Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Glenn Miller was born Alton Glenn Miller on March 1, 1904 on a farm in Clarinda, Iowa. Though his early musical schooling was in Nebraska by 1915 his education continued in Missouri. Working to save money by milking cows, he bought his first trombone and played in the town orchestra. By high school his interest turned towards a new style of music called “dance band” and led a band with classmates. His unsuccessful foray into college caused him to concentrate on becoming a professional musician.
The mid-twenties saw Glenn touring with several bands including Red Nichols in Broadway show pits performing with band mates were Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa. In 1929 he was part of the band backing a recording of “If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight” featuring Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Condon, Gene Krupa and Coleman Hawkins.
He went on to work with the Dorsey brothers and British bandleader Ray Noble, then transitioning into motion pictures for Paramount and 20th Century with such stars as Bing Crosby, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Ethel Merman, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers.
From 1938 to 1942 Miller amassed great fame with his songs “Tuxedo Junction”, “Moonlight Serenade”, “Little Brown Jug” and “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” breaking all sales and chart records. In 1942 Glenn joined the war effort joining first the Army and then the Army Air Force forming marching bands and orchestras and performing for soldiers. Sadly, on a flight from England to Paris on December 15, 1944, Glenn Miller’s plane went missing over the English Channel. His body was never recovered.
The jazz musician, arranger, composer and swing era bandleader was posthumously issued a postage stamp, three songs are in the Grammy Hall of Fame and in 2003 he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sammy Nestico was born Samuel Lewis Nestico on February 6, 1924 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Studying and learning to play the trombone, he started his professional career in 1941 at age 17 as a staff arranger for ABC radio affiliate WCAE.
Over the course of his career he arranged for Count Basie from 1967-1984, for the US Air Force and Marine Bands for twenty years while in Washington, DC, and played trombone in Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Gene Krupa and Charlie Barnet big bands.
A professor at the University of Georgia from 1998-99 Nestico taught commercial orchestration and conducting the Studio Orchestra, but was unable to find the necessary administrative support to remain there. He has also directed music programs at Los Angeles Pierce College, and the Westinghouse Memorial High School in Wilmerding, PA.
During his life in the television and film industry, Sammy has arranged and conducted projects for artists such as Bing Crosby, Sarah Vaughan, Frank Sinatra, Toni Tennille, Phil Collins, Barbra Streisand among others and orchestrated nearly seventy television programs such as Mission Impossible, Mannix, Charlie’s Angels and The Mod Squad.
He has written commercial jingles for numerous companies including Ford, Dodge, Anheuser-Busch and Mattel and has published nearly 600 numbers for school groups and professional big bands. A trombone player and a prolific, well-known composer and arranger of big band music, he is best known for his arrangements for the Count Basie orchestra. Sammy Nestico continues to compose, arrange, conduct and perform.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Benny Morton was born on January 31, 1907. Growing up in New York City, Benny was a graduate of the Jenkins Orphanage Band and was greatly influenced by church music as well as Dope Andrews, trombonist for Mamie Smith. By 1923, just 16 years old, he was gaining experience with the Clarence Holiday Orchestra and just three years later joined Fletcher Henderson. Swing was in and Benny moved on to spend six years with Don Redman and then three with Count Basie.
By 1938 he was recording with Clarence Holiday’s daughter Billie on My First Impression Of You and on The Sound Of Jazz. Morton went on to play with Teddy Wilson and Ed Hall in the 40’s and led his own band before playing in the Broadway pit for shows like Guys and Dolls and for Radio City Music Hall.
During the sixties and over the next two decades, the gentle and self-effacing trombonist was back in high jazz society with cornetist Wild Bill Davison and Bobby Hackett, The Saints and Sinners and the World’s Greatest Jazz Band.
One of the most sophisticated trombonists of the swing era, Benny Morton passed away on December 28, 1985.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
J. J. Johnson was born James Louis Johnson in Indianapolis, Indiana on January 22, 1924. He started studying piano at the age of 9 and at fourteen decided to play the trombone. By 1941 he began his professional career with Clarence Love and followed by Snookie Russell in ’42, then playing through the forties with the Benny Carter Orchestra, participating in the first Jazz At The Philharmonic organized by Norman Granz in Los Angeles.
He would tour and record with the Count Basie band, Illinois Jacquet and then began leading and recording small groups featuring Max Roach, Sonny Stitt and Bud Powell. By 1951 he took a job as a blueprint inspector but never abandoned his love for music as documented by his compositions Enigma and Kelo recorded by Miles Davis, garnering an invitation to play on the 1954 classic Davis Blue Note session, Walkin’.
Johnson went on to lead groups with Kai Winding, arranging for and backing Sarah Vaughan, following with a successful solo career touring the U.S., the U.K. and Scandinavia. He recorded a wide range of albums with notables as Bobby Jaspar, Clifford Jordan, Freddie Hubbard, Tommy Flanagan, Cedar Walton, Andre Previn and the list goes on and on.
In 1958-59 Johnson was one of three plaintiffs in a court case that hastened the abolition of the cabaret card system. By the sixties he was concentrating more on composition, writing a number of large-scale works that incorporated elements of both classical and jazz.
The 70’s saw J.J. in Hollywood scoring for film and television – Across 110th Street, Starsky & Hutch, and the Six Million Dollar Man but racism and other prejudices kept a black jazz musician from securing the amount and quality of work he was qualified to perform. However, his compositions including “Wee Dot”, “Lament” and “Enigma” have become jazz standards.
The trombonist, composer and arranger also authored a book of original exercises and etudes and a biography titled “The Musical World Of J.J. Johnson. He was voted into the Down Beat Hall of Fame in 1995. Diagnosed with prostate cancer, on February 4, 2001, he committed suicide by shooting himself.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Melba Doretta Liston was born on January 13, 1926. Growing up in Kansas City, MO the young trombonist studied with Alma Hightower and played in youth bands. At 17 the talented trombonist joined Gerald Wilson’s big band and by the mid-1940’s Melba began working with the emerging beboppers like Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, Paul Gonsalves, John Coltrane and John Lewis. She toured with Count Basie and Billie Holiday in the late 40’s but was so profoundly affected by audience indifference and the rigors of the road she quit playing.
For the next few years she did clerical work and supplemented her income working as an extra in Hollywood appearing in The Prodigal and The Ten Commandments. By the mid 50’s Melba was back playing, touring with Dizzy Gillespie for the U.S. State Department and recording with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. In 1958 she formed her all-women quintet and with her show “Free and Easy” she toured Europe with Quincy Jones as her musical director.
The 60’s saw Melba collaborating with pianist Randy Weston, arranging primarily her own compositions for mid-size to large ensembles and are widely acknowledged as jazz classics. Melba worked with the likes of Milt Jackson, Clark Terry, and Johnny Griffin as well as arranging for various Motown records. In 1971 she became the musical director for Stax Records, working with Stevie Wonder, Joe Sample, Wilton Felder, Arthur Adams and jazz drummer Paul Humphrey whose uncharted album released in 1972 contains some of Melba’s finest works ever.
Melba Liston was a trombonist, composer and an important jazz arranger whose collaboration with pianist/composer Randy Weston continued until her death on April 23, 1999.
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