Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Clifford Brown was born on October 30, 1930 into a musical family in Wilmington, Delaware. Organized into a vocal quartet with three of his youngest brothers buy his father, by age ten he started playing trumpet at school after becoming fascinated with the shiny trumpet his father owned. By age thirteen, he had his own trumpet and was taking private lessons.

Junior year in high school he received lessons from Boysie Lowrey, played in a jazz group that Lowery put together, made trips into Philadelphia while earning a good education from Howard High.  He briefly attended Delaware State University as a math major, before switching to Maryland State College that had a more vibrant musical environment. He played in the fourteen-piece, jazz-oriented, Maryland State Band.

In June of 1950, he was seriously injured in a car accident and during his yearlong hospitalization Dizzy Gillespie visited the young trumpeter and pushed him to pursue his musical career. Limited to the piano for months due to his injuries, Clifford never fully recovered and would routinely dislocate his shoulder for the rest of his life. However, he quickly became one of the most highly regarded trumpeters in jazz.

Brown was influenced and encouraged by Fats Navarro. His first recordings were with R&B bandleader Chris Powell. He worked with Art Blakey, Tadd Dameron, Lionel Hampton, and J. J. Johnson, before forming a band with Max Roach. The Clifford Brown & Max Roach Quintet was a high water mark of the hard bop style with pianist Richie Powell, tenor saxophonists Harold Land, Teddy Edwards, Sonny Rollins and bassist George Morrow, throughout the tenure of the group.

Brownie, as he was affectionately called had a sound that was warm and round, and notably consistent across the full range of the instrument. He could articulate every note, even at very fast tempos which seemed to present no difficulty to him; serving to enhance the impression of his speed of execution. He had a highly developed sense of harmony, delivered bold statements through complex chord changes of bebop harmony and fully expressed himself in a ballad.

Clifford never touched drugs and had no fondness for alcohol, however his clean living would not save him from his tragic death on the rainy night of June 26, 1956 due to an auto accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. That night band member Richie Powell and his wife Nancy would also lose their lives.

At age 25 trumpeter Clifford Brown would leave behind only four years of recordings, nonetheless, he influenced later jazz trumpet players like Donald Byrd, Woody Shaw, Lee Morgan, Booker Little, Freddie Hubbard, Valery Ponomarev, Wynton Marsalis and many others. His compositions “Joy Spring” and “Daahoud” are jazz standards. He won the Down Beat critics’ poll for the “New Star of the Year” in 1954; and was inducted into the Down Beat “Jazz Hall of Fame” in 1972 in the critics’ poll.

 

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Don Elliott was born on October 21, 1926 in Somerville, New Jersey. He played mellophone in his high school band and played trumpet for an army band. After study at the University of Miami he added vibraphone to his arsenal of instruments.  He recorded with Terry Gibbs and Buddy Rich before forming his own band.

From 1953 to 1960 he won the Down Beat readers poll several times for “miscellaneous instrument-mellophone.” Known as the “Human Instrument”, Elliott additionally performed jazz as a vocalist, trombonist, flugelhornist and percussionist. He pioneered the art of multi-track recording, composed over 5000 jingles with a countless number being prize-winning advertising jingles, prepared film scores, recorded over 60 albums and built a thriving production company.

Don scored several Broadway productions, such as The Beast In Me and A Thunder Carnival, the latter of which he performed with the Don Elliott Quartet, provided one of the voices for the novelty jazz duo the Nutty Squirrels, and lent his vocal talents to such motion picture soundtracks as The Getaway, $ (Dollars), The Hot Rock and The Happy Hooker.

His album Calypso Jazz is considered by some jazz enthusiasts to be one of the definitive calypso jazz albums. He worked with Paul Desmond, Ruby Braff, Bill Evans, Michel Legrand, Art Farmer, George Shearing and Mundell Lowe among others over his career. Multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, publisher and producer Don Elliott, who was a longtime associate of Quincy Jones, passed away of cancer in Weston, Connecticut on July 5, 1984.

 

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Bill Dixon was born on October 5, 1925 in Nantucket, Massachusetts and his family later moved to Harlem, New York City when he was about 7. It wasn’t until some twenty years later that he became interested in music and trumpet began his five-year studies at the Hartnette Conservatory of Music in 1946. He studied painting at Boston University, the WPA Arts School and the Art Students League. During the early 1950s while employed at the United Nations, he founded the UN Jazz Society.

By the 1960’s Dixon established himself as a major force in the jazz avant-garde movement, organizing and producing the “October Revolution in Jazz”. This first free-jazz festival comprised four days of music and discussions at the Cellar Café in Manhattan with musicians such as Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra participating.

Bill would later found the Jazz Composers Guild, become a professor of music at Bennington College, establish their Black Music Division, and was one of four featured musicians in the Canadian documentary Imagine the Sound in 1981 with Cecil Taylor,  Archie Shepp and Paul Bley.

Dixon recorded relatively little over the decade and a half beginning in the late Sixties but co-led a few sessions with Archie Shepp, appeared on Cecil Taylor’s “Conquistador!” and some solo trumpet recordings has emerged. His recording career as a leader and sideman would pick up in the 80s into the new millennium with his last album being issued posthumously in 2011.

On June 16, 2010, Bill Dixon, who played trumpet, flugelhorn and piano died in his sleep at his home after suffering from an undisclosed illness.

 

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RUSSELL GUNN + BLACKHAWK

Two-time GRAMMY-nominated trumpeter, composer, arranger and producer Russell Gunn returns to this intimate room with one of his most ambitious statements yet: his album release weekend of Afrikan-Amerikan Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth By Any Means Necessary, a provocative seven-song work that draws inspiration from the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead and reimagines the idea of a spiritual guide through the history, identity, resilience and forward movement of Black Americans. Featuring six original Gunn compositions and a Duke Ellington classic, the project brings together the fearless musical language that has defined Gunn’s career—jazz steeped in the Black musical continuum, alive with gospel, funk, hip-hop, groove and uncompromising improvisation.

The album also introduces Blackhawk, Gunn’s hand-selected ensemble whose name pays tribute to Miles Davis’ legendary In Person Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk, the recording Gunn credits with profoundly shaping his understanding of how jazz should feel. At its heart, however, Afrikan-Amerikan Book of the Dead is not a meditation on death, but an affirmation of life: music concerned with knowing who you are, understanding what came before you and moving forward with purpose, pride and possibility.

Cover: $59.00

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JOE GRANSDEN & KENNY BANKS SR.

The Art of The Song

Two of Atlanta’s finest jazz artists come together for an evening celebrating the enduring beauty of the Great American Songbook. Joe Gransden and Kenny Banks Sr. bring warmth, soul, and swing to timeless songs, shaped by their deep musical connection and years of shared artistry. With elegance, spontaneity, and a true love of the music, they make each performance feel both familiar and fresh.

Cover: $40.00

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