Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Nathaniel Charles Gonella was born March 7, 1908 in East London, England and took up cornet as a child while at St. Mary’s Guardian School, an institution for underprivileged children. His first professional job interrupted his stint as a furrier’s apprentice when he joined Archie Pitt’s Busby Boy’s Band in 1924. He remained with the band until 1928, and it was during this period that he became acquainted with the early recordings of Louis Armstrong and the New Orleans jazz style.
Nat played and recorded with many prominent jazz musicians, including Billy Cotton, Archie Alexander, Digby Fairweather, Lew Stone, Bob Bryden and Roy Fox. His distinctive vocal style was reminiscent of his idol, Louis Armstrong, though his voice was often eclipsed by his achievements as a bandleader and trumpeter.
Gonella’s standing grew even more quickly after the formation of his own band, “The Georgians”, in 1935, taking the name from his highly popular recording of “Georgia On My Mind” in 1932. He later formed a big band and quickly became a headliner on the variety circuit.
Nat flirted briefly with bebop but returned to the variety stage until a revival of tradition jazz came in the late Fifties. His performing and recording success lasted until the advent of The Beatles in the Sixties, however he toured the northern club circuit and over the next thirty years he continued to sing occasionally with various bands until his death in Gosport on August 6, 1998 at age 90.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Johnny Dunn was born on February 19, 1897 in Memphis, Tennessee and learned to play trumpet as a youth. He attended Fisk University in Nashville and had a solo act in Memphis before he was discovered by W.C. Handy and traveling to New York with him in 1917. After a three-year association featured playing cornet, Johnny joined Mamie Smith’s Jazz Hounds, recording with her band before leaving a year later to lead his Original Jazz Hounds.
During the 1920s he ventured to Europe with the Will Vodery band, recorded with Noble Sissle in France, played and recorded with Willie “The Lion’ Smith and memorable sessions with Jelly Roll Morton in New York, had a hit song “Sergeant Dunn’s Bugle Call Blues”.
By the 30s Dunn was working steadily in Europe and often residing there for periods of time in the Netherlands. He was among the best of the musicians playing in the immediate pre-jazz years and he influenced many of his contemporaries. Overshadowed though he was by the arrival of Louis Armstrong, Dunn was still an able and gifted player, showing subtle power and using complex patterns that never descended into mere showmanship.
His stylistic roots became outmoded during the 30s but his decision to remain in Europe and his early death on August 20, 1937, in Paris, meant that his reputation never suffered and is recognized as having been a highly accomplished trumpeter.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Herbert Lee “Peanuts” Holland was born on February 9, 1910 in Norfolk, Virginia. Holland learned to play trumpet at the Jenkins Orphanage. A veteran of the Alphonse Trent territory band with whom he recorded and played with from 1928 to 1933, he also played with Al Sears, the Jeters-Pillars Orchestra, Willie Bryant Jimmie Lunceford and Lil Armstrong’s band.
In 1938 Peanuts led his own very successful band prior to moving to New York City the following year. There he joined the big bands of Coleman Hawkins and Fletcher Henderson. Through the first half of the Forties he was part of Charlie Barnet’s band and in 1946 with Don Redman toured Europe.
Holland elected to stay in Europe living in Paris and Stockholm and performing with his own small combo. He amassed a catalog of 46 recordings for European labels between 1946 and 1960 regularly working with such jazz names as Mezz Mezzrow, Don Byas, Billy Taylor and Claude Bolling.
Jazz trumpeter Peanuts Holland best known for his contributions to swing jazz, passed away on February 7, 1979 in Stockholm, Sweden, just two days shy of his 69th birthday.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bobby Hackett was born January 31, 1915 and raised in Providence, Rhode Island. At an early age he played the ukulele and by the time he was twelve, he was playing guitar, violin and had bought his first cornet. Leaving high school after his freshman year he took a steady job with a band that performed seven days a week at the Port Arthur and playing guitar regularly at the Rhodes and Arcadia ballrooms that often broadcasted on Providence radio and when Cab Calloway arrived short-handed and invited him to fill in.
In the fall of 1932 Bobby was recruited by The Herbie Marsh Orchestra, spent the summer of 1933 playing with Payson Re’s band, met Pee Wee Russell, by 1934, and playing college gigs with his band The Harvard Gold Coast Orchestra on weekends between Providence and Boston throughout 1935 and 36.
He worked with a new band at Nick’s in Greenwich Village, with Benny Goodman, Eddie Condon, Jack Teagarden and Teddy Wilson, played the new York World’s Fair in 1939, did the club circuit in New York, toured, recorded with his own band on MCA, took a seat with the Horace Heidt Musical Knights and recorded on the soundtrack of Fred Astaire vehicle “Second Chorus”.
After a dental surgery Bobby’s lip was in bad shape making it difficult for him to play, however, Glenn Miller offered him a job as a guitarist with the Miller Band and playing short trumpet solos. During the 1950s, he made a series of albums of ballads with a full string orchestra, produced by Jackie Gleason, in the Sixties toured with singer Tony Bennett, and by the early 1970s, Hackett performed separately with Dizzy Gillespie and Teresa Brewer. In his later years, he continued to perform in a Dixieland style even as trends in jazz changed.
Trumpeter Bobby Hackett passed away on June 7, 1976 from a heart attack. In 2012, he was selected to be inducted into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Marcus Printup was born on January 24, 1967 in Conyers, Georgia. His first musical experiences hearing the fiery gospel music his parents sang in church and didn’t discover jazz until he was a senior in high school.
He is a versatile musician who started playing trumpet in the fifth grade, played funk as a teenager, and while attending the University of North Florida on music scholarship, won the “International Trumpet Guild Jazz Trumpet Competition”, and was a member of a ten-piece group called “Soul Reason for the Blues”. In 1991 he met pianist Marcus Roberts, his mentor to this day, who introduced him to Wynton Marsalis, and was induction into the Jazz @ Lincoln Center Orchestra two years later.
Marcus has performed and/or recorded with Betty Carter, Dianne Reeves, Eric Reed, Cyrus Chestnut, Wycliffe Gordon, Carl Allen, Marcus Roberts among many others, not to mention a few of his projects as a leader, Song for the Beautiful Woman, Hub Songs, The New Boogaloo, Bird of Paradise, London Lullaby and his most recent, Desire.
Printup’s screen debut was in the 1999 movie “Playing By Heart” and also recorded on the film’s soundtrack. He tours annually with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, spending one-third of his year touring world wide, and nourishes his educator side by teaching youth and experienced musicians and contributing to several camps annually.
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