Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Clyde Bernhardt, born July 11, 1905 in Gold Hill, North Carolina, grew up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He started playing trombone at 17 and in the Twenties performed in a series of lesser-known ensembles such as Bill Eady’s Ellwood Syncopators, Tillie Vennie, Odie Cromwell’s Wolverine Syncopators and The Whitman Sisters to name a few. In 1931 he worked with King Oliver and throughout the thirties played with Alex Hill, The Alabamians, Billy Fowler, Ira Coffey’s Walkathonians and Vernon Andrade.
In 1937 he joined the orchestra of Edgar Haye until 1942 then worked with Jay McShann, Cecil Scott, Luis Russell, Leonard Feather, Pete Johnson, Wynonie Harris, Claude Hopkins and the Bascomb brothers. He led his own ensemble, called the Blue Blazers, before returning to play with Russell from 1948-51. He recorded as a leader between 1946 and 1953, and on some of the recordings he sings under the pseudonym Ed Barron.
From 1952 to 1970 he played part-time with Joe Garland’s Society Orchestra followed with his leading the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band from 1972 and 1979 with sidemen Doc Cheatham, Charlie Holmes, Happy Caldwell, Tommy Benford and Miss Rhapsody. Shortly before his death he published his autobiography “I Remember” co-written with Sheldon Harris. As Bernhardt’s health began to fail in 1979, he gave up band leadership but played in Barry Martyn’s Legends of Jazz until his death on May 20, 1986 in Newark, New Jersey.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William Clarence Eckstine was born on July 8, 1914 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania but grew up in Washington, DC of Prussian and African American heritage. He began singing at the age of seven, entering amateur talent shows while dreaming of a football career that was sidelined when he broke his collarbone. Focusing on music he worked his way west to Chicago, joining Earl Hines’ Grand Terrace Orchestra as vocalist and occasionally trumpeter from1939 – 1943. During his tenure he made a name for himself through the Hines band’s radio shows with such jukebox hits as “Stormy Monday Blues” and his own “Jelly Jelly”.
Eckstine formed the first bop big band in 1944 making it a fountainhead for young musicians who would reshape jazz by the end of the decade, including Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro and Sarah Vaughn, with Tadd Dameron and Gil Fuller were among the band’s arrangers. Billy hit the charts often during the mid-’40s, with Top Ten entries including “A Cottage For Sale” and “Prisoner of Love”.
Breaking down barriers throughout the Forties as a leader of the original bop big band and as the first romantic black male in popular music, Mr. B, as he was affectionately known, went solo in 1947. His seamless transition to string-filled balladry saw him recording more than a dozen hits by the end of the decade and winning numerous awards from Esquire, Down Beat and Metronome magazines. His 1950 appearance at New York’s Paramount Theatre greatly surpassed Sinatra’s audience draw at the same venue.
Over the course of the next two decades Billy appeared on every major television variety show from Ed Sullivan to Nat King Cole, Jack Paar, Steve Allen, Joey Bishop, Flip Wilson and Playboy After Dark. After a long series of hit tunes and recordings by the 70’s Billy’s recordings came sparingly although he still performed before adoring audiences throughout the world. He made his final Grammy-nominated recording singing with Benny Carter in 1986.
Billy Eckstine, vocalist, bandleader, trumpeter, valve trombonist and guitarist passed away on March 8, 1993, at age 78, in his hometown of Pittsburgh.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Fred Wesley was born July 4, 1943 in Columbus, Georgia and raised in Mobile, Alabama. The son of a high school teacher and big band leader as a child he took piano and later trumpet lessons. At around the age of twelve his father brought a trombone home, whereupon he switched.
During the 1960s and 1970s Wesley went to R&B as many jazz musicians did to earn a living and became a pivotal member of James Brown’s bands, playing on many hit recordings including “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud”, “Mother Popcorn” and co-writing tunes such as “Hot Pants”. His slippery riffs and pungent, precise solos, complementing those of saxophonist Maceo Parker, gave Brown’s R&B, soul, and funk tunes their instrumental punch.
In the 1970s he also served as bandleader and musical director of Brown’s band The J.B.’s and did much of the composing and arranging for the group. His name was credited on ‘Fred Wesley & the J.B.’s’ recording of “Doing It To Death” which sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold record 1973. Leaving Brown’s band in 1975, Wesley spent several years playing with George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic projects, even recording a couple of albums as the leader of a spin-off group, The Horny Horns.
Wesley became a force in jazz in 1978 when he joined the Count Basie Orchestra. He released his first jazz album as a leader, “To Someone” in 1988, followed by “New Friends”, Comme Ci Comme Ca, and the live album “Swing and Be Funky” and “Amalgamation”.
In the early nineties Fred toured with former JB colleagues Pee Wee Ellis and Maceo Parker, as the JB Horns. When Ellis left, the band became The Maceo Parker Band with Wesley as the featured trombonist until 1996 when he formed his own band, The Fred Wesley Group, now known as Fred Wesley and the New JBs.
Wesley’s 35-year career includes playing with and arranging for a wide variety of other artist such as Ray Charles, Lionel Hampton, Randy Crawford, Vanessa Williams, The SOS Band, Cameo, Van Morrison, Socalled and rappers De La Soul, to name a few, while many other artists have sampled his work.
He has written an autobiography “Hit Me, Fred: Recollections of a Sideman”. Wesley served as an adjunct professor in the Jazz Studies department of the School of Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from 2004 to 2006, and now works with students as a visiting artist at numerous other schools including Berklee College of Music and Columbia College of Chicago.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Julian Priester was born on June 29,1935 in Chicago, Illinois. He attended DuSable High School studying under Walter Dyett and during his teens he played trombone with Muddy Waters, Dinah Washington, and Bo Diddley and jammed with jazz greats Max Roach, Clifford Brown and Sonny Stitt.
By the early 1950s Priester was a member of Sun Ra’s big band, recording several albums with the group before leaving Chicago in 1956 to tour with Lionel Hampton. Settling in New York in ’58 Julian joined Max Roach’s band and during his tenure recorded two albums as a leader for Riverside Records titled Spiritsville and Keep Swingin’.
In 1961 Priester left Max Roach and for the next eight years took a sideman gig on albums by Freddie Hubbard, Stanley Turrentine, Blue Mitchell, Art Blakey, Joe Henderson, McCoy Tyner, Johnny Griffin and Sam Rivers. During that period he also took part in Coltrane’s Africa/Brass ensemble, which played with Coltrane’s quartet on the album by the same name recorded in 1961. Accepting an invitation to play with Ellington’s big band, he stayed for six months and by 1970 Priester was playing fusion in Herbie Hancock’s sextet.
In 1973, Priester moved to San Francisco, recorded two more albums as a leader, joined the faculty of Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle in 1979 teaching jazz composition, performance and history. Over the course of the next three decades Julian has been a member of the Dave Holland band, returned to play with Sun Ra’s band, became a member of Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, co-led with drummer Jimmy Bennington “Portraits and Silhouettes”, played the 30th Annual Chicago Jazz Festival and made significant contribution to “Alice”, a tribute album to Alice Coltrane.
Trombonist Julian Priester’s musical experience spans to the borders of jazz and beyond, encompassing R&B, bebop, hard bop, and progressive and free jazz.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kai Chresten Winding was born in Aarhus, Denmark on May 18, 1922 and when he was 12 his family immigrated to the United States. Graduating from Stuyvesant High School in 1940 and immediately commence on a professional path in Shorty Allen’s band. He followed with stints in the bands of Sonny Durham and Alvino Rey prior to service in the Coast Guard during WWII.
After the war, Winding worked with Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton, and participated in the Birth of the Cool sessions. In 1954 he joined forces with J.J. Johnson and the collaboration produced some of the greatest trombone duet recordings, first on Savoy then Columbia. During this period he arranged and composed many of the songs they recorded and experimented with different instrumentation in brass ensembles and used a trombonium during an octet session.
During the 1960s, Kai had a long stint at Verve Records working with Creed Taylor that produced his hit recording “More” the theme from the movie Mondo Caine. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Kai recorded for a number of independent record labels, conducted clinics, wrote instructional jazz trombone books, played jazz concerts and even reunited with Johnson for a live concert in Japan. Kai Winding, jazz trombonist, composer and arranger died of a brain tumor in New York City on May 6, 1983.
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