Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Melton S. Mustafa was born on November 23, 1947 in Miami, Florida, the younger brother of Jesse Jones, Jr. He started playing the trumpet in junior high school and as a teenager played in a five-piece R&B/calypso band led by his brother. As a young adult in the Sixties, he studied at Berklee College of Music and Mississippi Valley State College before graduating from Florida A&M with a degree in music education.
During this period he started played behind Sam and Dave, Betty Wright, Lattimore, the Marvelettes and Joe Simon. His love for jazz never waning, his visibility on the Miami jazz scene increased when Melton joined hard bopper multi-instrumentalist Ira Sullivan. By the 80s he was playing with the Duke Ellington Orchestra led by mercer Ellington, Jaco Pastorius, James Williams, Bobby Watson and John Hicks and Mingus Dynasty among others.
Mustafa joined the Count Basie Orchestra in 1984 and stayed for eight years. In 1992 he formed his own big band and a couple years later signed with Contemporary/Fantasy releasing his debut album Boiling Point. He followed up with his sophomore project St. Louis Blues in 1997. Never far from jazz standards and ballads his quintet recorded his latest CD titled The Softer Side, Scenes from Miami Vol. 1 featuring Duffy Jackson on drums, Dennis Marks on bass and Jim Gasior on piano.
He produces his Annual Melton Mustafa Jazz Festival at the university that has welcomed Jon Faddis, Abraham Laboriel, Benny Golson, Dr. Nathan Davis, Dr. Grover Washington Jr., Dr. James Moody, Idris Muhammad, George Cables, Wallace Roney, Patrice Rushen, Geri Allen, Jimmy Owens, Billy Cobham, Herbie Mann, Dr. Billy Taylor, Clark Terry, Curtis Fuller, Nestor Torres, Winard Harper, Najee, Randy Brecker, and others.
As an educator he is the Director of Jazz Studies at Florida Memorial University, teaching Music Theory, Jazz Composition and other jazz related courses. The hard bop, post bop, soul and swing trumpeter, composer, arranger and producer and educator Melton Mustafa continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Scotty Barnhart was born William Barnhart on October 27, 1964 in Atlanta, Georgia. Receiving his education in music from Florida A&M University, he joined the Count Basie Orchestra in 1992. The following year he became a featured soloist with the band and just ten years later he was appointed as the new director of the orchestra. It was with the Basie Orchestra that he became a two-time Grammy winner.
His solo disc on Unity Records is titled Say It Plain reached #3 on the jazz charts and features Clark Terry, Ellis and Wynton Marsalis, Marcus Roberts, Jamie Davis and Etienne Charles. Barnhart has recorded with Marcus Roberts, Tony Bennett, Diana Krall, Ray Charles and Tito Puente, to name a few.
He is active as an educator, clinician and author, he has written The World of Jazz Trumpet – A Comprehensive History and Practical Philosophy. He is a professor in the College of Music at Florida State University. In between his teaching duties, touring with the Basie Orchestra and lecturing at colleges and universities around the world, trumpeter Scotty Barnhart performs and tours leading his quintet-sextet.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eddie Henderson was born on October 26, 1940 in New York City. His mother was an original Cotton Club dancer and his father sang with a popular singing group of the day, Billy Williams and The Charioteers. At the age of nine he got an informal lesson by Louis Armstrong and continued his study of the instrument as a teenager at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, after his family moved there in 1954. As a young man, he performed with the San Francisco Conservatory Symphony Orchestra. In 1957 he met Miles Davis, a friend of his parents and played a gig together when he was just 17.
After three years in the Air Force, Henderson enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley graduating with a B.S. in zoology in 1964. He then studied medicine at Howard University, then went back to the Bay area undertook his residency in psychiatry in 1968, he practiced general medicine from 1975 to 1985 in San Francisco part-time for about four hours a day working at a small clinic.
His break in music came when he took a weeklong gig with Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi band that led to a three-year job. It was during this period in the early 70s that her recorded three albums with the group but more importantly came out as a leader and recorded his debut album Realization followed by Inside Out.
After leaving Hancock, Eddie worked extensively with Pharoah Sanders, Mike Nock, Norman Connors, and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. He joined Latin jazz band Azteca, recorded with Charles Earland and fronted his own bands, both jazz and rock-oriented. However, recognized for his work with Hancock, his own records were considered too commercial.
By the 1990s, Henderson returned to playing acoustic hard bop, touring with Billy Harper while also working as a physician. He recorded at Miles tribute album So What? with Bob Berg, Dave Kikoski, Ed Howard and Victor Lewis. He has collaborated with his wife Natsuko who composed Tender You, Precious Moment, Around the World in 3/4 and Be Cool.
As an educator trumpet and flugelhorn player Eddie Henderson has been a faculty member of Juilliard since 2007 and is Associate Professor of Trumpet at the Oberlin Conservatory Jazz Department, beginning in 2014. He has recorded 23 albums as a leader, has released two anthologies, and recorded nearly four-dozen sessions as a sideman with Benny Golson, Mulgrew Miller, Richard Davis, Gary Bartz, Leon Thomas, Billy Hart, McCoy Tyner, Mal Waldron, Stanley Cowell, Grover Washington, Jr., Kenny Barron, Joe Farnsworth and the Mingus Big Band to name a few.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dizzy Gillespie was born John Birks Gillespie on October 21, 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina, the youngest of nine children of James and Lottie Gillespie. His father, a local bandleader, made instruments available to the children. He started playing the piano at the age of four and taught himself how to play the trombone as well as the trumpet by the age of twelve. From the night he heard his idol, Roy Eldridge, play on the radio, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician. Receiving a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina, he attended for two years before accompanying his family when they moved to Philadelphia.
Gillespie’s first professional job was with the Frank Fairfax Orchestra in 1935, after which he joined the respective orchestras of Edgar Hayes and Teddy Hill, essentially replacing Roy Eldridge as first trumpet in 1937 and making his first recording as part of the band on King Porter Stomp. He would move on to play with Cab Calloway, alongside Cozy Cole, Milt Hinton and Jonah Jones until an altercation with Calloway got him fired. During his period he started writing big band music for bandleaders like Woody Herman and Jimmy Dorsey while freelancing with a few bands – most notably Ella Fitzgerald’s orchestra, comprised of members of the late Chick Webb’s band, in 1942. Avoiding service in World War II, he joined the Earl Hines band followed by a stint with Billy Eckstine’s big band, got reunited with Charlie Parker and finally left to play with a small combo of quintet size.
A forerunner of the evolution of bebop along with Parker, Monk, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke, and Oscar Pettiford, Dizzy helped shape a new vocabulary of musical phrases. They jammed at Minton’s Playhouse and Monroe’s Uptown House with compositions like Groovin’ High, Woody ‘n’ You, Salt Peanuts and A Night In Tunisia that also introduced Afro-Cuban rhythms.
As an educator Gillespie taught or influenced many of the young musicians on 52nd Street including Miles Davis, Max Roach, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, Chuck Mangione and even balladeer Johnny Hartman about the new style of jazz, but after ambivalent or hostile reception in Billy Berg’s Los Angeles club, he decided to lead his own big band, though unsuccessful at his first attempt in 1945. He went on to work with Milt Jackson, John Coltrane, Lalo Schifrin, Ray Brown, Kenny Clarke, James Moody, J.J. Johnson and Yusef Lateef, whole appearing as a soloist for Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic.
In 1948 Dizzy lost his ability to hit the B-flat above high C due to an automobile hitting the bicycle he was riding. He won the case, but the jury awarded him only $1000, in view of his high earnings up to that point. Not to be sidelined, he went on tour for the State Department earning himself the title Ambassador of Jazz. His new big band would tour the U.S. and record a live album at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival and featured pianist Mary Lou Williams.
Dizzy immersed himself in the Afro-Cuban movement and hired Chano Pozo and Mario Bauza to play in his bands on 52nd Street, the Palladium and the Apollo Theater. He co-wrote with Pozo the songs Manteca and Tin Tin Deo, commissioned George Russell’s Cubano Be, Cubano Bop, and discovered Arturo Sandoval while on a music researching trip to Cuba.
As his tone gradually faded in the last years in life his performances often focused more on his protégés, such as, Arturo Sandoval and Jon Faddis, all the while keeping his good-humored comedic routines a part of his live act. Dizzy would go on to give 300 performances in 27 countries, appeared in 100 U.S. cities in 31 states and the District of Columbia, headline three television specials, performed with two symphonies, and recorded four albums.
Gillespie put himself on the ballot as a write-in candidate of the 1964 Presidential election, published his autobiography, To Be or Not To Bop, was a vocal fixture in many of the John & Faith Hubley’s animated films, such as The Hole, The Hat and Voyage to Next. He led the United Nation Orchestra, toured with Flora Purim and David Sanchez in his band, received Grammy nominations, guested on The Muppet Show, Sesame Street and The Cosby Show and had a cameo on Stevie Wonder’s hit Do I Do and Quincy Jones’ Back On The Block.
Inducted into the Down Beat Magazine’s Jazz Hall of Fame, Dizzy was also honored by being crowned a traditional chief in Nigeria, received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France, and was named Regent Professor by the university of California, received fourteen honorary doctorates, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the Polar Music Prize, a Hollywood Walk of Fame Star, the Kennedy Center Honors Award, and the Ameican Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Duke Ellington Award for 50 years of achievement. Composer, performer, bandleader and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie passed away of pancreatic cancer on January 6, 1993 in Englewood, New Jersey at the age of 75. In 2014, Gillespie was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
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Donald Ayler was born in Cleveland Heights, Ohio on October 5, 1942, the younger brother of saxophonist Albert Ayler. He took up the trumpet as a child and went on to work with his brother in the mid-1960s but in 1967 had a nervous breakdown, which affected his brother’s life as well.
In 1970 his brother’s death affected him deeply. After that he worked with a septet in Florence but never led a recording session of his own. To this day, Donald remains best known for his jazz performance and recordings with his brother Albert.
Trumpeter Donald Ayler, who played in the free, avant-garde and mainstream genres of jazz, suffered a sudden heart attack on Sunday October 21, 2007, and passed away at home in Northfield, Ohio.
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