Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Glauco Masetti was born on April 19, 1922 in Milan, Italy and was an autodidact on reed instruments as well as a classically trained violinist, attending the Milan and Turin conservatories.
In the late 1940s he worked with Gil Cuppini for the first time, an association that would continue well into the latter part of the 1960s. He worked often as a session musician in the first half of the 1950s, with Gianni Basso and Oscar Valdambrini among others.
He led his own ensemble from 1955, and played with Eraldo Volonté and Chet Baker. In the Sixties, he also played with Giorgio Gaslini during that decade. Clarinetist and alto saxophonist Glauco Masetti passed away on May 27, 2001 in Milan.
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Pat LaBarbera was born Pascel Emmanuel LaBarbera on April 7, 1944 in Mt. Morris, New York. He began as a soloist in Buddy Rich bands from 1967–1973 and went on to work with Elvin Jones in 1975 and touring Europe with him in 1979. While working with Rich, he was also working in groups led by Woody Herman and Louie Bellson, as well as playing with Carlos Santana.
He moved to Toronto, Ontario in 1974 and is a on the faculty at Humber College. LaBarbera has played a major role in the development of a generation of Canadian saxophonists. He has released a handful of albums as a leader since 1975 and another two-dozen as a sideman. In 2000, he won a Juno Award for Best Traditional Instrumental Jazz Album for Deep in a Dream.
He is the brother of trumpeter John LaBarbera with who he is a part of his big band, and drummer Joe LaBarbera and worked with the Dave McMurdo Jazz Orchestra, Denny Christianson, Jan Jarczyk. Tenor, alto and soprano saxophonist, clarinetist, and flautist Pat LaBarbera continues to teach, perform and record.
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Gerry Mulligan was born Gerald Joseph Mulligan on April 6, 1927 in Queens Village, Queens, New York. His father’s career as an engineer moved them frequently through numerous cities and while less than a year old, the family moved to Marion, Ohio. Taking on a nanny to help raise the children, Lily rose became fond of Gerry and he spent time at her home and became enamored with her player piano that had amongst it collection of rolls, Fats Waller. Her home was also a boarding house for Black musicians who came through town giving him the chance to meet them..
During a family move to Kalamazoo, Michigan he took up the clarinet in the Catholic school’s orchestra and made an attempt to arrange the Richard Rodgers song Lover. By 14 he was in Reading, Pennsylvania studying clarinet with dance-band musician Sammy Correnti, who encouraged his arranging. During this period Mulligan began professionally playing the saxophone in dance bands in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which was the family’s next move.
He attended the West Philadelphia Catholic High School for Boys, organized a school big band, and wrote arrangements and by 16 was selling arrangements to local radio station WCAU. Dropping out of high school during his senior year he worked with a touring band Tommy Tucker, picking up a $100.00 a week for two or three arrangements.
A move to New York City in 1946 saw Gerry joining the arranging staff on Gene Krupa’s bebop-tinged band pumping out arrangements of Birdhouse, Disc Jockey Jump and How High the Moon” that quoted Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology” as a countermelody. He began arranging for the Claude Thornhill Orchestra, along with Gil Evans and occasionally sitting in as a member of the reed section.
In September 1948, Miles Davis formed a nine-piece band that featured arrangements by Mulligan, Evans and John Lewis that ended up on the Capitol Records album, titled Birth of the Cool. The band initially consisted of Davis on trumpet, Mulligan on baritone saxophone, trombonist Mike Zwerin, alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, Junior Collins on French horn, tubist Bill Barber, pianist John Lewis, bassist Al McKibbon and drummer Max Roach. The Davis nonet has been judged by history as one of the most influential groups in jazz history, creating a sound that, despite its East Coast origins, became known as West Coast Jazz.
Throughout the late Forties and early Fifties he worked with Davis, George Auld, Chubby Jackson and led his debut as a leader with Mulligan Plays Mulligan. By 1952 he was moving to Los Angeles, California and arranging for Stan Kenton and getting a recording contract with Pacific Jazz Records. These sessions enlisted trumpeter Chet Baker as part of his pianoless quartet that included bassist Bob Whitlock and Chico Hamilton on drums.
Valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer would replace Baker, and Mulligan and Brookmeyer both occasionally play piano, would enlist Jon Eardley, Art Farmer, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Lee Konitz and Annie Ross. He performed as a soloist or sideman with Paul Desmond, Duke Ellington, Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges, Jimmy Witherspoon, André Previn, Billie Holiday, Marian McPartland, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Stan Getz, Thelonious Monk, Fletcher Henderson, Manny Albam, Quincy Jones, Kai Winding and Dave Brubeck, to name a few. Mulligan appeared in Art Kane’s A Great Day in Harlem portrait of 57 major jazz musicians taken in August 1958.
Gerry appeared in the films Follow That Music, I Want to Live!, Jazz on a Summer’s Day, The Rat Race, The Subterraneans and Bells Are Ringing and wrote music for A Thousand Clowns, Luv, La Menace, and Les Petites galères and I’m Not Rappaport.
Baritone saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger Gerry Mulligan passed away on January 20, 1996 in Darien, Connecticut at the age of 68, following complications from knee surgery. He had won numerous awards not limited to Down Beat Poll Winners, Kennedy Center Honors, and a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Big Band for Walk on the Water.
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Eric Kloss was born on April 3, 1949 in Greenville, Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh. Blind from birth he attended the Western Pennsylvania School for the Blind, which was run by his father. At 10 he started learning to play the alto saxophone, and two years later he was playing in nightclubs with professional musicians such as Bobby Negri, Charles Bell, and Sonny Stitt. By the age of 16 he had recorded his debut album, Introducing Eric Kloss on the Prestige label in 1965 with Don Patterson and Pat Martino.
His third album as a leader saw him enlist the talents of musicians over twice his age: Jaki Byard, Richard Davis, and Alan Dawson. He continued recording and performing while a student at Duquesne University and being a fan of Elvis Presley and the Ventures, Kloss was attracted to the growth of jazz fusion in the 1960s and ’70s. He would eventually play with fusion musicians Chick Corea, Dave Holland, and Jack DeJohnette.
Eric also collaborated with Richie Cole and Gil Goldstein, and did sessions with Cedar Walton, Jimmy Owens, Kenny Barron, Booker Ervin, Barry Miles, and Terry Silverlight.
In the 1980s, he taught at Rutgers University, then Duquesne and Carnegie Mellon. He collaborated with his vocalist wife Candee in a group called Quiet Fire. Alto saxophonist Eric Kloss has performed and recorded rarely since the 1980s due to health problems.
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Milton Aubrey “Brew” Moore was born March 26, 1924 in Indianola, Mississippi where his formal musical training began at twelve, first on trombone, and then clarinet before switching to tenor saxophone. Inspired by the style of Lester Young, he even held his horn at the same unorthodox 120 degree angle. He got his first professional experience playing in a Texas territorial band the summer before entering college.
Moore left the University of Mississippi in his first year to pursue a performing career, with stints in New Orleans, Louisiana, Memphis, Tennessee and twice in New York City between 1942-47. It was in New York that he first heard the new music called bebop. Combining Young’s and Charlie Parker’s style he was able to create his own thing. Returning to New York in 1948, he became a fixture on the city’s vibrant jazz scene, cutting his first album Brew Moore and His Playboys as a leader on the Savoy Records label.
He went on to work with Machito’s orchestra, Claude Thornhill’s Big Band, the Kai Winding sextet, Stan Getz and George Wallington among others. In 1949 he joined Getz, Zoot Sims and Al Cohn, three of the four brothers from Woody Herman’s Second Herd plus Allen Eager and recorded the album The Brothers on Prestige Records. The early 50s saw Brew gigging with Bird and other beboppers of note before leaving New York in 1954 for the West Coast, settling eventually in San Francisco, California. Fitting well into the beat generation culture, however by 1959 the heavy drinking that had early on given him his nickname took its toll, and he withdrew from the scene.
Resurfacing in Copenhagen, Denmark, he would, with the exception of three years in New York from 1967 to 1970, continue to perform there for the rest of his life. He teamed with Kenny Drew, Sahib Shihab, Alex Riel and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen among others. Following a trip home to settle his late father’s affairs and coming into a substantial inheritance, he fell down a flight of stairs in Tivoli Gardens after a characteristically bibulous night and suffered the injuries that caused his death. Tenor saxophonist Brew Moore passed away on August 19, 1973.
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