Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gerald Stanley Wilson was born on September 4, 1918 in Shelby, Mississippi. At age 16 he moved to Detroit, Michigan where he attended with Wardell Gray and graduated from Cass Technical High School. He joined the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra in 1939, replacing its star trumpeter and arranger Sy Oliver. While with the band, Wilson contributed numbers to the band’s book, including “Hi Spook” and “Yard-dog Mazurka”, the first being influenced by Ellington’s Caravan and the latter being a big influence on Stan Kenton’s Intermission Riff.
During World War II he performed for a brief time with the U.S. Navy with musicians including Clark Terry, Willie Smith and Jimmy Nottingham, among others. Gerald formed his own band, with some success in the mid-1940s, but by 1960, he formed a Los Angeles-based band that began a series of critically acclaimed recordings for the Pacific Jazz label. His band at various times included Snooky Young, Carmell Jones, Bud Shank, Joe maini, Harold Land, Teddy Edwards, Don Raffell, Joe Pass, Richard Holmes, Riy Ayers, Bobby Hutcherson, Mel Lewis and Mel Lee.
Wilson continued leading bands and recording in later decades for the Discovery and MAMA labels, many of his compositions reflected Spanish/Mexican themes and many were named after his family members. His later bands included Luis Bonilla, Rick Baptist, Randall Willis, son-in-law Shuggie Otis, son Anthony Wilson, grandson Eric Otis, Jimmy Owens, Oscar Brashear, Ron Barrows and Jon Faddis..
In 1998, Wilson received a commission from the Monterey Jazz Festival for an original composition, resulting in “Theme for Monterey”, performed at that year’s festival. He went on to form orchestras on the West and East coasts, each with local outstanding musicians. He also made special appearances as guest conductor with the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the Chicago Jazz Ensemble, BBC Big Band and other European radio jazz orchestras.
Gerald hosted an innovative show in the 1970’s, on KBCA in Los Angeles, California with co-host Dennis Smith, taught at California State University – Northridge and Los Angeles, Cal Arts, and University of California both in Los Angeles, and his 1998 album Theme For Monterey and his final 2011 recording Legacy were both nominated for a Grammy.
Throughout his career he wrote arrangements for the likes of Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Julie London, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Carter, Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington and Nancy Wilson just to name a few. Trumpeter, bandleader, composer, arranger and educator Gerald Wilson passed away on September 8, 2014 in his home in Los Angeles, California after a brief illness that followed a bout of pneumonia. He was 96 years old.
Jazz Is Global – Share
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Daily Doe Of Jazz…
Byron Stripling was born as Lloyd Byron Stripling on August 20, 1961, in Atlanta, Georgia. He attended Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan.
Following his studies, Stripling was featured as lead trumpeter and soloist with the Count Basie Orchestra when Thad Jones and Frank Foster were directing. His touring and recording reads like a who’s who list with Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Lionel Hampton, Clark Terry, Louis Bellson, Buck Clayton,, Gerry Mulligan,, J.J. Johnson, Jim Hall, Sonny Rollins, Paquito D’Rivera, Freddie Cole, Jack McDuff, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, the Joe Henderson Big Band and the GRP All-Star Big Band.
Byron debuted at Carnegie Hall with Skitch Henderson and the New York Pops. He took on Broadway as the lead in the musicals Satchmo and From Second Avenue to Broadway, and has had a featured cameo in the television movie The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. He again portrayed Louis Armstrong in Dave Brubeck’s revival of his The Real Ambassadors.
He has been a featured soloist at the Newport Jazz Festival, Hollywood Bowl and the Vail Jazz Festival as well as with the Boston Pops, Cincinnati Pops, Baltimore Symphony, St. Louis Symphony and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras, and the Seattle, Utah and Minnesota Symphonies, and The American Jazz Philharmonic.
In 2002 Stripling was selected to succeed Jazz Arts Group founder, Ray Eubanks, as the Artistic Director of the Columbus Jazz Orchestra. He continues to serve in that role, while also performing throughout the world with symphony orchestras and his own small group.
Give A Gift Of Jazz – Share
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tim Hagans was born on August 19, 1954 and grew up in Dayton, Ohio. His early inspiration came from Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard and Thad Jones. In 1974 he joined the Stan Kenton band with whom he played until 1977, when he then toured with Woody Herman. Leaving for Europe he lived in Malmo, Sweden, which was a hotbed of the European jazz scene. He toured extensively and played with Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew, Horace Parlan and Thad Jones. He would later dedicate For the Music Suite, a 40-minute piece for jazz orchestra to Jones.
Tim’s first recorded composition, I Hope This Time Isn’t The Last, appears on Thad Jones Live at Slukefter. In 1987 he moved to New York City and has since performed with Maria Schneider, the Yellowjackets, Steps, Secret Society, and Gary Peacock. He has worked extensively with producer and saxophonist Bob Belden on a variety of recordings and live performances, including their ongoing Animation/Imagination project.
As an educator Hagans has taught master classes at universities both stateside and abroad including the University of Cincinnati and Berklee College of Music. He has held the position of Artistic Director and Composer-in-Residence for the Norrbotten Big Band in Lulea, Sweden for which his Avatar Seesions: The Music of Tim Hagans was nominated for a Grammy. He has had several commissions by the NDR Big Band, Jazz Baltica, and the Barents Composers Orchestra.
Trumpeter Tim Hagans has been honored with awards, a featured subject in the documentary Boogaloo Road, a featured soloist on the soundtrack for the film The Score with Marlon Brando, Edward Norton and Robert DeNiro. He currently performs, tours, and records with the Tim Hagans Quartet: Tim Hagans, trumpet; Vic Juris, guitar; Rufus Reid, bass, and Jukkis Uotila, drums.
Inspire A Young Mind
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eddie Shu was born Edward Shulman on March18, 1918 in New York City and learned violin and guitar as a child before picking up the saxophone as a teenager. He began his professional career in 1935 in Brooklyn and for the seven years leading up to his service in the U.S. Army, he performed in vaudeville and night clubs as a ventriloquist and played harmonica with the Cappy Barra harmonica Band.
While serving in the Army from 1942 to 1945 with Stan Harper, the two were assigned to a special unit to entertain the troops. He also played in various bans including with Maurice Evans in the Pacific. After the war and through the 1950s Eddie performed with Tadd Dameron, George Shearing, Johnny Bothwell, Buddy Rich, Les Elgart, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Barnet, Chubby Jackson, and Gene Krupa.
By the 1960s Shu moved to Florida, playing locally as well as with the Louis Armstrong All-Stars, Lionel Hampton and Gene Krupa once again. He was a member of the vocal jazz group Rare Silk in 1980. During this period, he performed with this group in and around Boulder, Colorado and also performed a 6-week Department of Defense tour. He would record his final date on the Island Jazz Label “Shu-Swings” With The Joe Delaney Trio, playing tenor and alto saxophones, clarinet, trumpet and also revisit’s his 1954 78 single “Ruby” on chromatic harmonica.
Eddie Shu died on July 4, 1986 in St. Petersburg, Florida while living in Tampa. The swing and jazz multi-instrumentalist also had a high proficiency on the accordion and was a popular comedic ventriloquist.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Louis Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana and grew up in the poverty-stricken, rough neighborhood known as “The Battlefield”, which was part of the Storyville legal prostitution district. Abandoned by his father while still an infant, he and his sister lived with relatives for a period of years. He attended the Fisk School for Boys, getting his early exposure to music, worked as a paperboy, discarded food reseller, and hauled coal to the brothels and clubs and worked for a Jewish junk haulers who treated him like family.
Dropping out of school at age eleven, Louis joined a quartet of boys singing on the corner for money, and listened to the bands in Storyville. He developed his cornet playing skills by playing in the band of the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs under the tutelage of Professor Peter Davis who instilled discipline in and provided musical training to the otherwise self-taught Armstrong. He eventually became the bandleader, they played around New Orleans and by thirteen-year-old he began drawing attention by his cornet playing, starting him on a musical career. At fourteen he got his first dance hall job at Henry Ponce’s where Black Benny became his protector and guide. He hauled coal by day and played his cornet at night.
Over the next years he played in the city’s frequent brass band parades and listened to older musicians every chance he got, learning from Bunk Johnson, Buddy Petit, Kid Ory and Joe “King” Oliver, who acted as a mentor and father figure to the young musician. He toured with Fate Marable, replaced King Oliver in Kid Ory’s band, and was second trumpet in the Tuxedo Brass Band.
1922 saw Armstrong in Chicago joining King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band when the city was the center of the jazz universe. He was challenged to “cutting contests” by hornmen trying to displace the new phenomenon, which could blow two hundred high Cs in a row. He made his first recordings on the Gennett and Okeh labels, he met Hoagy Carmichael through his friend Bix Beiderbecke. Taking the advice of second wife Lil Harden Armstrong, he left Oliver and went to work with Fletcher Henderson in New York and developing his own style. By 1924 he switched to trumpet and his influence upon Henderson’s tenor sax soloist Coleman Hawkins, can be judged by listening to the records made by the band during this period.
During this time, Armstrong made many recordings on the side, arranged by Clarence Williams, with the Williams Blue Five pairing him with Sidney Bechet and backing Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Alberta Hunter. He began recording under his own name for Okeh with his famous Hot Five and Hot Seven groups Hot Five and Hot Seven groups, producing hits Potato Head Blues, Muggles and West End Blues, the music of which set the standard and the agenda for jazz for many years to come. His recording of Heebie Jeebies turned on both black and white young musicians to his new type of jazz, including a young Bing Crosby.
Over the course of his career he appeared in musical, played clubs, added vocals to his repertoire covering most famously Carmichael’s Stardust that became one of the most successful renditions. His approach to melody and phrasing was radical and evolved into scat singing. As with his trumpet playing, Armstrong’s vocal innovations served as a foundation stone for the art of jazz vocal interpretation. The uniquely gritty coloration of his voice became a musical archetype that was much imitated and endlessly impersonated.
After spending many years on the road, in 1943 Louis settled permanently in Queens, New York in 1943 in contentment with his fourth wife, Lucille. During the subsequent thirty years, he played more than three hundred gigs a year, toured Africa, Europe, and Asia under sponsorship of the US State Department earning the nickname “Ambassador Satch” and inspiring Dave Brubeck to compose his jazz musical The Real Ambassadors.
He has been honored posthumously with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, won a Male Vocal Performance Grammy for Hello Dolly, has 11 recordings inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame list his West End Blues as one of the 500 songs that shaped Rock and Roll, had a commemorative U.S. postage stamp issued, and has been inducted into six Halls of Fame, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, as well as the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, the US Open main stadium was renamed Louis Armstrong Stadium, and his Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings are now a part of the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress.
Trumpeter and vocalist Louis Armstrong, also known as Satchmo, Dipper, Pops and the King of Jazz, passed away in his sleep of a heart attack on July 6, 1971. His honorary pallbearers included Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Harry James, Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, Earl Wilson, Alan King, Johnny Carson and David Frost. Peggy Lee sand The Lords Prayer, Al Hibbler sang Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen and his long-time friend Fred Robbins gave the eulogy.
Dose A Day – Blues Away