Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jimmy Archey was born on October 12, 1902 in Norfolk, Virginia. He began playing when he was twelve and was getting professional gigs a year later. He studied at Hampton Institute from 1915 to 1919, played in Atlantic City, New Jersey for a while before moving to New York City in 1923.
During the Roaring Twenties, he played with Edgar Hayes, Most noteworthy for his work was in several prominent jazz orchestras and big bands of his time, including leading one of his own. He performed and recorded with the James P. Johnson Orchestra, King Oliver, Fats Waller, and the Luis Russell Orchestra, among others.
The late 1930s saw Archey participating in big bands that simultaneously featured musicians such as Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Claude Hopkins. In the 1940s he toured France with Mezz Mezzrow and in the 1950s, he spent much of his time working with New Orleans revivalist bands with artists such as Bob Wilber and Earl Hines.
Becoming a bandleader, during the next few years, he headed a sextet, which in 1952 had trumpeter Henry Goodwin, Benny Waters on clarinet and pianist Dick Wellstood. A major yet underrated musician, his only sessions recorded as a leader were for Nec Plus Ultra, the French Barclay and the 77 label. Trombonist Jimmy Archey passed away on November 16, 1967 in Amityville, New York.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Fred Norman was born on October 5, 1910 in Leesburg, Florida and started out playing trombone when he was 14. After working with local bands in Florida, until moving to Washington, D.C. in 1930. There he worked with Duke Eglin’s Bell Hops, Booker Coleman, and Elmer Calloway (Cab’s younger brother). When he joined Claude Hopkins’ Orchestra in 1932, he doubled as a singer and contributed many arrangements.
Norman was with the Hopkins Big Band during its key years (1932-37), and when he departed, gave up the trombone and stuck exclusively to writing. Norman wrote arrangements for many big bands including those of Benny Goodman (1938), Bunny Berigan, Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton, Jack Teagarden, Glenn Miller, Harry James, Artie Shaw, and Tommy Dorsey.
Landing the position of staff arranger for Krupa from 1940 to 1943, he spent periods writing exclusively for Dorsey and Charlie Spivak. In the 1950s, Fred started working closely with MGM and Carlton record labels, among others, and often as a musical director for singers such as Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, and Brook Benton.
Although his orchestra backed numerous singers, he led his own orchestra record date, producing Norman Plays Novello. Trombonist, vocalist, and arranger Fred Norman, who spent most of the swing era as a busy arranger, passed away on February 19, 1993 in New York City, New York.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John L.Thomas was born September 18, 1902 in Louisville, Kentucky, but relocated to Chicago, Illinois as a child, receiving his formal education in the Windy City. Sliding into on-stage trombone performances with the Clarence Miller Orchestra around 1923. Between 1927 and 1928 he worked with Erskine Tate, which led to his entry into Louis Armstrong’s legendary Hot Seven, replacing Kid Ory in Armstrong’s band and also played with Erskine Tate, among others, becoming associated with the Chicago jazz scene.
He was briefly with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers for jobs in the Northeast in the ’30s; in 1937 he was part of a touring revue fronted by pianist and singer Nat King Cole. He was once again with Tate as well as drummer Floyd Campbell’s outfit prior to switching his trombone case for the tool kit of a defense plant worker during the Second World War. That hiatus from playing took place prior to dropping out completely during the ’50s, as he did gig once again in a group led by guitarist Walter Dysett in 1944.
He had a wonderful repertory band led by Franz Jackson with which Thomas performed and recorded through the first half of the ’60s. The ’50s, on the other hand, may have simply depressed the trombonist with its onslaught of rock & roll, because he simply stopped playing completely representing the first major halt in musical action for this performer since his professional activities began in the Roaring Twenties.
The trombonist continued working with a wide range of classic jazz bandleaders, including trumpeter Freddie Keppard. Preferring to move in and out of groups such as that of the aforementioned Tate and Reuben Reeves, in one lineup and then out of the next. Trombonist John L. Thomas passed away on November 7, 1971 in Chicago, Illinois.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Clifford Edward Thornton III was born on September 6, 1936 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania into a musical family, his uncle pianist Jimmy Golden and his cousin, drummer J. C. Moses. He began piano lessons when he was seven-years-old, and studied with trumpeter Donald Byrd during 1957 after Byrd had left Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and also that he worked with 17-year-old tuba player Ray Draper and Webster Young. Following a late 1950s stint in the U.S. Army bands, he moved to New York City.
In the early 1960s, Clifford lived in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, New York in an apartment building with other young musicians, including Rashied Ali, Marion Brown, and Don Cherry. He performed with numerous avant-garde jazz bands, recording as a sideman with Sun Ra, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, and Sam Rivers.
During the Seventies, Thornton and others were affected by the compositional ideas of Cecil Taylor, was active in the Black Arts Movement, and associated with Amiri Baraka and Jayne Cortez. This musical and artistic network provided him with a variety of perspectives on ideas such as black self-determination, performance forms, outside playing, and textural rhythm; and giving him access to performers who would provide the abilities some of his later compositions required.
He was included in the dialogue around the developing thought of political artists, including Shepp, Askia M. Touré, and Nathan Hare, as well as the journals Freedomways and Umbra. As an educator, he taught world music at Wesleyan University and created an Artists-in-Residence on campus, giving the academic world-music community exposure to Sam Rivers, Jimmy Garrison, Ed Blackwell, and Marion Brown. He arranged performances by Rashied Ali, Horace Silver, McCoy Tyner, and numerous others
Trumpeter, trombonist, activist, and educator Clifford Thornton, who played free and avant~garde jazz in the 1960 and ‘70s, passed away on November 25, 1989.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ford Leary was born on September 5, 1908 in Lockport, New York. He married early, had a son, and left both wife and child for a music career. During the thirties he performed as part of the Frank Trumbaur band and with the Bunny Berigan band, the latter being one of his better positions while scuffling to make ends meet freelancing in New York City.
Ford would go on to work with Larry Clinton in the late Thirties and in the early 1940s with Charlie Barnet, Mike Riley, and Muggsy Spanier. As he was readying to begin a new career path as a replacement performer in the Broadway show Follow The Girls, he suffered a back injury from which he never fully recovered.
His short career ended in the late ‘40s when trombonist and vocalist Ford Leary, the only trombonist of note to die institutionalized at Bellevue Hospital, passed away on June 4, 1949 at age 40.