Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frank Wellington Wess was born on January 4, 1922 in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of a principal father and a schoolteacher mother. He began with classical music training and played in Oklahoma in high school. He later switched to jazz after moving to Washington, DC and by nineteen was working with big bands.
Although his career was interrupted during World War, he played with a military band in the period. After leaving the military, he joined Billy Eckstine’s orchestra, then a few years later he returned to DC and received a degree in flute at the Modern School Of Music. He played tenor saxophone and flute with Count Basie from 1953 to 1964.
Wess was considered one of the best jazz flautists of his time and from 1959 to 1964 he won the Down Beat Critic Poll for flute. He went on to be a member of Clark Terry’s big band from 1967 into the 1970s, played in the New York Jazz Quartet with Roland Hanna and did a variety of work for TV.
In 1968 Frank contributed to the landmark album The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra. Over the course of his career he played with Kenny Barron, Rufus Reid, Buck Clayton, Benny Carter, Billy Taylor, Harry Edison, Mel Torme, Ernestine Anderson, Louie Bellson, John Pizzarelli, Milt Jackson, Quincy Jones, Yusef Lateeef, Howard Alden, Dick Hyman, Jane Jarvis, Frank Vignola, Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra, Hank Jones and the list continues.
NEA Jazz Master, flautist, alto and tenor saxophonist Frank Wess passed away from a heart attack related to kidney failure on October 30, 2013.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ralph Moore was born on December 24, 1956 in London, England and grew up in a crowded inner city area. He showed no particular musical interest until his mother bought him a trumpet when he was 13. He studied with Brixton local musician Alan Briggs and was soon sitting in with pub bands. Briggs had a tenor saxophone that the young musician fell in love with the look of the instrument and soon made the switch.
1972 saw Ralph moving to California to live with his American father, graduating from Santa Maria High School where he played in the jazz orchestra and collected several music awards.Three years later he enrolled at Berklee Colege of Music, studied with saxophonist Andy McGhee and another three years later received the Lenny Johnson Memorial Award for outstanding musicianship from the college.
He launched his professional career with a tour of Scandinavia, later joined Frank Quintero for recording and a tour of South America. He moved to New York City in 1981 and within two months joined the Horace Silver Quintet for an association that lasted four years and included tours of Europe and Japan.
Moore has worked with Roy Haynes, Charles Mingus Dynasty, Freddie Hubbard, Dizzy Gilespie’s Reunion Big Band, Kevin Eubanks, Bill Mays, Valery Ponoomarev, Roy Hargrove, Jimmy Knepper, Brian Lynch, J.J. Johnson, Billy Hart, Oscar Peterson, Superblue, Cedar Walton and Ray Brown. He continues to perform, tour and record as a leader and sideman.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Samuel Most was born on December 16, 1930 in Atlantic City, New Jersey and learned to play the flute, saxophone and piano. He began his career in music at the age of 18 with the bands of Tommy Dorsey, Shep Fields, Boyd Raeburn and Don Redman. He also performed many times with his older brother Abe, a clarinetist.
His first recording was at age 23, a single called Undercurrent Blues and the following year he was awarded Down Beat magazine’s “Critic’s New Star Award”. Between 1953 and 1958 Sam led and recorded sessions for the Prestige, Debut, Vanguard and Bethlehem record labels. He also worked as a session player for Chris Connor, Paul Quinichette and Teddy Wilson and was a member of the Buddy Rich band from 1959 to 1961. He would go on to work as a sideman with Clare Fischer, Lalo Schifrin and Louie Bellson.
Most resurfaced in the late 1970s and recorded six albums on the Xanadu label, was given a gift of an expensively carved flute by Frank Sinatra who had used it for breath control, and in the late Eighties recorded four albums, including Solo Flute with producer Fernando Gelbard of Liquidjazz.com. He was the guest of and played for the King of Thailand three times and was the subject of Edmond Goff’s 2001 documentary film Sam Most, Jazz Flutist.
Flautist and tenor saxophonist Sam Most, who according to jazz historian Leonard Feather, was probably the first great jazz flutist, passed away on June 13, 2013 from cancer, at the age of 82.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Freddy Martin was born Frederick Alfred Martin on December 9, 1906 in Cleveland, Ohio and was raised mostly in an orphanage and by various relatives. He started out playing drums, then switched to C-melody saxophone, finally landing on the tenor saxophone.
Martin led his own band while he was in high school, then played in various local bands. Earning enough money through music to enter Ohio State University, he opted to perform and wound up becoming an accomplished musician. After working on a ship’s band, he joined the Mason-Dixon band, then joined Arnold Johnson and Jack Albin, with whom he made his first recordings in 1930.
Freddy’s career got started when he filled in one night for a date Guy Lombardo couldn’t make. Though the band did well, it broke up and he didn’t put another together until 1931 at the Bossert Hotel in Brooklyn, New York. Here he pioneered the “Tenor Band” style that swept the sweet-music industry and spawned imitators in hotels and ballrooms nationwide.
He would go on to make his debut for Columbia Records in 1932, then record for Brunswick, Bluebird, and Victor Record labels. He would play NBC radio’s Maybelline Penthouse Serenade and have his million copies gold record hit Tonight We Love with Clyde Rogers on vocals. Martin recorded A Lover’s Concerto two decades before The Toys made it popular as a R&B hit, as well as many other classical pieces were arranged for his jazz band.
Nicknamed “Mr. Silvertone” by saxophonist Johnny Hodges, Chu Berry named him his favorite saxophonist, and so did Eddie Miller. He had a good ear for singers and at one time or another employed Merv Griffin, Buddy Clark and Helen Ward. His popularity led him to Las Vegas, Hollywood performing in a handful of movies, while still playing hotels, radio and a tour of one-nighters called The Big Band Cavalcade.
Returning to California he would lead Guy Lombardo’s band when he was hospitalized and led his own band until the early 1980s, although by then, he was semi-retired. Tenor saxophonist and bandleader Freddy Martin passed away at age 76 on September 30, 1983, in a Newport Beach hospital after a lingering illness.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tim Armacost was born on December 8, 1962 in Los Angeles, California. He began his musical training on clarinet in Tokyo at the age of eight but by sixteen he had switched to tenor saxophone, and was working in big bands around Washington. His turning point into a jazz career came at eighteen when he returned to Los Angeles and met his two primary teachers, Bobby Bradford and Charlie Shoemake. Through them he learned the fundamentals of melody and harmony, and was exposed to the giants of modern jazz, who would give shape to his early development.
Armacost graduated Magna Cum Laude from Pomona College in 1985, moved to Amsterdam later that year, established himself on the jazz scene, learned fluent Dutch and became the head of the Sweelinck Conservatory’s saxophone department. After seven years of performing, teaching and recording in Europe, he headed for India. There he studied under table master Vijay Ateet. He would go on to perform with Indian jazz and classical musicians and at festival.
Fluent in Japanese, Tim has studied as an exchange student at Waseda University, and has performed with Terumasa and Motohiko Hino, Fumio Karashima, Nobuyoshi Ino, Fumio Itabashi, Shingo Okudaira, Benisuke Sakai, Kiyoto Fujiwara, and Yutaka Shiina.
Moving to New York in 1993 he established himself and released his first two albums Fire and Live at Smalls. With his quartet, the cooperative group Hornz in the Hood with fellow saxophonists Craig Handy and Ravi Coltrane he continues to perform as well as with Ray Drummond’s “Excursion Band,” and co- leads the Brooklyn Big Band with Craig Bailey.
Tenor saxophonist Tim Armacost has performance and recording credits alongside Al Foster, Jimmy Cobb, Kenny Barron, Tom Harrell, Billy Hart, Victor Lewis, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Ray Drummond, Roy Hargrove, Paquito D’Rivera, Claudio Roditi, Bruce Barth, Dave Kikoski, Don Friedman, Lonnie Plaxico, Robin Eubanks, Charlie Shoemake, Pete Christlieb, Randy Brecker, Akira Tana, Valery Ponomarev, the Maria Schneider Orchestra, and the David Murray Big Band. He continues to tour throughout East and West Europe, Japan, India, and the United States.
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