Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Warren Vaché, born February 21, 1951 in Rahway, New Jersey came from a musical family. His father was a bassist, author of several jazz books and a critic, while his mother was a secretary at Decca Records. He began playing piano in the third grade but soon switched to trumpet so he could play in the fourth grade band and his father immediately bought him a cornet.
Over the years Warren has looked to Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Bobby Hacket, Fats Navarro, Tom Harrell and Ruby Braff as his sources of inspiration. Throughout high school and while attending Montclair State College he played gigs from dance to weddings and all kinds of receptions.
Part of his formal training by studying under Pee Wee Erwin and continued with him playing in polka, Dixieland, big dance and Broadway pit bands, as well as small jazz groups and large free-wheeling combos.
His first professional job was with the Billy Maxted band in Detroit in 1972. From there he ventured on to play th Broadway production of Mr. Jazz, work with George Wein and finally landing in Benny Goodman’s band. There he played with Hank Jones, Urbie Green, Zoot Sims and Slam Stewart.
He became part of the Condon’s house band, had his debut release, First Time Out on the Monmouth label, but Concord Records gave him his biggest exposure working with Scott Hamilton, John Bunch, Jake Hanna and Cal Collins. He has also worked with Bucky Pizzarelli and Howard Alden.
Swing master cornet, flugelhorn and trumpeter Warren Vaché currently maintains a full schedule of recording, worldwide festivals appearances, Broadway and club dates.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Buddy Childers was born Marion Childers in Belleville, Illinois on February 12, 1926. He came to fame in 1942 at the age of 16 when he took over the first trumpet chair in the Stan Kenton Orchestra. For years he worked with Kenton as well as performing with Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Les Brown, Charlie Barnet, Dan Terry and other big bands.
He would go on to work with Gene Ammons, Elmer Bernstein, Maynard Ferguson, Clare Fischer, Milt Jackson, Carmen McRae, Oliver Nelson and Lalo Schifrin among others. No stranger to television programs and or films, Childers put together a big band that recorded for Candid Records in the 1980s and 1990s. He also recorded quintet and quartet sessions with Herbie Steward, Arnold Ross, Bob Harrington and Harry Babasin on the Jazz City label.
Trumpeter, composer and ensemble leader Buddy Childers passed away of cancer on May 24, 2007, at the age of 81.
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Manny Klein was born Emmanuel Klein on February 4, 1908. Not much is known about his youth and trumpet education but he began with Paul Whiteman in 1928. Active throughout the 1930s, he played with several major bands of the era including the Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman.
By 1937 Klein had moved to California and worked with Frank Trumbauer’s orchestra and in early 1940 he appears on Artie Shaw And His Orchestra recordings. During this period he also did soundtracks and though received no credit, played trumpet for the film From Here To Eternity, and worked with musicians associated with West Coast cool jazz in the 1950s.
A versatile player who could play in almost any setting, including first trumpet in an orchestra, classical and pop, appearing on several Dean Martin recordings during the 1960s, and played piccolo trumpet on Hugh Montenegro’s hit version of the main theme to the film, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Regarded as one of the most proficient players of his, or any generation, he possessed an uncanny ability to mimic the styles of many other prominent trumpeters, namely Bunny Berigan and Ziggy Elman. Trumpeter Manny Klein, most associated with swing, passed away at the age of 86 in Los Angeles, California on May 31, 1994.
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Hot Lips Page was born Oran Thaddeus Page on January 27, 1908 in Dallas, Texas. His main trumpet influence was Louis Armstrong as well as early influence from Harry Smith and Benno Kennedy. In his early teens he moved to Corsicana, Texas and traveled across the Southwest and toured as far East as Atlanta and north to New York City. He played in circuses and minstrel shows and backed blues singers Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Ida Cox.
In 1926 he caught the eye of the bassist Walter Page (no relation) who had recently assumed leadership of the Oklahoma City Blue Devils and by 1928 was playing and touring. In 1931 he left to join the Bennie Moten Orchestra in Kansas City.
Hot Lips went on to occasionally appear as vocalist, emcee and trumpet soloist with Count Basie’s Reno Club orchestra after Moten’s sudden death disbanded the group. It was during this period that Page embarked upon a solo career, playing with small pick up bands from Kansas City. At the behest of Armstrong’s manager Joe Glaser, he moved to New York City in 1936.
His career as a bandleader got off to an auspicious start in 1937 with sold-out appearances and an extended run at Harlem’s Smalls Paradise, but struggling by 1939 he was struggling to maintain a regular working band, he led small combos and bands on 52nd Street through the Fifties. Page was known as “Mr. After Hours” to his many friends for his ability to take on all comers in late night jam sessions, recorded for the Mezzrow-Bechet Septet in 1945, as Pappa Snow White, with Mezz Mezzrow, Sidney Bechet, Pops Foster, Chu Berry, Sid Catlett and vocalist Pleasant Joe.
Over the course of his short career Hot Lips made over 200 recordings, most as a leader, for Bluebird, Vocalion, Decca and Harmony Records, among others. He toured extensively throughout the southern and northeast states and Canada, led as many as thirteen different big bands, appeared with Bud Freeman and Artie Shaw, recording over 40 sides with the latter. His band backed the singer Wynonie Harris was the leader of the Apollo Theater, recorded duets with Pearl Bailey on The Hucklebuck and Baby It’s Cold Outside and twice toured Europe.
Known as Hot Lips to the public and Lips by fellow musicians, the bandleader and trumpeter heralded as one of the giants of the Swing Era and a founder of what became rhythm and blues, passed away due to mysterious circumstances in New York on November 5, 1954 at the age of 46.
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Talib Ahmad Dawood, formerly Alfonso Nelson Rainey, was born on January 26, 1923 on Antigua. He first took lessons from his father, a trumpeter who played in marching bands; his mother was a singer who accompanied him on piano. He also learned to play the banjo and the pipe organ.
His further education came in the United States at from his high school and music school experiences at the end of the 1930s in New York. Because of the support he received fromof the Barrymore Foundation, Talib first took the stage name Barrymore Rainey. After studying at the Juilliard School in 1940, he played with Tiny Bradshaw, Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter, Andy Kirk, Jimmie Lunceford, Roy Eldridge and other swing orchestras.
In Philadelphia he met Sheikh Nasir Ahmad, an Ahmadiyya missionary, through whom he converted to Islam and took the name Talib Dawud. In the second half of the 1940s and again in 1956 he was a member of the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, performing with in 1957 at the Newport Jazz Festival.
1958 saw Dawud married to singer Dakota Staton who was no longer actively working since 1959 and the two operated an Africa-Import Shop in New York City. As a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim sect, which distanced itself from the Nation of Islam, he wrote numerous articles in the African-American Chicago daily New Crusader on the controversy between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X.
Trumpeter Talib Dawud never had the opportunity to record as a leader, and on July 9, 1999 he passed away in New York City.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
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