Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ernest James Watts was born October 23, 1945 in Norfolk, Virginia. He began playing saxophone at thirteen. After a brief period at West Chester University, he attended Berklee College of Music on a Downbeat scholarship. He toured with Buddy Rich in the mid-1960s, occupying one of the alto saxophone chairs, with Lou Marini sitting the other.
He traveled to Africa on a US State Department tour with Oliver Nelson’s group and played tenor saxophone with The Tonight Show Band under Doc Severinsen for 20 years. During the Seventies he was a featured soloist on many of Marvin Gaye’s Motown albums, as well as on countless other pop and R&B sessions during 25 years as a first-call musician in the studios of Los Angeles, California.
In the mid-1980s Watts decided to rededicate himself to jazz, recording and touring with German guitarist and composer Torsten de Winkel, drummer Steve Smith and keyboardist Tom Coster. He joined bassist Charlie Haden’s Quartet West, played the saxophone on the Grease soundtrack, clarinet on The Color Purple soundtrack and performed on the opening theme song of the popular 80s sitcom Night Court.
Ernie founded Flying Dolphin Records and in early 2008, his Analog Man won the award in the 7th Annual Independent Music Awards for Best Jazz Album, worked with vocalist Kurt Elling, won a Grammy in 2010 for Best Jazz Vocal Album. He tours Europe twice a year with his own Ernie Watts Quartet, as well as Asia and summer jazz festivals the world over.
He has toured with the Rolling Stones, played the mystery horn on Frank Zappa’s album The Grand Wazoo, and has performed and recorded with Richard Groove Holmes, Alphonse Mouzon, Billy Alessi, Bobby Alessi, Gene Ammons, Paul Anka, Eric Martin, Willie Bobo, Brass Fever, Kenny Burrell, Lee Ritenour, David Axelrod, Donald Byrd, Stanley Clarke, Billy Cobham, Gino Vannelli, Randy Crawford, Kurt Elling, Torsten de Winkel, Hellmut Hattler, Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Hutcherson, Milt Jackson, J. J. Johnson, Carole King, Charles Kynard, John Mayall, Carmen McRae, Blue Mitchell, Helen Reddy, New Stories, Moacir Santos, Lalo Schifrin, Bud Shank, Gábor Szabó, Gerald Wilson, Ndugu Chancler, Alphonso Johnson, Patrice Rushen, Joe Louis Walker, Barry Goldberg, Paul Jones, Chubby Tavares, T. Bone Walker, Big Joe Turner and Otis Span among others.
Tenor, alto and soprano saxophonist and flautist Ernie Watts has won two Grammy Awards as an instrumentalist and continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bert Wilson was born on October 15, 1939 in Evansville, Indiana and contracted polio from a public swimming pool at age 4, and for the rest of his life was in a wheelchair. When he was 10, he heard the music of Charlie Parker in a Chicago hospital school, an experience he often said affected his life far more than the disease.
After graduating from high school Wilson moved to Los Angeles, California where he became interested in the avant-garde “free jazz” of Ornette Coleman. In 1966 he moved to New York, where he lived alone on the sixth floor of a building with no elevator. In New York City and Los Angeles he recorded with fiery alto saxophonist Sonny Simmons, drummers James Zitro and Smiley Winters and trumpeter Barbara Donald.
As an educator some of his students over the years have included the Dave Matthews Band’s Jeff Coffin, Los Angeles ace Ernie Watts, Tower of Power member Lenny Pickett and Latin percussionist Michael Olson. It was Olson in 1979, who along with keyboardist Michael Moore, of the band Obrador, learned that Wilson was living alone and miserable in Woodstock, New York and threw a benefit concert to move him to Olympia, Washington.
From that time forward, Bert was an active participant in the Northwest jazz scene, performing at the Earshot Jazz Festival and other major events, as well as, performing weekly with saxophonist Chuck Stentz at the Water Street Cafe.
On June 6, 2013 tenor saxophonist Bert Wilson, who did things on the saxophone that nobody else could do, passed away of a heart attack at age 73 in Olympia, Washington. He left behind many recordings as a sideman and as a leader of his own band, Rebirth.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Noël Chiboust was born on October 14, 1909 in Thorigny-sur-Marne , Département Seine-et-Marne, France. He began his career as a violinist with Ray Ventura and during the early Thirties played trumpet in the Michel Warlop Orchestra. By 1936 he was involved in the concert series la semaine à Paris, by the Hot Club de France. At this time in his career he also joined the André Ekyan Orchestra until 1938, then played in the Swing Band of Philippe Brun followed by an early 1940s stint with Alix Combelle.
Around the mid 1930s he recorded with Django Reinhardt , Stéphane Grappelli , Bill Coleman and Coleman Hawkins, joined Eddie Brunner in 1938 at Cabaret Bagatelle. The late 1930s saw him giving up the trumpet and joining the tenor saxophone and clarinet sections when he joined the Marcel Bianchi Orchestra.
From 1940 he recorded under his own name for the French label Swing releasing a few 78s. Starting in 1944 he performed with an orchestral cast including Hubert Rostaing, and with Jack Diéval and Lucien Simoen at Club Schubert. From 1947 to 1950 he had an engagement at Cabaret le Drap d’Or.
He turned his attention to popular music as well as the rock and roll to and by 1959 released several EPs and singles for Polydor Records with songs like Telstar, Dynamite Charleston and Yes Sir That’s My Baby.
Trumpeter, tenor saxophonist, clarinetist, arranger, composer and band leader in the field the swing and popular music era Noël Chiboust passed away on January 17, 1994.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harry Allen was born in Washington, D.C. on October 12, 1966. When he was a small child, his father, a big band drummer, played records for him including recordings of tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves, which made a lasting impression. By his high school years he was recognized as an exceptional talent being able to uncannily play tunes such as Body and Soul in the style of legendary tenor players Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Flip Phillips, or Sam Donahue.
While in high school he also added the traditional influences from Scott Hamilton to his repertoire before attending and graduating from Rutgers University in 1988. A master interpreter of standards, he has recorded with Daryl Sherman, Joe Cohn and Jan Lundgren. He is best known for his work with John Colianni, Keith Ingham, John Pizzarelli and Bucky Pizzarelli. The tenor saxophonist has about two dozen albums under his belt and continues to perform , record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hal Singer was born Harold Joseph Singer on October 8, 1919 in Greenwood, the Black section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. After surviving the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, he grew up in Greenwood where he studied violin as a child but, as a teenager, switched to clarinet and then tenor saxophone, which became his instrument of choice. From the late 1930s he began playing in local bands, including Ernie Fields’, before joining Jay McShann’s orchestra in 1943. Moving to New York he worked in other bands, then joined Oran “Hot Lips” Page’s band in 1947 and began working as a session musician with King Records.
By early 1948 Hal left Page, formed his own small group, and was signed to Mercury Records where he cut his first single Fine As Wine with a B side Rock Around the Clock co-written with Sam Theard and not the same title made famous by Bill Haley. He got his nickname when he recorded the tune Corn Bread for the Savoy label in Newark, New Jersey after the instrumental reached #1 on the R&B charts later that year.
The early to mid 1950s he continued recording with Mercury, toured with The Orioles and Charles Brown, and increased his work as a session musician. In 1958 he began recording with Prestige Records as a jazz soloist and performing at the Metropole Cafe in New York with jazz musicians such as Roy Eldridge and Coleman Hawkins. In 1965, after touring Europe with Earl “Fatha” Hines’ band, Singer stayed in France and settled near Paris. He continued to record and tour extensively around Europe and Africa, performing with various bands including Charlie Watts’ and the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
Hal’s 1969 album, Paris Soul Food, featured him on saxophone and singing; Robin Hemingway, vocals, arrangements and album production; and Manu Dibango, saxophone, organ and arrangements that won a French Record Academy award for best international LP in 1969. He went on a State Department tour of Africa in 1974 with Horace Parlan, appeared on the 1981 live recording Rocket 88 with the UK-based boogie-woogie band and in the summer of 1981 recorded two albums for John Stedman’s JSP record label, Swing On It, with Jim Mullen, Peter King, Mike Carr and Harold Smith, while the second Big Blues, recorded a day later with the same group, also featured Jimmy Witherspoon.
Singer shared artist billing along with Al Copley for 1989’s Royal Blue, appeared as an actor in the award-winning 1990 feature film Taxi Blues and in 1992 was awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts by the French government. A documentary film, Hal Singer, Keep the Music Going, was made by Haitian-American director Guetty Felin in 1999, in which he shares a duet with Jessica Care Moore. He was also an educator teaching jazz to younger generations of French jazz musicians. Bandleader and tenor saxophonist Hal Cornbread Singer recorded sixteen albums as a leader and currently is 96 years of age.
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