Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Theodore “Wingy” Carpenter was born on April 15, 1898 in St. Louis, Missour. Losing his left arm as the result of an accident during his early teens, the amputation was performed by a noted surgeon who was an uncle of jazz musician Doc Cheatham. Sometime later, he took up the trumpet and by 1920 he was working in traveling carnival shows. In 1921 he toured with Herbert’s Minstrel Band.
By 1926 he had settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he worked with Wes Helvey, Clarence Paige, Zack Whyte, and Speed Webb. In 1927, he played in Buffalo, New York, with Eugene Primus. Off and on from late 1926 through 1928, he was featured on the Whitman Sisters’ Show with pianist Troy Snapp’s band.
During the early 1930s, Wingy was featured with Smiling Boy Steward’s Celery City Serenaders and another Florida band led by Bill Lacey. In the mid-1930s, he began regular touring with bandleaders including Jack Ellis, Dick Bunch, and Jesse Stone. In the late 1930s, he settled in New York City, where he worked with Skeets Tolbert and Fitz Weston.
From 1939 on working as the leader of his own band, Carpenter had periods at well-known clubs such as The Black Cat, The New Capitol, Tony Pastor’s The Yeah Man, and other venues. He continued to lead his band through the 1960s, playing occasional dance dates. Several of his works are still accessible as MP3 downloads, including Look Out Papa Don’t You Bend Down, Preachin’ Trumpet Blues, Put Me Back in the Alley, Rhythm of The Dishes and Pans, and Team Up.
Trumpeter, vocalist and bandleader Wingy Carpenter, one of several one-armed trumpeters who worked in the music business, passed away on July 21, 1975, in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Oliver Edward Mitchell was born April 8, 1927 in Los Angeles, California. He was the son of Harold Mitchell, lead trumpeter for MGM Studios, who taught him to play the trumpet.
Mitchell would go on to play in big bands for Harry James, Buddy Rich and Pérez Prado, among others, as well as the NBC Symphony Orchestra. In the 1960s, he joined The Wrecking Crew, a group of studio and session musicians who played anonymously on many records for popular singers of the time, as well as theme songs for television, film scores, and advertising jingles.
Mitchell was an original member of Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass. He would go on to have his own bands, Ollie Mitchell’s Sunday Band, and the Olliephonic Horns
Moving to Puako, Hawaii in 1995 he founded the Horns. In 2010, he published his memoir, Lost, But Making Good Time: A View from the Back Row of the Band. He stopped playing the trumpet toward the end of his life, due to macular degeneration and hand problems from an automobile accident.
Trumpeter Ollie Mitchell, who recorded with Chet Baker, Harry James, Stan Kenton, Irene Kral, Shorty Rogers, Pete Rugolo, Dan terry and Gerry Wilson among others, suffered from cancer and passed away on May 11, 2013.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William Franklin Hardman, Jr. was born on April 6, 1933 in Cleveland, Ohio and growing up there worked with local players including Bobby Few and Bob Cunningham. While in high school he played with Tadd Dameron, and after graduation he joined Tiny Bradshaw’s band.
Hardman’s first recording was with Jackie McLean in 1956 and following this he played with Charles Mingus, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver, and Lou Donaldson. He led a group with Junior Cook and as a leader recorded Saying Something on the Savoy label, receiving critical acclaim in jazz circles, but was little known to the general public.
He had three periods in as many decades with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, however, his misfortune was not to be with him during their popular Blue Note recording years. Bill would go on to record three albums for Muse and one for Steeplechase record labels. He recorded forty-three albums as a sideman between 1956 and 1987 working with among others Hank Mobley, Charles Earland, Walter Bishop Jr., Curtis Fuller, Eddie Jefferson and Benny Golson.
On December 5, 1990 hard bop trumpeter and flugelhornist Bill Hardman, whose most prolific recording period as a sideman was with Blakey, passed away of a brain hemorrhage in Paris, France at the age of 57.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dave Douglas was born on March 24, 1963 in Montclair, New Jersey and grew up in the New York City area, attending Phillips Exeter Academy, a private high school in New Hampshire. He was introduced to jazz by his father and as a young teen was shown jazz theory and harmony by pianist Tommy Gallant. He began performing jazz as a trumpeter during his junior year in high school while on an abroad program in Barcelona, Spain. After graduating from high school in 1981, he studied at the Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory, both located in Boston, Massachusetts.
A move to New York City in 1984 had him studying at New York University with Carmine Caruso, and finished a degree in music. Early gigs included the experimental rock band Dr. Nerve, Jack McDuff, Vincent Herring as well as street bands around New York City. He played with a variety of ensembles and came to the attention of the jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader, Horace Silver, with whom he toured the US and Europe in 1987.
During the late 1980s, Douglas began playing with bands led by Don Byron, Tim Berne, Marty Ehrlich, Walter Thompson, and others in New York. He also played in the composer collectives Mosaic Sextet and New and Used.
Trumpeter, composer, and educator Dave Douglas has more than fifty recordings as a leader and over 500 published compositions. Has led and co-led quintets and sextets as well as electronic ensembles, won a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Aaron Copland award, and received Grammy Award nominations. As a composer, has received several commissions from among others from the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Essen Philharmonie, The Library of Congress, Stanford University and Monash Art Ensemble, which premiered his chamber orchestra piece Fabliaux in 2014.
He has served as artistic director of the Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music at the Banff Centre in Canada, co-founded the Festival of New Trumpet Music in New York, serving as its director. He is on the faculty at the Mannes School of Music and is a guest coach for the Juilliard Jazz Composer’s Ensemble. In 2016, he accepted a four-year appointment as the artistic director of the Bergamo Jazz Festival.
In 2005 Douglas founded Greenleaf Music, a record label for his albums, sheet music, podcasts, as well as the music of other modern jazz musicians. Greenleaf has produced over 70 albums.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Albert Aarons was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on March 23, 1932 and graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He began to gain attention as a trumpeter by 1956 and started working with saxophonist Yusef Lateef and pianist Barry Harris in the latter part of that decade in Detroit.
After a period playing with jazz organist Wild Bill Davis, he played trumpet in the Count Basie Orchestra from 1961 to 1969. The 1970s saw Aarons working as a sideman for singers Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, and saxophonist Gene Ammons.
Contributing to jazz fusion, playing on School Days with Stanley Clarke, he appeared with Snooky Young on the classic 1976 album Bobby Bland and B. B. King Together Again…Live. Trumpeter Al Aarons passed away on November 17, 2015 at age 83 in Laguna Woods, California.