Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charlie Allen was born on September 25, 1908 in Jackson, Mississippi and grew up in Chicago, Illinois and in the early 1920s just out of high school began playing. In 1925 he was a member of the band led by Hugh Swift, then went on to play with Dave Peyton and Doc Cook in 1927, and Clifford King in 1928 and Johnny Long by the end of the decade.
Allen joined Earl Hines from 1931 to 1934, then did a short stint in Duke Ellington’s orchestra in 1935, though he never recorded any solos with the orchestra. He would play with Fletcher Butler in 1936 and then returned to play with Hines again in 1937.
Charlie played in various groups in Chicago in the 1940s and 1950s and later in his life became a music educator, working in the Chicago Musicians’ Union. He also designed custom trumpet mouthpieces, used by Cat Anderson, among others. Trumpeter Charlie Allen passed away on November 19, 1972 in Chicago, Illinois.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bobby Nichols was born on September 15, 1924 in Boston, Massachusetts. He began playing trumpet when he was nine and later attended the New England Conservatory. His biggest job before joining the military was as a trumpeter with Vaughn Monroe’s Orchestra from 1940 to 1943, impressive for a 15-year old. Joining the Army in 1943 he became a member of the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band and during its two years of existence, his advanced swing solos gave the huge group much of its jazz credibility.
After his discharge, staying busy for the next 15 years, Bobby never became known to the general public. He worked with Tex Beneke between 1946-47, led his own group, and worked with Ray McKinley in 1948. After playing with Tommy Dorsey in 1951, he became a longtime member of the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra from 1952-61 and a studio musician. When the Sauter-Finegan big band eventually broke up, having never led his own record date, he slipped completely into obscurity.
Trumpeter Bobby Nichols, who at nineteen exhibited fire in his playing but never made it big despite his many solos, at 95 years old is sought by collectors of the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band recordings, died in 1975 in Aruba.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cat Anderson was born William Alonzo Anderson on September 12, 1916 in Greenville, South Carolina. Losing both parents when he was four years old, he was sent to live at the Jenkins Orphanage in Charleston, South Carolina where he learned to play the trumpet. It was his classmates that gave him the nickname “Cat” based on his fighting style.
He toured and made his first recording with the Carolina Cotton Pickers, a small group based at the orphanage. After leaving the Cotton Pickers, Anderson played with guitarist Hartley Toots, the Claude Hopkins Big Band, Lucky Millinder, the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra, the Sabby Lewis Orchestra, the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, with whom he recorded the classic Flying Home No. 2, and the Doc Wheeler Sunset Orchestra with whom he also recorded from 1938–1942.
His career took off in 1944 when he joined Duke Ellington’s orchestra at the Earle Theater in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He quickly became a central part of Ellington’s sound. Although Anderson was a very versatile musician, capable of playing in a number of jazz styles, he is most renowned for his abilities in the extreme high or “altissimo” range. He had a big sound in all registers but could play up to a “triple C” with great power, able to perform his high-note solos without a microphone.
A master of half valve and plunger mute playing, Cat was capable of filling in for anyone else who was not there. He led and fronted his own big band and in addition, he was a very skilled arranger and composer. He performed his own compositions El Gato and Bluejean Beguine with Ellington, and others of his compositions and arrangements with his own band, for example on his 1959 Mercury recording, Cat on a Hot Tin Horn.
After 1971, he settled in the Los Angeles, California area, where he continued to play studio sessions, perform with local small and big bands, and to tour Europe. He recorded seven albums as a leader, and as a sideman recorded sixty-four with Johnny Hodges, Quincy Jones, Rosemary Clooney, Frances Faye, Mel Torme, Earl Hines, Bell Berry, Benny Carter, Claude Bolling, Gene Ammons, Louis Bellson, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Lionel Hampton. Trumpeter Cat Anderson passed away from cancer on April 29, 1981.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Adriano Acea was born September 11, 1917 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Adriano Acea of Cuba and Leona Acea of Virginia. One of six children, he was stricken with rheumatic fever and wasn’t expected to live during his first decade of life.
During the 1930s, Acea started out as a trumpeter and saxophonist and after his military service in the Army in 1946, he switched to playing the piano. He later became a session musician with jazz veterans Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Cootie Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Illinois Jacquet, Dinah Washington, James Moody, Zoot Sims, and Roy Haynes. Between 1951 to 1962 he would record with Grant Green, Dodo Greene, Joe Newman, Leo Parker, Don Wilkerson, and Jesse Powell.
Acea is listed as co-composer of Nice ‘N’ Greasy that was the closing track to Lou Donaldson’s 1962 album, The Natural Soul. He is also credited as a composer on recordings by Gillespie, Jacquet, and Moody.
Pianist Adriano Acea, known as Johnny Acea, passed away on July 25, 1963.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Clifford Edward Thornton III was born on September 6, 1936 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania into a musical family, his uncle pianist Jimmy Golden and his cousin, drummer J. C. Moses. He began piano lessons when he was seven-years-old, and studied with trumpeter Donald Byrd during 1957 after Byrd had left Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and also that he worked with 17-year-old tuba player Ray Draper and Webster Young. Following a late 1950s stint in the U.S. Army bands, he moved to New York City.
In the early 1960s, Clifford lived in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, New York in an apartment building with other young musicians, including Rashied Ali, Marion Brown, and Don Cherry. He performed with numerous avant-garde jazz bands, recording as a sideman with Sun Ra, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, and Sam Rivers.
During the Seventies, Thornton and others were affected by the compositional ideas of Cecil Taylor, was active in the Black Arts Movement, and associated with Amiri Baraka and Jayne Cortez. This musical and artistic network provided him with a variety of perspectives on ideas such as black self-determination, performance forms, outside playing, and textural rhythm; and giving him access to performers who would provide the abilities some of his later compositions required.
He was included in the dialogue around the developing thought of political artists, including Shepp, Askia M. Touré, and Nathan Hare, as well as the journals Freedomways and Umbra. As an educator, he taught world music at Wesleyan University and created an Artists-in-Residence on campus, giving the academic world-music community exposure to Sam Rivers, Jimmy Garrison, Ed Blackwell, and Marion Brown. He arranged performances by Rashied Ali, Horace Silver, McCoy Tyner, and numerous others
Trumpeter, trombonist, activist, and educator Clifford Thornton, who played free and avant~garde jazz in the 1960 and ‘70s, passed away on November 25, 1989.
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