Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Valery Ponomarev was born January 20, 1943 in Russia and the young trumpeter became interested in jazz after hearing it on Voice of America. Feeling a particular affinity for Clifford Brown, he dedicated countless hours to transcribing, studying and memorizing legendary jazz trumpet solos. Fleeing the Soviet Union in 1973 he emigrated to the U.S. where he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, an association that lasted four years.
Valery’s tenure with Blakey afforded him the opportunity to perform the major concert venues, clubs and festivals around the world, recording eleven albums and television appearances in Europe, Japan, Brazil and the United States. After his departure from The Jazz Messengers, Valery formed his own band “Universal Language”.
Ponomarev has performed or collaborated with Max Roach, Harold Land, George Morrow, Sam Dockery, Evelyn Blakey, Curtis Fuller, Bobby Watson and others. He is currently a member of the memorial Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers band led by Benny Golson. He also tours with his big band playing some originals and some music from the Jazz Messengers repertoire.
Considered by many as an outstanding educator and mentor, Valery teaches privately and as part of the Wells Fargo Jazz for Teens program in Newark, New Jersey. He has had a documentary made about his life, “Messenger From Russia” and released his autobiographical book “On The Flip Side of Sound” in 2009.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jonah Jones was born Robert Elliott Jones in Louisville, Kentucky on December 31, 1909. He started playing alto sax at the age of 12 in the Booker T. Washington Community Center band in Louisville before quickly transitioning to trumpet where he excelled immediately. Jones began his career in the 1920s playing on a riverboat named “Island Queen” which plied between Kentucky and Ohio.
By 1928 he joined with Horace Henderson, later worked with Jimmie Lunceford, had an early and successful collaboration with Stuff Smith from 1932-1936, and by the Forties he was working in big bands like Benny Carter’s and Fletcher Henderson. He would spend most of the decade with Cab Calloway’s band that later became a combo.
Starting in the 1950s he had his own quartet and began concentrating on a formula that gained him wider appeal for a decade. The quartet consisted of George “River Rider” Rhodes on piano, John “Broken Down” Browne on bass and “Hard Nuts “Harold Austin on drums. The most mentioned accomplishment of this style is perhaps their version of “On The Street Where You Live”. This effort succeeded and he began to be known to a wider audience. This led to his quartet performing on “An Evening With Fred Astaire” in 1958 and winning a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Performance by a group in 1960.
Jonah went on to become a sensation in France, returned to more “core” jazz work with Earl Hines, played in the pit orchestra for the stage play Porgy and Bess starring Cab Calloway, was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1999. Trumpeter Jonah Jones passed away on April 29, 2000.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Willie Gary “Bunk” Johnson was born December 27, 1879 although there is some speculation surrounding his birth year as 1889. He received lessons from Adam Olivier, began playing professionally in Olivier’s orchestra and spent some adolescent years occasionally playing with Buddy Bolden’s band.
During the decade 1905-1915 Bunk was regarded as one of the top trumpeters in New Orleans in between repeatedly leaving to tour with minstrel shows and circus bands. In 1931 he lost his trumpet and front teeth when a violent fight broke out at a dance that put an end to his playing. He thereafter worked in manual labor, occasionally giving music lessons on the side when he could.
The later years of the thirties saw writers researching jazz history and trading letters with Johnson in which he stated he could play again if he had new teeth and trumpet. Writers and musicians took up a subsequent collection and got his new dentures via Sidney Bechet’s dentist brother, a new horn and made his first recording in 1942.
This propelled Bunk into public attention, attracting a cult following and he played New Orleans, San Francisco, Boston and New York City. His work in the 1940s show why he was well regarded by his fellow musicians—on his best days playing with great imagination, subtlety and beauty. Earlier fame eluded him for he was unpredictable, temperamental, with a passive-aggressive streak and a fondness for drinking alcohol to the point of serious impairment. In 1948, jazz trumpeter Bunk Johnson suffered from a stroke and died the following year in New Iberia on July 7, 1949.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ray Willis Nance was born on December 10, 1913 in Chicago, Illinois and as a child he studied piano, took violin lessons and was self-taught on trumpet. He led small groups from 1932-1937, then spent periods with the orchestras of Earl Hines and Horace Henderson through to 1940, however, he is best known for his long association with Duke Ellington through most of the 1940s and 1950s, after he was hired to replace Cootie Williams.
Shortly after joining the band, Nance was given the trumpet solo on the first recorded version of “Take The “A” Train” which became the Ellington theme, a major hit and jazz standard. Nance’s “A Train” solo is one of the most copied and admired trumpet solos in jazz history that even Williams upon his return to the some twenty years later would play Nance’s solo almost exactly as the original.
Ray was often featured on violin and was the only violin soloist ever featured in Ellington’s orchestra. He is also one of the well-known vocalists from the Ellington orchestra, having sung arguably the definitive version of “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing). It was Nance’s contribution to take the previously instrumental horn riff into the lead vocal, which constitute the now infamous, “Doo wha, doo wha, doo wha, doo wha, yeah!” The multi-talented trumpeter, violinist, vocalist and dancer earned him the nickname “Floorshow”.
He left the Ellington band in 1963 after having switched to and playing cornet alongside his predecessor Cootie Williams for a year. Over the course of his career he recorded a few albums as a leader and with Earl Hines, Rosemary Clooney and others. Ray Nance passed away on January 28, 1976 in New York City.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Donald Byrd was born Donaldson Toussaint L’Ouverture Byrd II on December 9, 1932 in Detroit, Michigan. He studied music and trumpet at Cass Technical High School, performing with Lionel Hampton prior to graduating. Joining the Air Force he played with the band, followed by matriculation through Wayne State University and the Manhattan School of Music.
He came to prominence while at the Manhattan School when he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers replacing Clifford Brown. By 1955 he was recording with Jackie McLean and Mal Waldron, left the Messengers a year later and performed with John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock and Thelonious Monk.
Byrd’s first full-time band was a quintet that he co-led from 1958-61 with Pepper Adams, an ensemble with hard driving performances as captured live on “At The Half Note Café”. In June 1964, Byrd jammed with jazz legend Eric Dolphy in Paris and throughout the rest of the decade and into the 70s was a leader and notable sidemen for Blue Note’s stable of jazz greats.
In the 1970s, Donald moved away from his previous hard-bop jazz base and began to record jazz-fusion, jazz-funk, soul-jazz, and rhythm and blues. Teaming up with the Mizell Brothers, he recorded Black Byrd in 1972 that subsequently became Blue Note’s highest selling album ever. Three subsequent big selling albums called “Street Lady”, Places and Spaces, and “Steppin’ Into Tomorrow” followed this. In 1973, he created the Blackbyrds, a fusion group consisting of his best students that scored several major hits including “Happy Music”, “Walking In Rhythm” and “Rock Creek Park”. Byrd is best remembered as one of the only bebop jazz musicians who successfully pioneered the funk and soul genres while simultaneously remaining a pop artist.
Dr. Donald Byrd holds three master degrees, a law degree and a doctorate and has pursued a career as an educator teaching at Rutgers University, Hampton Institute, New York University, Howard University, Queens College, Oberlin College, Cornell University and was named artist-in-residence at Delaware State University. The trumpeter passed away at the age of 80 in Teaneck, New Jersey on February 4, 2013 leaving a legacy of recordings that spanned the jazz idiom.
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