EKEP NKWELLE BAND

A rising master of her craft, vocalist Ekep Nkwelle entrances audiences with her strong lyrical presence and an uncanny connection to phrasing that’s at once grounded and ethereal. High-level musicality informs her storytelling. To Dizzy’s Club she brings her tight ensemble of acclaimed artists. Expect an evening of imaginative arrangements and compelling treatment of standard tunes. 

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

John Maxwell Collie was born on February 21, 1931 in Melbourne, Australia. In 1946 he first heard professional jazz listening to Graham Bell’s lunchtime concerts at The New Theatre Melbourne. By 17 he was playing with a local band and shortly after leading it.

When he received the invitation by cable to take the trombone chair in the Melbourne New Orleans Jazz Band that was on tour in Europe, Max accepted and in 1962 arrived in England. He toured Europe until the band went back to Australia a year later, however, he decided to stay and joined the London City Stompers, becoming leader after a year. In 1966 he formed Max Collie’s Rhythm Aces and that band, notwithstanding the collapse of the UK jazz scene flourished.

The group released their first record in 1971 and in 1975 they won the World Championship of Jazz in traditional jazz against fourteen competing North American jazz bands in Indianapolis, Indiana.

He would go on to tour Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Japan and create a theater show. This show, Max Collie’s New Orleans Mardi Gras, which included Ken Colyer and Cy Laurie, turned out to be the most successful jazz show in British jazz history. Trombonist Max Collie died on January 6, 2018, at the age of 86.

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STEVE TURRE

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Vernon Brown was born on January 6, 1907 in Venice, Illinois. He began his career as a jazz trombonist playing in St. Louis, Missouri with Frankie Trumbauer in 1925, and then moved through a variety of groups at the end of the 1920s and into the 1930s, including those of Jean Goldkette, Benny Meroff, and Mezz Mezzrow.

In 1937 Brown joined Benny Goodman’s orchestra, remaining there until 1940. While only soloing occasionally with Goodman, this association got him well known. The Forties saw him performing with Artie Shaw, Jan Savitt, Muggsy Spanier, and the Casa Loma Orchestra. In the 1940s, Brown switched focus from swing to Dixieland, playing often in studio recordings and working with Sidney Bechet.

Brown performed with Louis Armstrong and his All Stars for the ninth Cavalcade of Jazz concert in 1953 at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, California. The concert also featured that day were Roy Brown and his Orchestra, Don Tosti and His Mexican Jazzmen, Earl Bostic, Nat “King” Cole, and Shorty Rogers and his Orchestra.

He led his own band in the Pacific Northwest in 1950 and did reunion tours with Goodman in that decade. He worked with Tony Parenti in 1963, and remained a studio musician into the early-1970s

Trombonist Vernon Brown, who later in his life lived in Roslyn Heights, New York, died in Los Angeles on May 18, 1979.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Albert Warner was born on December 31, 1890, in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana. Though his father was a string bass player, he didn’t seriously pick up the trombone until he was twenty-two years old. Taking lessons from one of his half-brothers, Ulysses Jackson, as well as Arthur Stevens and Honoré Dutrey. His main influences in his youth came from hearing Freddie Keppard, Vic Gaspard, and Baptiste Delisle.

His first professional jobs were playing for dance bands, including those led by “Big Eye” Louis Nelson, Kid Rena, Wooden Joe Nicholas, Buddy Petit, and Chris Kelly. In 1932 Warner joined the Eureka Brass Band and remained a regular member of this group until his death in 1966. His musical interplay with Charles Sonny Henry in the Eureka band during the late 1940s and 1950s is remembered by many for its intricacy and beauty.

The early Forties saw Albert playing and recording with Bunk Johnson and George Lewis. He would record often throughout the 1950s and in the Sixties he could be found playing frequently at Preservation Hall, accompanying the Preservation Hall band on a number of tours with Kid Sheik and the Eureka Brass Band. He went on one Memphis tour with Billie and DeDe Pierce in 1965.

Warner left behind a number of sessions recorded and released by Commodore, Pax, Folkways, Atlantic, and American. The album Bunk Johnson 1942/1945,  Eureka Brass Band and The Eureka Brass Band in Rehearsal, a number of recordings with Charlie Love, Peter Bocage with His Creole Serenaders and the Love-Jiles Ragtime Orchestra, released by American. He also appeared on other American label albums recorded by Punch Miller, John Casimir, Kid Sheik and appeared on Atlantic’s Jazz at Preservation Hall series.

Trombonist Albert Warner, who performed in the traditional and brass band genres, transitioned on September 10, 1966 in New Orleans.

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