Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Earle Warren was born on July 1, 1914 in Springfield, Ohio. He was the primary alto saxophonist and occasional singer in the Basie orchestra in its formative years and its heyday, from 1937 to the end of the 1940s. After the break-up of Basie’s 1940s band, in 1949, he worked with former Basie trumpeter, Buck Clayton.
Earle also played some rock´n roll working for Alan Freed in Alan Freed’s Christmas Jubilee, December 1959, which was the very last big Alan Freed show before payola put an end to the legendary Freed. He also appeared in the 1970s jazz film of Count Basie and his band, “Born to Swing”.
In his later years, Warren performed often at the West End jazz club at 116th and Broadway in New York City, helming a band called The Countsmen, which also featured fellow former Basie-ite Dicky Wells on trombone and Peck Morrison on bass. He lived part of the time in Switzerland where he fathered a child in a May/September romance. Alto saxophonist Earle Warren passed away on June 4, 1994.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Donald Harrison, Jr. was born June 23, 1960 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He studied at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, and then went on to study at Berklee College of Music. In the 80s he became a Jazz Messenger, played with Roy Haynes, Jack McDuff, Terence Blanchard and Don Pullen, and was part of the re-formed Headhunters band in the Nineties.
By1991 Don had recorded “Indian Blues” capturing the sound and culture of New Orleans’ Congo Square in a jazz context and by mid-decade created the “Nouveau Swing” jazz style, merging the swing beat with many of today’s popular dance styles of music as well as those prominent from his cultural experiences in his hometown.
Harrison has performed in the smooth jazz arena, is a producer, singer and rapper in the traditional Afro-New Orleans Culture and hip-hop genres with his group, The New Sounds of Mardi Gras and is the Big Chief of the Congo Nation Afro-New Orleans Cultural Group that keeps alive the traditions of Congo Square.
Not limited by his music crossing genres in his compositions and playing, Don has created large orchestral pieces, was featured in Spike Lee’s HBO documentary “When The Levees Broke”, directed the New Jazz School for the Isidore Newman School, is the director of Tipitina’s Intern Program and has nurtured a number of young musicians including his nephew and Grammy-nominated trumpeter Christian Scott, Mark Whitfield, Cyrus Chestnut, Christian McBride and the Notorious B.I.G.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hal McKusick was born on June 1, 1924 in Medford, Massachusetts. Hal moved with his family at age 3 to nearby Newton and at age 8, Hal’s mother bought him a clarinet as a Christmas present, insisting first on a vow of daily practice sessions and weekly lessons. With clarinet in hand, Hal practiced relentlessly and took lessons from schoolteacher Frank Tanner, who used him in the school band on clarinet and alto saxophone at age 9. Sight-reading came quickly to Hal, and by age 15, he was playing Boston’s burlesque house, the Old Howard Theater.
By the 40s and WWII McKusick was playing with Les Brown and moved through the decade playing with Boyd Raeburn and then Claude Thornhill. In the early 1950s he worked with Terry Gibbs and Don Elliott and in 1957 released his first album as a leader for Prestige titled Triple Exposure. As a sideman he sat in on recording sessions with groups led by George Russell and Jimmy Giuffre; worked with Bill Evans, Art Farmer, Paul Chambers, Connie Kaye, Lee Konitz and John Coltrane.
During the 60s he joined the CBS orchestra playing alongside the likes of Hank and Thad Jones, playing Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center behind Judy Garland, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole and Barbara Streisand. In the 70s he moved east to New York and throughout the 70s and 80s he produced weekend performances at Jazz At Moon in Easthampton that led to forming his nonet featuring Clark Terry, Art Farmer, Percy Heath, Jim Hall, Mike LeDonne, Hank Jones, Jim McNeely Jerry Dodgion and others.
Hal McKusick, alto saxophonist, clarinetist, flautist, composer and educator taught at the Ross School in East Hampton, New York and also restored and sold antiques, restored and built Shaker furniture both for Bloomingdales and private commissions. On April 11, 2012 he passed away of natural causes at the age of 87.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Auld was born John Altwerger on May 19, 1919 in Toronto, Canada but lived in the U.S. from the late 1920s. He was most noteworthy for his tenor saxophone work Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Erroll Garner, Dizzy Gillespie, Al Porcino, Billy Eckstine, Tiny Kahn, Frank Rosolino and many others.
Primarily a swing saxophonist, he did many big band stints in his career, and led several big bands, including Georgie Auld and His Orchestra and Georgie Auld and His Hollywood All Stars. Auld also played some rock´n roll working for Alan Freed in 1959.
George can be heard playing sax on the 1968 Ella Fitzgerald album “30 by Ella” and in 1977 he played a bandleader in “New York, New York” starring Liza Minelli and Robert DeNiro and also acted as a technical consultant for the film. The tenor saxophonist, clarinetist and bandleader George Auld died in Palm Springs, California at the age of 71 on January 8, 1990.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Keith Jarrett was born on May 8, 1945, in Allentown, Pennsylvania and had significant early exposure to music. He possessed absolute pitch and displayed prodigious musical talents as a young child. He began piano lessons just before his third birthday, and at age five he appeared on a TV talent program and by seven had given his first classical piano recital. During his teens he began leaning towards jazz, turned down classical training in Paris and attended Berklee College of Music
He started his career with Art Blakey and after his tenure as a Jazz Messenger moving on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 70s he has enjoyed a great deal of success in jazz, jazz-fusion, and classical music; as a group leader and a solo performer. His improvisations draw not only from the traditions of jazz but from other genres as well, especially Western classical music, gospel, blues, blues and ethnic folk music.
Jarrett has received the Polar Music Prize, the Leonie Sonning Music Prize, was inducted into the Down Beat Down Beat Hall of Fame, played with Jack DeJohnette, Charles Lloyd, Charlie Haden, Paul Motian, Dewey Redman, Airto Moreira, Palle Danielson and Jan Garbarek among others.
Jarrett’s compositions and the strong musical identities of the group members gave this ensemble a very distinctive sound. The quartet’s music is an amalgam of free jazz, straight-ahead post-bop, gospel music, and exotic, Middle-Eastern-sounding improvisations. He has played as a soloist, trio, returned also to classical music, incorporates vocalizations of grunts, squeals and tuneless singing. He continues to compose, record, perform and tour.
In 2003, Jarrett received the Polar Music Prize, the first (and to this day only) recipient not to share the prize with a co-recipient,[1] and in 2004 he received the Leonie Sonning Music Prize. In 2008, he was inducted into the Down Beat hall of Fame in the magazine’s 73rd Annual Readers’ Poll. He continues to tour and record.
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