Daily Dose Of Jazz…
J. R. Monterose was born Frank Anthony Peter Vincent Monterose, Jr. in Detroit Michigan on January 19, 1927. A few months after his birth, the family moved to Utica, New York and this is where he began formal clarinet studies at thirteen. After hearing the Glenn Miller soloist Tex Beneke J.R. taught himself to play tenor saxophone with his early influences Coleman Hawkins and Chu Berry. He also found harmonic inspiration in pianist Bud Powell and learned chord changes from guitarist Sam Mancuso.
Monterose first stepped into the professional arena playing in upstate New York territory dance bands in the late forties. In 1950 he joined the Henry “Hot Lips” Busse touring orchestra, then the Buddy Rich band in ’51 but left for lack of soloing opportunities.
By the mid to late 50s he was in New York City as a featured soloist with Claude Thornhil’s orchestra and with vibraphonist Teddy Charles’ modernist groups, Charles Mingus’s Jazz Workshop and Kenny Dorham’s short-lived Jazz Prophets. He recorded two sessions with Alfred Lion for Blue Note as a leader, “J.R. Monterose” in 1956 and “The Message” in 1959.
Throughout his life he continued to pursue his ever-evolving craft in small time U.S. venues and during extended stays in the late 1960’s through the mid 1970’s in Belgium, The Netherlands and Denmark with occasional low-profile recordings. His preference for small group work in out of the way places would shape much of his subsequent career, contributing to the musical growth upon which he was always so intently focused but ultimately relegating him to an undeserved obscurity.
He steadfastly refused to be pigeonholed in any particular style and was quoted as saying “ I’ve tried all my life to avoid copying. If I can’t be myself, there’s no point in being in jazz”. Tenor saxophonist J.R. Monterose passed away on September 16, 1993.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Talmadge (Tab) Smith was born in Kinston, North Carolina on January 11, 1909. He joined his first professional band, the Carolina Stompers, in 1929 and in the 1930s and 1940s he spent several years in the bands of Lucky Millinder and Count Basie as well as spending long periods freelancing both as a player and as an arranger. After WWII he led his own groups, which concentrated on rhythm and blues as jazz turned from swing to bop.
His biggest R & B hit was “Because of You”, recorded for United Records reached #1 on the R & B charts and number 20 on the pop charts, in 1951. His association with United lasted until 1957, put ting out 24 singles and a 10-inch LP for the company sometimes alternating on tenor saxophone.
During the 1950s, Smith was a significant rival to alto saxophone-playing bandleader Earl Bostic, and was also in competition with his own formative influence Johnny Hodges, until Hodges returned to Duke Ellington’s band.
His career never recovered from the closure of United Records. After brief stays at Checker and King Labels, Tab retired from the music business in the early 1960s. He sold real estate, and played piano part-time in a steakhouse.
Alto saxophonist Tab Smith, who concentrated on swing and R&B genres, passed away in St. Louis, Missouri on August 17, 1971.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jonah Jones was born Robert Elliott Jones in Louisville, Kentucky on December 31, 1909. He started playing alto sax at the age of 12 in the Booker T. Washington Community Center band in Louisville before quickly transitioning to trumpet where he excelled immediately. Jones began his career in the 1920s playing on a riverboat named “Island Queen” which plied between Kentucky and Ohio.
By 1928 he joined with Horace Henderson, later worked with Jimmie Lunceford, had an early and successful collaboration with Stuff Smith from 1932-1936, and by the Forties he was working in big bands like Benny Carter’s and Fletcher Henderson. He would spend most of the decade with Cab Calloway’s band that later became a combo.
Starting in the 1950s he had his own quartet and began concentrating on a formula that gained him wider appeal for a decade. The quartet consisted of George “River Rider” Rhodes on piano, John “Broken Down” Browne on bass and “Hard Nuts “Harold Austin on drums. The most mentioned accomplishment of this style is perhaps their version of “On The Street Where You Live”. This effort succeeded and he began to be known to a wider audience. This led to his quartet performing on “An Evening With Fred Astaire” in 1958 and winning a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Performance by a group in 1960.
Jonah went on to become a sensation in France, returned to more “core” jazz work with Earl Hines, played in the pit orchestra for the stage play Porgy and Bess starring Cab Calloway, was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1999. Trumpeter Jonah Jones passed away on April 29, 2000.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hank Crawford was born Bennie Ross Crawford, Jr. on December 21, 1934 in Memphis, Tennessee. He began formal piano studies at age nine and was soon playing for his church choir. His father had brought an alto saxophone home from the service and when Crawford entered Manassas High School, he took it up in order to join the band, hanging out with George Coleman, Booker Little, Harold Mabern and Frank Strozier. At eighteen he appeared on an early 1952 Memphis recording for B. B. King playing alongside Ben Branch and Ike Turner.
In 1958 Crawford attended Tennessee State University, majored in music studying theory and composition, played alto and baritone saxophone in the Tennessee State Jazz Collegians and led his own rock ‘n’ roll quartet, “Little Hank and the Rhythm Kings”. It was during this period that he met Ray Charles and got his nickname “Hank” because he looked and sounded like local legendary saxophonist Hank O’Day.
Charles hired Crawford originally as a baritone saxophonist but he switched to alto in ’59 and became musical director until ’63 when he left to form his own septet, having already established himself with several albums on Atlantic Records, recording a dozen albums between 1960 and 1970. He also arranged for Etta James, Lou Rawls and others, although much of his career has been in R&B. However, in the Seventies, Hank had several successes on the jazz and pop charts.
In 1983 a move to Milestone Records gave him the opportunity to become a premier arranger, soloist, and composer, writing for small bands—that include guitarist Melvin Sparks, Dr. John and organist Jimmy McGriff, the later with whom he toured extensively and co-led dates for Milestone’s “Soul Survivor”, Steppin’ Up”, “On The Blue Side” and Road Tested”. The new century found Crawford pursuing a more mainstream jazz sound with the “World of Hank Crawford”, covering Ellington and Tadd Dameron compositions.
Hank Crawford, alto and baritone saxophonist in the hard bop, R&B, jazz-funk and soul jazz genres, credits Charlie Parker, Louis Jordan, Earl Bostic and Johnny Hodges as early influences. His piercing full-bodied signature sanctified church sound, easily recognizable, will live on through his music since his passing on January 29, 2009 at 74.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cecil Payne was born December 14, 1922 in Brooklyn, New York. He received his first saxophone at age 13, asking his father for one after hearing Count Basie’s version of Honeysuckle Rose performed by Lester Young and took lessons from Pete Brown, a local alto sax player.
Payne began his professional recording career with J. J. Johnson on the Savoy label in 1946. During that year he played with Roy Eldridge, through whom he met Dizzy Gillespie. His earlier recordings would largely fall under the “swing” category, until Gillespie hired him, a relationship that lasted until 1949.
By the early 50s, Cecil found himself working with Tadd Dameron, Illinois Jacquet, James Moody, Machito, Woody Herman, Count Basie and freelancing around New York, frequently performing with Randy Weston. Throughout his fifty plus year career baritone saxophonist he recorded as a leader and a sideman for Decca, Savoy, the Charlie Parker label, Muse, Spotlite and Strata East, and regularly for Delmark Records in the nineties, when he was in his seventies, and on into the new millennium.
Cecil Payne, baritone and alto saxophonist and flautist, passed away on November 27, 2007. Although largely unknown to the public he was one of the pioneers in adapting the baritone saxophone to bebop and post-bop.