Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Roy Eldridge was born David Roy Eldridge on January 30, 1911 on the North Side of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His mother was a gifted pianist with a talent for reproducing music by ear, a talent inherited from her. He began playing piano at age five, took up drums at six, played bugle in church and by eleven began seriously honing the instrument, especially the upper register. Though lacking a proficiency at sight-reading, he could replicate melodies by ear effectively.

Eldridge’s early years had him leading and playing in a number of Midwest bands and absorbed the influence of saxophonists Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins in developing an equivalent trumpet style. Leaving home after expulsion from high school in ninth grade he joined a traveling show at sixteen until it folded in Youngstown, Ohio. He then joined a carnival, returned home and found work in another traveling show. By 20, he led an orchestra, auditioned for Horace Henderson, played in a number of territory bands, formed his own short-lived band once again, moved to Milwaukee and took part in a cutting contest with Cladys “Jabbo” Smith.

Eldridge moved to New York in 1930, playing in Harlem dance bands, and got the nickname “Little Jazz” from Ellington saxophonist Otto Hardwick. He laid down his first recorded solos with Teddy Hill in 1935, led his own band at the reputed Famous Door nightclub and recorded a number of small group sides with singer Billie Holiday. He would join Fletcher Henderson’s band, becoming his featured soloist because of his ability to swing a band. He would move to Chicago to form a band with his older brother, playing saxophone and arranging. In the 40s he joined the Gene Krupa Orchestra, staying until the band broke up after Krupa was jailed for marijuana possession.

Over the course of his career, Little Jazz would play with Anita O’Day, Jazz At The Philharmonic, Coleman Hawkins, Ella Fitzgerald, Earl Hines, Abbey Lincoln, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Kenny Dorham, Max Roach, Count Basie, Artie Shaw and the list goes on and on. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of triton substitutions, his virtuosic solos exhibiting a departure from the smooth and lyrical style of earlier jazz trumpet innovator Louis Armstrong, and his strong impact on Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most influential musicians of the swing era and a precursor of bebop.

In 1971 trumpeter Roy Eldridge was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.  After suffering a heart attack in 1980, he gave up playing. He died at the age of 78 on February 26, 1989 at the Franklin General Hospital in Valley Stream, New York, three weeks after the death of his wife, Viola.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Laura Kahle was born on January 20, 1979 in Michigan but her family moved to Australia as a baby where she lived until 2004. She received her Bachelor of Music in jazz trumpet with the great John Hoffman and a Master of Music Studies in Composition @ the QLD Conservatorium of Music.

Moving to New York in 2004 she found herself working with the Danish Radio Big Band in Copenhagen, arranging the music of Jeff “Tain” Watts and Michael Brecker. She recorded “Downstream” was recorded in 2004 with a ten-piece ensemble from Brisbane, “West End Composers Collective”.

In 2006 she had two arrangements premiered by Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra featuring Jeff “Tain” Watts in Rose Hall, New York City. In 2007 she arranged the music of Gil Evans for the Branford Marsalis Septet, and performed in the Allen Room in New York City. By 2011 she recorded “Circular” and continues to perform and record.

Inspire A Young Mind

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Joe Magnarelli was born in Syracuse, New York on January 19, 1960. He first started playing music at age 12 with guitar and trumpet lessons, but had a knack for picking out songs on the piano by ear. His early performance experience, from elementary through high school, came via playing the trumpet and guitar in church. Later, while attending Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, he was the pianist and choir director at the Central Baptist Church.

Mags, as he was known, went on to get his bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from the State University of New York in Fredonia in 1986, and that year, he moved to New York City to pursue a career in music. Becoming a regular on the New York and international jazz scene, by 1987 he was touring and recording with Lionel Hampton and Brother Jack McDuff, and was soon seen playing with Toshiko Akiyoshi, Glenn Miller Orchestra, Harry Connick Jr. and the Hard Bop Quintet.

In 1990, Joe was a semifinalist at the Thelonious Monk International Trumpet Competition in Washington, DC. He made his debut as a leader on the Cris Cross label in 1994 with “Why Not”. He followed that excellent album with three others on the label, “Always There”, “Mr. Mags” and “Hoop Dreams”. Joe currently has nine records out as a leader, and has played on numerous jazz labels as a sideman.In 2003-2006, Mags performed with the great Latin jazz conguero Ray Barretto’s New Sextet.

Joe recorded on Ray’s “Time Was, Time Is” (O+ Music), which was nominated for a Grammy. His list of sideman gigs is too long to list but a few are the Vanguard Orchestra, Jane Monheit, Jon Hendricks, Jimmy Cobb, Louis Hayes, Alvin Queen, Dado Maroni, Marty Sheller, Tom Harrell Big Band, The Carnegie Hall Orchestra, Don Sebesky, John Pizzarelli, Aretha Franklin, Rosemary Clooney, Joe Williams, Michael Feinstein, and the Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Trumpeter Joe Magnarelli is currently an adjunct professor of music at the Juilliard School of Music and Rutgers University, and he also conducts clinics and master classes around the world.

Give A Gift Of Jazz – Share

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Maurice Brown was born on January 6, 1981 in Harvey, Illinois. Showing a remarkable affinity for the trumpet, he performed with Ramsey Lewis at Chicago’s Symphony Center while matriculating through Hillcrest High School. Following graduation, he received a full scholarship to attend Northern Illinois University, and later continued his studies at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he worked with famed clarinetist Alvin Batiste.

Relocating to New Orleans shortly thereafter, Maurice began sitting in with numerous jazz veterans, including Clark Terry, Johnny Griffin, Ellis Marsalis and Lonnie Plaxico. He recorded as a sideman with Curtis Fuller, Fred Anderson, Roy Hargrove, Michelle Carr and Ernest Dawkins among others.

In 2001 Brown would win first place in the National Miles Davis Trumpet Competition and in 2003 he released his first album as a bandleader, heading his own quintet for Hip to Bop. The project showed an amazing affinity for bop-inflected jazz, along with a willingness to expand the genre’s lexicon through innovative techniques like playing trumpet solos through a wah-wah pedal.

Trumpeter Maurice Brown continues to live in New Orleans, playing both with his quintet and a hip-hop/funk combo called Soul’d U Out.

Dose A Day – Blues Away

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Chet Baker was born Chesney Henry Baker, Jr. on December 23, 1929 in Yale, Oklahoma. Raised in the musical household of a professional guitar player, he began his musical career singing in church, and then introduced to the trombone, but proved to large it was replaced with the trumpet.

Baker received some musical education at Glendale Junior High School, but left school at age 16 in 1946 to join the Army, serving in the 298th Army band. After his discharge in 1948, he studied theory and harmony at El Camino College in Los Angeles, dropped out in his second year and re-enlisting joined the army band at the Presidio but was soon spending time in San Francisco jazz clubs such as Bop City and the Black Hawk. Once again discharged he pursued his career as a professional musician.

Chet’s earliest notable professional gigs were with saxophonist Vido Musso band and with Stan but earned much more renown in 1951 when Charlie Parker chose him to play a series of West Coast engagements. In 1952, Baker joined the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, which was an instant phenomenon due to contrapuntal touches.

With Mulligan serving a sentence on drug charges, Pacific Jazz picked up Baker in 1956 releasing Chet Baker Sings to the consternation of purists, but it increased his profile. He would go on to perform and record with Russ Freeman, Carson Smith, Joe Mondragon, Jimmy Bond, Art Pepper and Shelley Manne among others, win the Downbeat Jazz Poll, make his acting debut in Hell’s Horizon, front his own combos, and become an icon in the West Coast cool jazz movement.

However successful Baker became his lifelong battle with heroin brought a decline to his musical career, pawning instruments, serving prison sentences, encountering expulsion and deportation from European countries, savagely beaten and losing his teeth and ability to play. Chet’s comeback came with being fitted with dentures, relocating to New York and Europe, playing with Philip Catherine, Phil Markowitz, Stan Getz and returning with his most prolific recording era between 1978 and 1988, though on mostly small European labels that never reached wide audience attention.

Chet Baker, composer, flugelhornist and trumpeter who popularity was due in part to his matinee-idol good looks and well publicized drug habit, and who was associated most prominently with his rendition of My Funny Valentine and his documentary Let’s Get Lost, passed away on May 13, 1988 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

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