Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lawrence Joseph Elgart was born in New London, Connecticut on March 20, 1922, four years younger than his brother, Les, and grew up in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. Mother and father both played piano, the former being a concert pianist. He attended Pompton Lakes High School and began playing in jazz ensembles in their teens, and he played with jazz musicians such as Charlie Spivak, Woody Herman, Red Norvo, Freddie Slack and Tommy Dorsey.
In the mid-1940s, the brothers started up their own ensemble, hiring Nelson Riddle, Bill Finegan and Ralph Flanagan to arrange tunes for them. Their ensemble was not successful, and after a few years, they scuttled the band and sold the arrangements they had commissioned to Tommy Dorsey. Both returned to sideman positions in various orchestras.
By 1953, Larry met Charles Albertine and recorded two of his experimental compositions, Impressions of Outer Space and Music for Barefoot Ballerinas. Released on 10″ vinyl, these recordings became collectors’ items for fans of avant-garde jazz, though not commercially successful. Putting together a more traditional ensemble they, produced what came to be known as the Elgart Sound in their recordings. This configuration proved to be very commercially successful, and throughout the 1950s, Larry and Les enjoyed a run of successful albums and singles on the Columbia label. Their initial LP, “Sophisticated Swing,” released in late 1953, was credited to The Les Elgart Orchestra, because, according to Larry, Les was more interested than his brother in fronting the band.
In 1954, the Elgarts left their permanent mark on music history in recording Albertine’s Bandstand Boogie, for the legendary television show originally hosted by Bob Horn, and two years later, by Dick Clark. In 1956, Clark took the show from its local broadcast in Philadelphia, to ABC-TV for national distribution as American Bandstand. He remained host for another 32 years. Variations of the original song surfaced as the show’s theme in later years.
In 1955, the band became The Les and Larry Elgart Orchestra, but split up in 1959, subsequently releasing his own series of LPs. Larry signed with RCA Victor and his 1959 album, New Sounds At the Roosevelt, was nominated that year for a Grammy Award. From 1960-62, he released music on MGM Records. The brothers reunited in 1963, recorded several more albums and ended with 1967’s “Wonderful World of Today’s Hits,” after which they once again went their separate ways.
His biggest exposure came in 1982, with the smash success of a recording titled Hooked on Swing. The instrumental was a medley of swing jazz hits – In the Mood, Cherokee, Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree, American Patrol, Sing, Sing, Sing, Don’t Be That Way, Little Brown Jug, Opus #1, Take the A Train, Zing Went the Strings of My Heart and A String of Pearls. The album became so popular it cracked the US Billboard Pop Singles chart at #31 and Adult Contemporary chart #20. This was the final hit for any artist in the year-long “medley craze,” that lasted from 1981 to 1982.
Continuing to tour internationally and record into the 2000s, alto saxophonist Larry Elgart, who over the course of his career recorded twenty-eight albums as a leader and recorded two-dozen with his brother, passed away at a hospice center in Sarasota, Florida on August 29, 2017 at the age of 95.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lenny Tristano was born Leonard Joseph Tristano on March 19, 1919 in Chicago, Illinois, the second of four brothers. He started on the family’s player piano at the age of two or three. He had classical piano lessons when he was eight, Born with weak eyesight, and then with measles, by the age of nine or ten, he was totally blind. He attended the Illinois School for the Blind in Jacksonville, Florida for a decade around 1928. During his school days, he played several other instruments, including trumpet, guitar, saxophones, and drums and by eleven, he had his first gigs, playing clarinet in a brothel.
Back in Chicago, Tristano got his bachelor’s degree in music from the American Conservatory of Music but left before completing his master’s degree, moving to New York City in 1946. He played saxophone and piano with leading bebop musicians, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach among others. He formed his own small bands, which soon displayed some of his early interests – contrapuntal interaction of instruments, harmonic flexibility, and rhythmic complexity. His 1949 quintet recorded the first free group improvisations, that continued in 1951, with the first overdubbed, improvised jazz recordings.
He started teaching music, with an emphasis on improvisation, in the early 1940s, and by the mid-1950s was concentrating on teaching instead of performing. He taught in a structured and disciplined manner, which was unusual in jazz education when he began. His educational role over three decades meant that he exerted an influence on jazz through his students, including saxophonists Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh.
Through the Fifties to the Sixties he would go on to record for the New Jazz label which would become Prestige Records, and Atlantic Records, he founded his own label Jazz Records, create his own recording studio, tour throughout Europe, played A Journey Through Jazz, a five-week engagement at Birdland, s well as other New York City jazz haunts. His last public performance in the United States was in 1968 but continued teaching into the Seventies.
Having a series of illnesses in the 1970s, including eye pain and emphysema from smoking for most of his life, on November 18, 1978 pianist, composer, arranger, and jazz improvisation educator Lennie Tristano passed away from a heart attack at home in Jamaica, New York.
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Three Wishes
Pannonica made an inquiry of Al Doctor as to his three wishes and his answer was:
- “Family changes.”
- “I want to play my horn as much as possible, that’s all.”
*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Woody Witt was born on March 16, 1969 in Omaha, Nebraska and started on the clarinet in fourth grade and switched his focus to saxophone the following year. A professional musician from the age of 16, he studied at the University of Houston, earned a Master’s degree in Jazz Studies from the University of North Texas, and a doctorate from the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music.
As a saxophonist, Witt has recorded ten albums as a leader and over twenty-five albums as a sideman. He has collaborated with major jazz artists such as Randy Brecker, Tim Hagans, Jim Rotondi, the late James Moody, David Liebman, and Tim Armacost, Conrad Herwig, Larry Ham, Joe LoCascio, Mark Levine, Louis Hayes, Adam Nussbaum, Billy Hart, and Nancy King. He has worked with the Houston Symphony and Houston Ballet and has been featured on major third-stream works that blend together jazz and classical music.
The winner of the 2010 Chamber Music America French American Cultural Exchange grant and the 2014 International Jazz Saxophone Competition in Taiwan, Woody is the booker and the artistic director at Houston’s top jazz club, Cezanne. He has taught at Houston Community College since 2000, is an Affiliate Artist at the University of Houston, and conducts a countless number of workshops and masterclasses throughout the United States, France, Romania, Germany, and Asia. Currently, saxophonist Woody Witt is involved in several different group projects.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ofer Assaf was born in Israel on March 10, 1976 and started learning to play the saxophone as a youth. He attended the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts dividing his time between his two passions ~ music and dance the latter actually training as a professional ballet dancer at the age of eight before switching over to a full-time jazz career. As a member of the Air Force and IDF Orchestras of the Israeli Army, he performed for former President Bill Clinton, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, for Jerusalem’s 3,000th-anniversary celebration. During the Nineties, he was a member of the Tel Aviv Big Band as well as performing on a diverse array of national TV and radio shows.
After moving to New York City, he entered The New School University’s jazz program and studied with tenor saxophonist Billy Harper, bassist Reggie Workman, pianist Richie Beirach, trumpeter Jimmy Owens, percussionists Bobby Sanabria and Jamey Haddad. In 2002 upon graduation he performed with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock at Carnegie Hall as part of the JVC Jazz Festival.
In 1991 he won the Israeli National Competition in Jazz and Contemporary Music for young musicians, received scholarships and awards from the Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute from 1999 to 2001, and was pre-nominated for the Grammy Awards in the “Best Jazz Instrumental Album” category in 2009 for his debut album Tangible Reality on Summit Records. He was joined by trumpeter Jim Rotondi, Don Pate and Essiet Essiet on the bass and drummer Bruce Cox. With the Bernie Worrell Orchestra, he was awarded “Best Funk/Fusion/Jam Song of the Year” at the 12th annual Independent Music Awards in 2013. Tenor saxophonist, composer and educator Ofer Assaf continues to perform and record.
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