Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Shorty Baker was born Harold Baker on May 26, 1914 in St. Louis, Missouri and began playing drums, but switched to trumpet during his teens.
He started his career on riverboats with Fate Marable, then with Erskine Tate before playing with Don Redman in the mid-1930s. He went on to work with Teddy Wilson and Andy Kirk before joining Duke Ellington. Shorty married Kirk’s pianist Mary Lou Williams and though the two separated shortly thereafter, they never officially divorced.
Baker worked on and off in Duke Ellington’s Orchestra from 1942 to 1962 alongside Ray Nance, Clark Terry, Taft Jordan, Willie Cook and Cat Anderson among others. He also worked with Billy Strayhorn and Johnny Hodges’ group in the early Fifties during the period when Hodges was not a member of Ellington’s orchestra. During the latter years of his career he worked with Bud Freeman and Doc Cheatham.
Trumpeter Shorty Baker passed away on November 8, 1966 in New York City.
Sponsored By
www.whatissuitetabu.com
More Posts: trumpet
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kenny Ball was born Kenneth Daniel Ball on May 22, 1930 in Ilford, Essex, England. At the age of 14 he left school to work as a clerk in an advertising agency, but also started taking trumpet lessons. He began his career as a semi-professional sideman in bands in addition to being a salesman and continued working at the ad agency.
Turning professional in 1953 Kenny played the trumpet in bands led by Sid Phillips, Eric Delaney, Charlie Galbraith and Terry Lightfoot before forming his own trad jazz band, Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen in 1958. His Dixieland band was at the forefront of the early 1960s UK jazz revival.
Ball’s 1961 recording of Cole Porter’s Samantha became a hit and they reached No. 2 by the end of the year on the UK Singles Chart. The following year they hit the Hot 100 with Midnight In Moscow, selling over a million copies, earning them a gold record. Further hits followed such as March of the Siamese Children from the King and I, however crossing to the U.S. though making the cover of New Musical Express along with Cliff Richards, Brenda Lee, Joe Brown, Craig Douglas and Frank Ifield, they remained a one-hit wonder.
By 1963 Ball became the first British jazzman to become an honorary citizen of New Orleans and appeared in the film Live It Up!, featuring Gene Vincent. In 1968 the band appeared with Louis Armstrong during his last European tour and later appeared on BBC Television’s review of the 1960s music scene Pop Go the Sixties. His continued success was aided by guest appearances on every edition of the first six series of the BBC’s Morecambe and Wise Show and performed at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.
Kenny enjoyed one of the longest unbroken spells of success for trad bands and over the course of his career he charted fourteen Top 50 it singles, reached Number 1 collaborating with Acker Bilk and Chris Barber on a joint album, The Best of Ball, Barber and Bilk. In 2001 he recorded on the album British Jazz Legends Together that also featured Bilk, Don Lusher, John Chilton & The Feetwarmers, John Dankworth, Humphrey Littleton and George Melly.
Trumpeter Kenny Ball continued to tour until shortly before his death, performing his last concert with Bilk and Barber at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall on February 21st, two weeks before he passed away on March 7, 2013 at age 82 in Basildon Hospital in Essex, where he was being treated for pneumonia.
Put A Dose In Your Pocket
More Posts: trumpet
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
King Oliver was born Joseph Nathan Oliver on May 11, 1885 in Aben, Louisiana. He was also known as Joe Oliver and moved to New Orleans in his youth. He first studied the trombone and then changed to cornet. From 1908 to 1917 he played cornet in New Orleans brass and dance bands, and also in the city’s red-light district known as Storyville.
Oliver co-led a band with trombonist Kid Ory that was considered to be New Orleans’ hottest and best in the late 1910s. He gained great popularity in New Orleans across economic and racial lines, and was in demand for music jobs from rough working-class black dance halls to white society debutante parties.
With the closing of Storyville, Joe packed up his wife and child and moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1918. There he found work with clarinetist Lawrence Duhé, bassist Bill Johnson, trombonist Roy Palmer and drummer Paul Barbarin, eventually becoming the leader. By 1922 he was billing himself as King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band at the Royal Gardens cabaret. His band included Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodds, Johnny Dodds, Lil Hardin, Honoré Dutrey and William Manuel Johnson. The following year they recorded for Gennett, Okeh, Paramount and Columbia record labels, bringing Dixieland to the attention of a much wider audience.
The mid-Twenties saw King enlarging his band to nine musicians, began performing more written arrangements with jazz solos, disbanding to do more freelance work in New York, Over the course of his career Oliver pioneered the use of mutes, including the rubber plumber’s plunger, derby hat, bottles and cups but his favorite mute was a small metal mute made by the C.G. Conn Instrument Company. He performed mostly on cornet, but like many cornet players he switched to trumpet in the late 1920s.
Oliver was also a talented composer, and wrote many tunes that are still regularly played, including Dippermouth Blues, Sweet Like This, Canal Street Blues, and Doctor Jazz. His recording Wa Wa Wa with the Dixie Syncopators can be credited with giving the name wah-wah to such techniques.
As an educator he influenced young New Orleans and Chicago players like Tommy Ladnier, Paul Mares, Muggsy Spanier, Johnny Wiggs Frank Guarente, Louis Panico and Louis Armstrong. The latter he taught, gave him his job in Kid Ory’s band and then summoned him to Chicago to play in his band.
As a businessman his acumen was often less than his musical ability losing jobs at the Savoy Ballroom and the Cotton Club by holding out for moe money than they were willing to pay. Ellington took the Cotton Club job and catapulted to fame
Oliver’s managers stole money from him and then the Great Depression hit losing his life savings to a failed Chicago bank, and bookings became lean.Oliver also had health problems, suffering from the gum disease pyorrhea, caused by his love of sugar sandwiches. He began employing younger musicians to play solos like up-and-coming trumpeter Henry “Red” Allen. Coupled with health problems suffering from periodontitis and his diminished capacity to play left him no choice but to stop playing by 1937.
Cornetist and bandleader King Oliver died in poverty of arteriosclerosis in a Savannah rooming house on April 10, 1938 at age 52, too broke to afford treatment. His sister spent her rent money to have his body brought to New York, where he was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. In attendance were his friends Louis Armstrong, Clarence Williams, Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, W.C. Handy, Milt Jackson, and Max Roach. In 2007 he was inducted as a charter member of the Gennett Records Walk of Fame in Richmond, Indiana.
Jazz Is Global – Share
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dick Pearce was born April 19, 1951 in Forest Gate, London, England. Dick began playing cornet at the age of 12 in the Boys’ Brigade and joined Ewell village’s local brass band a year later. At 15 he became interested in jazz and attended a Sunday morning rehearsal band run by the dance bandleader Ken Macintosh. Soon after, he joined Bill Ashton’s National Youth Jazz Orchestra where he met many like-minded young musicians.
At 17 he spent three and a half extremely disillusioned years in the army (The Household Cavalry) supposedly as a bandsman. He’d played Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto for his audition and expected to receive musical tuition after signing on the dotted line, but for most of his service he found himself sitting on a horse playing bugle calls. Discharged from the army in April 1972, he began playing with some of the ‘freer’ bands of that time – led by Graham Collier, Dudu Pukwana, Pat Evans and Keith Tippet.
In the mid to late 70s he was drawn towards the harmonically structured improvisation of post-Bebop playing with jazz groups led by the likes of Don Rendell, Michael Garrick and Mike Westbrook, while also playing with his own generation of young jazz musicians.
In 1980 Dick joined The Ronnie Scott Quintet, with whom he travelled all over the world for the following 14 years. The band included pianist John Critchinson, double bassist Ron Mathewson, drummer Martin Drew and Ronnie Scott on tenor sax. In 1990 the quintet became a sextet with the addition of Mornington Lockett on tenor sax.
In more recent years trumpeter Dick Pearce has been playing with Alan Barnes, Don Weller’s Tribute to Cannonball Adderley Band. The Don Weller Big Band. The Tim Richards Great Spirit, the John Williams New Perspectives. Stan and Clarke Tracey’s Ellingtonia, Pete Downes Trio with Dick Pearce and John Critchinson’s tribute to Ronnie Scott band.
Give The Gift Of Knowledge
More Posts: trumpet
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hugh Ramopolo Masekela was born on April 4, 1939 in Kwa-Guqa Township of Witbank, South Africa. He began singing and playing piano as a child. At the age of 14, after seeing Kirk Douglas in the film Young Man With A Horn he took up playing the trumpet. He was given his first trumpet was given to him by anti-apartheid Archbishop Trevor Huddleston at St. Peter’s Secondary School.
Quickly mastering the instrument under the tutelage of Uncle Sauda of Johannesburg’s Native Municipal Brass Band, Masekela along with some of his schoolmates formed the Huddleston Jazz Band, South Africa’s first youth orchestra. By 1956, after leading other ensembles, he joined Alfred Hebrert’s African Jazz Revue.
In 1958 he wound up in the orchestra of South Africa’s first musical blockbuster King Kong, followed by touring the country for a sold-out year with Miriam Makeba and the Manhattan Brothers’ Nathan Mdledle in the lead. By the end of 1959 Hugh along with Dollar Brand, Kippie Moeketsi, Makhaya Ntshoko and Johnny Gertze formed the Jazz Epistles. They became the first African jazz group to record an album and perform to record-breaking audiences in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Following the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre of 69 peacefully protesting Africans he left the country with the help of Huddleston, Yehudi Menuhin and John Dankworth for London’s Guildhall School of Music. Befriended by Harry Belafonte on a visit to the U.S. he gained admission to Manhattan School of Music studying classical trumpet.
By the late Sixties he had hits with Up, Up & Away and Grazing In The Grass, appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival, and was featured in the film Monterey Pop. In 1974, Masekela and friend Stewart Levine organized the Zaire 74 music festival around the Rumble In The Jungle boxing match.
He has played primarily in jazz ensembles, with guest appearances on recordings by The Byrds and Paul Simon. Since 1954 Hugh’s music protested about apartheid, slavery, government and the hardships individuals were living but also vividly portrayed the struggles and sorrows, as well as the joys and passions of his country. In 1987, he had a hit single with Bring Him Back Home, which became an anthem for the movement to free Nelson Mandela.
Trumpeter Hugh Masekela also plays the flugelhorn, cornet, and trombone and is a composer and singer. He has some four dozen albums to date in his catalogue, has won two Grammy Awards with seven nominations, received two honorary doctorates, and serves as a director on the board of The Lunchbox Fund, a non-profit organization that provides a daily meal to students of township schools in Soweto. He continues to perform, record and tour.
Take A Dose On The Road
More Posts: cornet,flugelhorn,trombone,trumpet