Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Edward Pugh, born November 12, 1950 in Butler, Pennsylvania began playing the trombone around the age of ten. He attended the Eastman School of Music from 1968 to 1972, where he played in an ensemble under Chuck Mangione.
Pugh toured and recorded with the Woody Herman Band for four years from 1972 and briefly performed with Chick Corea in 1977. He then concentrated on studio session work for jazz and popular musicians. In 1984, he was co-leader for the album The Pugh–Taylor Project. He also composed for and played on the album X Over Trombone.
Trombonist and composer James Pugh continues to perform and record sessions for jazz, pop and Broadway soundtracks.
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DELFEAYO MARSALIS QUINTET
Delfeayo Marsalis is one of the top trombonists, composers and producers in jazz today. He is known for his “technical excellence, inventive mind and frequent touches of humor” says Leonard Feather of the Los Angeles Times. According to Philip Elwood, San Francisco Examiner, Marsalis is “one of the best, most imaginative and musical of the trombonists of his generation.” In January 2011, Delfeayo and the Marsalis family (father Ellis and brothers Branford, Wynton and Jason) earned the nation’s highest jazz honor, a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award.
Born in New Orleans on July 28, 1965, Marsalis was destined to a life in music. “I remember my dad (Ellis Marsalis) playing piano at the house, and me laying underneath the piano as a child, listening to him play. After briefly trying bass and drums, in sixth grade I gravitated towards the trombone, which was an extension of my personality. Early on my influences and inspirations included J.J. Johnson, Curtis Fuller, Al Grey, Tyree Glenn and Tommy Dorsey.” Marsalis attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts high school, was classically trained at the Eastern Music Festival and Tanglewood Institute, and majored in both performance and audio production at the Berklee College of Music.
From the age of 17 until the present, Marsalis has produced over 100 recordings for major artists including Harry Connick, Jr, Marcus Roberts, Spike Lee, Terence Blanchard, Marcus Roberts, Adam Makowicz, Nicholas Payton, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the projects of Ellis, Branford and Wynton Marsalis.
Marsalis has also been long involved in work as an educator. He lectured in schools in 1995 on behalf of the Dallas Opera and the Bravo cable network. Marsalis served as director of the Foundation for Artistic and Musical Excellence summer program in Lawrenceville, New Jersey (1998-2002), founded the Uptown Music Theatre in 2000, and implemented its Kidstown After School in three New Orleans grammar schools in 2009. He has composed over 80 songs that help introduce kids to jazz. Learn more about Delfeayo at www.dmarsalis.com
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Don Lusher was born on November 6, 1923 in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England and started playing the trombone at six years old in his local Salvation Army band, the third generation of his family to do so.
During World War II, he served as a gunner signaller in the Royal Artillery. After the war, he became a professional musician, playing with the bands of Joe Daniels making £12 a week, Lou Preager, Maurice Winnick, the Squadronaires, Jack Parnell and the Ted Heath Big Band.
Lusher spent nine years as lead trombone with Ted Heath’s Orchestra and toured the United States with him five times. After several attempts to revive the band, Don took over the leadership in 1976. He led the ‘Ted Heath Tribute Orchestra’ throughout the 1980s and 1990s until the sold-out final concert at the Royal Festival Hall in December 2000. He led the trombone section during many of Frank Sinatra’s European tours. In 1975 he gave the first performance of Gordon Langford’s Rhapsody for Trombone at London’s Royal Albert Hall, and went on to perform it around the world.
Lusher formed his own ensemble, the Don Lusher Big Band, performed with the Manhattan Sound Big Band, played with Alexis Korner and various session musicians in the big band-rock fusion group CCS, and was a founder member of the Best of British Jazz group from the 1970s onwards.
After spending some years as a Professor of the Royal College of Music he became Professor of Trombone at the Royal Marines School of Music, in Portsmouth, England in 1997, retiring in 2004.
In 2001, he recorded an album British Jazz Legends Together on the Decca label featuring Kenny Ball, Acker Bilk, John Chilton and the Feetwarmers, John Dankworth, Humphrey Lyttelton, and George Melly.
He was awarded the status of Freeman of the City of London, received an OBE for services to the music industry, and was twice president of the British Trombone Society. Trombonist Don Lusher, who with his big band played its final concert in 2007, transitioned in Cheam, England on July 5, 2006 at 82.
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Three Wishes
The Baroness approached Al Grey and presented him with the question of three wishes and he replied to her:
- “To have happiness.”
- “Knowledge.”
- “Understanding. I have no more to say.”
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Washington was born October 18, 1907 in Brunswick, Georgia and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. He began playing trombone at age ten and attended Edward Waters College in the early-1920s.
Washington relocated to Philadelphia in 1925 and played with J.W. Pepper before moving to New York City shortly thereafter. In New York, he studied under Walter Damrosch at the New York Conservatory, playing with various ensembles in the late 1920s.
In 1931, he began playing with Don Redman, and gigged with Benny Carter in 1932 and Spike Hughes in 1933. In the mid-1930s, he played and arranged for the Mills Blue Rhythm Band and worked with Red Allen and Fletcher Henderson. From 1937 to 1943, he played in Louis Armstrong’s orchestra. After his tenure with Armstrong he moved to the West Coast, and played with Horace Henderson, Carter again, and Count Basie.
From 1947 he led his own ensemble, playing in California and the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada. He and drummer Johnny Otis collaborated often, and in 1960 Washington worked with Joe Darensbourg. He did freelance work as a player and arranger later in his life. To date there is no record of his death
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