 in Geneva, Switzerland.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ralph Earl Sutton was born on November 4, 1922 in Hamburg, Missouri. A stride pianist in the tradition of James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, he had a stint as a session musician with Jack Teagarden’s band before joining the Army during World War II.
After the war, he played at various venues in Missouri, eventually ending up in New York City at Eddie Condon’s club in Greenwich Village. Relocating to San Francisco in 1956, Sutton recorded several albums with Bob Scobey’s Dixieland band.
Ralph recorded for Riverside and Arbors Record labels as a leader and played and recorded with Johnny Varro, Ruby Braff and Dick Cary as a sideman. From the 1960s onward, he worked mostly on his own up until the time of his death on December 30, 2001 in Evergreen, Colorado. The following year pianist Ralph Sutton was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carmen Lundy was born November 1, 1954 in Miami, Florida and at the age of six began to study the piano. After joining her church junior choir, she decided to become a singer when she was 12 years old. While an opera major at the University of Miami she sang with a jazz band and her decision to sing vocal jazz was cemented.
Moving to New York in 1978 Carmen was hired by the Mel Lewis/Thad Jones Big Band and performed her first engagement at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village. Two years later she formed her own trio, performing with pianists John Hicks and Onaje Allan Gumbs. She has also performed with Walter Bishop Jr., Don Pullen, Mulgrew Miller, Terri Lyne Carrington, Courtney Pine, Bill O’Connell, Steve Berrios, Marian McPartland, Kenny Kirkland and numerous others.
Lundy recorded her first album of original compositions Good Morning Kiss in 1985 followed by her sophomore project Night and Day the next year featuring musicians Kenny Kirkland, Alex Blake, her brother Curtis Lundy, Victor Lewis, Rodney Jones and Ricky Ford.
Carmen played the lead role in the European tour of Duke Ellington’s Broadway musical, Sophisticated Ladies. Off-Broadway she portrayed Billie Holiday in Lawrence Holder’s They Were All Gardenias. She made her television debut in 1990 as the star of the CBS pilot-special Shangri-La Plaza in the role of Geneva.
A composer, arranger, producer, actress, painter, and sophisticated vocalist well known for her progressive bop and post-bop styling’s, Lundy has composed and published forty songs with favorites such as Quiet Times, Forgive Me, The Out Crowd, and Never Gonna Let You Go that have been recorded by Kenny Barron, Ernie Watts and Straight Ahead. With thirteen albums to her credit Carmen Lundy continues to focus on original material as she moves her three-decade career forward.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Wallington was born Giacinto Figlia on October 27, 1924 in Palermo, Italy but his family moved to the United States in 1925. He didn’t arrive on the New York scene until the 40s at around 18 years old, but from 1943 to 1953 he played with Joe Marsala, Charlie Parker, Serge Chaloff, Allan Eager, Kai Winding, Terry Gibbs, Brew Moore, Al Cohn, Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims, Red Rodney and Lionel Hampton.
He was Dizzy Gillespie’s pianist in his first bop band at the Onyx club in 1944, where his contributions reflected his innate creative ability, a talent that established him as one of the best composers in the progressive field. His astonishing, fast-moving eloquence as a pianist, contrasted strangely with his introvert, laconic manner as a person.
Wallington recorded as a leader for Savoy and Blue Note and led groups in New York that included newcomers Donald Byrd, Jackie McLean and Phil Woods from 1954 to 1960. He would record with these groups for Prestige and Atlantic record labels. In 1960 he retired to work in the family business, but returned to music in 1984 and recording three albums. His style is often compared to the legendary Earl “Bud” Powell.
George’s best known compositions are the bop standards “Lemon Drop” and “Godchild”, he sat in on the recording of Lady Fair on the Verve release Metronome All-Stars 1956 and was closely associated with the progressive jazz movement in Harlem and on 52nd Street during the 1940s.
Bop pianist, arranger and composer George Wallington, one of the first bop pianists alongside Al Haig and Bud Powell, passed away in Cape Coral, Miami, Florida on February 15, 1993. He left a ten record discography as a leader with several more as a sideman.
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