Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Percy Gaston Humphrey was born January 13, 1905 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was the son of clarinetist Willie Eli Humphrey and the younger brother of clarinetist Willie and trombonist Earl. He learned the musical basics of New Orleans jazz from his grandfather “Professor” Jim Humphrey.
For more than thirty years he was leader of the Eureka Brass Band founded by trumpeter Willie Wilson and played alongside Willie Parker, John Casimir and George Lewis. After Wilson got ill, Alcide Landry, Joseph “Red” Clark and Dominique “T-Boy” Remy each temporarily led the group until 1946 when Percy took over until the demise of the band in 1975. He also played in the band of pianist Sweet Emma Barrett.
For years he led his own jazz band Percy Humphrey and His Crescent City Joymakers. He played regularly at Preservation Hall from its opening in the early Sixties until shortly before his death. He traveled and performed internationally with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band as well as his own bands.
As a leader and sideman of the various groups he recorded prolifically with Pax, Alamac, Folkways, Jazzology and Sounds of New Orleans. A 1951 album, New Orleans Parade, features Humphrey with trombonists Charles “Sunny” Henry and Albert Warner and saxophonist Emmanuel Paul. Their 1962 sessions, Jazz at Preservation Hall, Volume 1: the Eureka Brass Band of New Orleans, on Atlantic Records with his borhter Willie, Kid Sheik Cola, Pete Bocage, Alber Warner and Oscar “Chicken” Henry, Emanuel Pail, Wilbert “Bird” Tilman, Josiah “Cie” Frazier and Robert “Son Fewclothes” Lewis.
After 1975, Percy revived the name occasionally for festival performances and other appearances. Trumpeter and bandleader Percy Humphrey continued to lead his own band until his passing in New Orleans on July 22, 1995 at the age of ninety .His last gig was at the annual New Orleans jazz festival in April, three months before his death.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roger Guérin was born on January 9, 1926 in Saarbrücken, Germany and initially studied violin, followed by cornet and trumpetat the Paris Conservatory. It was there as a teenager that he won first prize.
Roger began working professionally in 1947, playing with Aime Barelli, Django Reinhardt, Don Byas, Hubert Fol, James Moody, Benny Golson, Bernard Peiffer, Fats Sadi, Lucky Thompson, Kenny Clarke, Blossom Dearie, Martial Solal, Michel Legrand and Andre Hodeir.
Playing at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival l with a youth ensemble, Guérin also played in Les Double Six in 1959, later returning to this group. He replaced Clark Terry in Quincy Jones’s Big Band in 1960. He worked on the soundtrack to the film Paris Blues in 1961 with Duke Ellington and went on to work extensively as a vocalist for Michel Legrand.
He has over 150 album credits to his name including recording with the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band, and has won the Prix Django Reinhardt in 1959. Trumpeter and vocalist Roger Guérin passed away on February 6, 2010 in Nimes, France.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Irvin Mayfield, Jr. was born on born December 23, 1977 in New Orleans, Louisiana, the youngest of five brothers, three half-brothers and a half-sister. He received his first trumpet when he was in the fourth grade, asking his father for one after seeing the success a friend of his was having with girls by playing the instrument. Early in his public school education, he befriended fellow schoolmate Jason Marsalis. As a young man he attended and graduated from New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, declined a scholarship to Juilliard School of Music to attend the University of New Orleans, then dropped out during his first semester.
Mayfield began his musical career during the latter half of the 1980s, playing with the Algiers Brass Band, shared a New York City apartment with Wynton Marsalis for a brief period and helped found Los Hombres Calientes with Bill Summers, Jason Marsalis, Victor Atkins III, David Pulphus, and Yvette-Bostic Summers. Signing with Basin Street Records, the groups debut album garnerd much success and Irvin received national recognition.
As an educator Mayfield would go on to be an artist-in-residence and establish the Institute of Jazz Culture at Dillard University, found the sixteen-piece New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, accept a one-year appointment as Artistic Director of Jazz at Orchestra Hall, the five-concert jazz series of the Minnesota Orchestra, received The Chancellor’s Award from the University of New Orleans, and awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Dillard University,
Over the course of his still vibrant career, Mayfield has been a part of the Higher GroundHurricane Relief Benefit Concert in the aftermath of Katrina, and was nominated to the National Council on the Arts by President George W. Bush and was subsequently appointed to the post by President Obama in 2010, serving through 2014. He has performed at the White House and festivals around the country, was made a Cultural Ambassador of the City of New Orleans, has a club named after him in the Royal Sonesta Hotel and has recorded to date, twenty-five albums.
Grammy and Billboard Award-winning trumpeter Irvin Mayfield currently serves as Jazz Artist in Residence for the Apollo Theater, is Artistic Director of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra and continues to perform, record and tour with his small groups and occasionally with Los Hombres Calientes.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sy Oliver was born Melvin James Oliver on December 17, 1910 in Battle Creek, Michigan. His mother was a piano teacher and his father was a multi-instrumentalist who made a name for himself demonstrating saxophones at a time that instrument was little used outside of marching bands. Showing a proclivity for singing as a child, he also learned to lay trumpet during these formative years.
Oliver left home at 17 to play with Zack Whyte and his Chocolate Beau Brummels and later with Alphonse Trent. He sang and played trumpet with these bands, becoming known for his “growling” horn playing. In 1933, he joined the Jimmie Lunceford band, contributing many hit arrangements for the band, including My Blue Heaven and Ain’t She Sweet as well as his original composition For Dancers Only which in time became the band’s theme song.
By 1939 Sy became one of the first Black musician with a prominent role in a white band when he joined Tommy Dorsey as an arranger, though he ceased playing trumpet at that time. He led the transition of the Dorsey band from Dixieland to modern big band. His joining was instrumental in Buddy Rich’s decision to join Dorsey. His arrangement of On The Sunny side Of The Street, Yes Indeed!, Opus One, The Minor Is Muggin’ and Well, Git It were big hits for Dorsey,
After leaving Dorsey, Oliver continued working as a freelance arranger and as music director for Decca Records. One of his more successful efforts as an arranger was the Frank Sinatra album I Remember Tommy, a combined tribute to their former boss.
In 1950 the Sy Oliver Orchestra released the first American version of C’est Si Bon with the interpretation of Louis Armstrong to worldwide success. In his later years, up until 1980, he reformed his own big and small bands, with which he also played his trumpet again after having set it aside so many years earlier.
He arranged and conducted many songs for Ella Fitzgerald during her Decca years. As a composer, one of his most famous songs was T’ain’t What You Do (It’s The Way You Do It, which he co-wrote with Trummy Young. On May 28, 1988 arranger, composer, bandleader, trumpeter and singer Sy Oliver passed away in New York City. He was 77.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Terell Stafford was born on November 25, 1966 in Miami Florida and raised in Chicago, Illinois and Silver Spring, Maryland. Originally a classical trumpet player, he soon branched out to jazz with the University of Maryland jazz band. He went on to get a degree in music education from the University of Maryland in 1988 and a degree in classical trumpet performance from Rutgers University in 1993.
Soon afterwards his career in jazz picked up and playing with McCoy Tyner, Christian McBride, John Clayton, Steve Turre, Dave Valentin and Russell Malone. In 1995 he released his debut album Time To Let Go on the Candid label. Not one to settle for the status quo of who’s who, he has found other up-and-comers such as bassist Derrick Hodge, who appears as a sideman on his 2003 MaxJazz release New Beginnings.
As an educator Stafford is the current Director of Jazz Studies at the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University, has worked with the Juilliard School’s jazz program at the Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington program, and with the 2006 All-Alaska Jazz Band.
In between his teaching responsibilities trumpeter Terell Stafford has performed at Carnegie Hall, has been a guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, recorded nine CDs, performed as a sideman with Stephen Scott, Shirley Scott, Bobby Watson, Lafayette Harris, Cecil Brooks III, Tim Warfield, Ed Wiley, Cornell Dupree, Herbie Mann, Victor Lewis, Marc Cary, Melissa Walker Ferit Odman, Jack cooper, Bruce Barth and the Arkadia Jazz All Stars as he continues to perform, record and tour.
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