Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jan Savitt was born Jacob Savetnick on  September 4, 1907 in Shumsk, U.S.S.R. (now Ukraine) and reared in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He exhibited musical ability at an early age and began winning conservatory scholarships in the study of the violin. He was offered the position of concertmaster in Leopold Stokowski’s Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, but turned it down, preferring to continue his studies at Curtis Institute. A year later, believing himself ready, he joined Stokowski and the association continued for seven years, during which time Savitt gained further laurels as a concert soloist and leader of a string quartet.

In 1938, Jan Savitt & His Top Hatters broadcast from 5–5:30 pm every Tuesday, thru Friday as the KYW staff orchestra at KYW/NBC in Philadelphia. Saturday’s weekly broadcast was one hour, coast-to-coast. The group also played at the Earl Theatre and performed with The Andrews Sisters and The Three Stooges.

He got his start in popular music sometime later as music director of KYW, Philadelphia, where he evolved the unique “shuffle rhythm” which remained his trademark. Numerous sustaining programs created such a demand for the “shuffle rhythm” that Savitt left KYW to form his own dance crew.

His band was notable for including George “Bon Bon” Tunnell,^[3] one of the first Black singers to perform with a white band. Tunnell’s recording with Jan included Vol Vistu Gaily Star, co-composed by Slim Gaillard, and Rose of the Rio Grande. Helen Englert Blaum, known at the time as Helen Warren, also sang with him during the war years.

In the 1940s Savitt recorded short pieces used a filler before network shows for the National Broadcasting System’s Thesaurus series. Some of the pieces he created were I’m Afraid the Masquerade Is Over; If I Didn’t Care; Ring Dem Bells; and Romance Runs in the Family.

Violinist, bandleader and arranger Jan Savitt, known as “The Stokowski of Swing” from having played violin in Leopold Stokowski’s orchestra, passed away on October 4, 1948.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Hernán Oliva was born in Valparaíso, Chile on July 4, 1913 and began his violin studies at age 8 under a dominating mother. Around 1927 at the age of fourteen, he joined the Ernesto Davagnino Orchestra. Bohemian in character and dedicating himself to music over his father choice of law, his father disinherited and expelled from the home.

Around 1935 he crossed to Mendoza, Argentina and worked a few months on the LV10 radio in Cuyo, with his orchestra. Migrating to Buenos Aires, Argentina where Luis Davagnino, Ernesto’s brother, also a musician, lived, and after finding him whistling from corner to corner of Calle Alsina a tune that he knew Luis would recognize received him at his home after. Getting him a job as a companion to Betty Caruso and Fanny Loy on Radio Belgrano, then joined the René Cóspito Orchestra.

He played at the Boite La Chaumiere, with Enrique “Mono” Villegas on piano, David Washington on trumpet, and the English Phillips on sax. The following year Hernán joined the Oscar Alemán orchestra and by 1944 he began working with Ahmed Ratip’s Cotton Pickers, then with Tito Alberti and José Finkel they formed the Jazz Casino in 1951 with singer Lorna Warren.

His later years were spent hanging around the bars of San Telmo playing for whoever asked, sometimes for a glass of whiskey and for many who never appreciated his enormous talent. Violinist Hernán Oliva, who recorded six albums as a leader, passed away in the early morning of June 17, 1988 in Buenos Aires, Argentina lying on a sidewalk in the Palermo neighborhood, hugging his violin case.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Toby Hardwicke was born Otto James Hardwicke on May 31, 1904 in Washington, D.C., and started on string bass at the age of 14, then moved to C melody saxophone and finally settled on alto saxophone. A childhood friend of Duke Ellington, he joined Ellington’s first D.C. band in 1919. He also worked for banjoist Elmer Snowden at Murray’s Casino.

In 1923, Ellington, Hardwick, Snowden, trumpeter Arthur Whetsol, and drummer Sonny Greer had success as the Washingtonians in New York City. After a disagreement over money, Snowden was forced out of the band and Duke Ellington was elected as the new leader. Booked at a Times Square nightspot called the Kentucky Club for three years, they met Irving Mills, who produced and published Ellington’s music.

Otto left the Duke Ellington band in 1928 to visit Europe, where he played with Noble Sissle, Sidney Bechet and Nekka Shaw’s Orchestra, and led his own orchestra before returning to New York City in 1929. He went on to have a brief stint with Chick Webb that year, then led his own band at the Hot Feet Club, with Fats Waller leading the rhythm section in 1930. He led a group at Small’s before rejoining Duke Ellington in the spring of 1932, following a brief stint with Elmer Snowden.

He played lead alto on most Ellington numbers from 1932 to 1946 and was a soloist on Black and Tan Fantasy, In a Sentimental Mood and Sophisticated Lady. Hardwick, with his creamy tone, was almost always the lead alto in the reed section of the Ellington orchestra except in some situations where Ellington required the more cutting tone of Johnny Hodges’ alto to set the tone of the ensemble. He left the band in 1946 over a disagreement with Ellington about his girlfriend, freelanced for a short time in the following year, and then retired from music.

>Occasionally doubling on violin and string bass in the Twenties, alto saxophonist Toby Hardwicke who also played clarinet and bass, baritone, and soprano saxes, passed away on August 5, 1970.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Tullio Mobiglia was born in Carezzano, Italy on April 12, 1911. In the early 1930s, after his studies at the conservatory in Genova and his first local engagements, he made several trips to the United States as a member of an on-board ship’s orchestra. Once in America, he made the acquaintance of the leading tenor saxophonists, including Coleman Hawkins.

In 1940 he visited Berlin, Germany as a member of the Italian Orchestra Mirador and in 1941 Tullio was with the Heinz Wehner Orchestra, and from April to November, he formed his own sextet played in the Patria Bar and was also in the Komiker Cafe’s musical revue Dreams About Me.

In the early Forties, Mobiglia’s orchestra played in the Rosita Bar and he also did some Film and Recordings during this period. Kramer combined musicians from two different generations to form his orchestra utilizing trumpeter Alfredo Marzaroli and saxophonist and clarinetist Francesco Paolo Ricci from the Twenties along with the younger members, Tullio Mobiglia, Eraldo Romanoni, Carlo Pecori, and the Triestino Angelo Bartole that performed during the Second World War II in Berlin.

After the war, he operated mainly in Italy, but also performed in Dortmund and Frankfurt Germany. From 1967 into the ’80s, he was active as a violin teacher at the Sibelius Conservatory in Helsinki, Finland.

Tullio directed a band without interruption in Berlin between 1941 and 1943, along with the Kramer’s Orchestra during the second half of the Thirties, the only stable group in the history of Italian Jazz between the years 1935 and ’43. He enlisted the brilliant and inventive guitarist Alfio Grasso to take part in the recordings.

Tenor saxophonist, violinist and bandleader Tullio Mobiglia passed away on July 24, 1991, aged 80, in Helsinki, Finland.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Michel Maurice Armand Warlop came into the world in Douai, France on January 23, 1911.  A child prodigy, he won every award and prize that existed for the violin in France before attaining the age of 18. he started his musical studies with his mother, a music professor, and entered the Conservatory of Douai, the second oldest in France, at age six.

There he studied with Victor Gallois who had won the Prize of Rome for composition in 1905. At age seven, he played his first public concert accompanied by his mother on the piano and by age eight in 1919 he played his first concert in Paris, to benefit victims of WW1. He transferred to the Conservatory of Lille around the age of 10 and started his studies on the university level at the Conservatory of Paris at age 13.

By mid-1939 Warlop began working permanently with the Raymond Legrand Orchestra, then got called up for military service in September 1939 and left Paris. Soon after hostilities started between Germany and France and he became a German prisoner of war but later released because of his tuberculosis. He returned to France late in February 1941.

Back in Paris, he took up his old chair in Legrand’s orchestra, recorded with the Jazz Dixit and his own string septet Septuor a Cordes from time to time. Both of these units were made up of other musicians in the Legrand organization. Warlop wrote and arranged almost all of the Septour’s music which was in a style that blended a classical string setting with Warlop’s jazz abilities. By 1942 he recorded his own Swing Concerto, however, Disques Swing did not issue it and it sat in the vaults until it was finally released on a CD in 1989.

After the war many French musicians, singers and film stars were accused of supporting the enemy for appearing on German-controlled radio, playing for German troops or touring in Germany. Many were banned from working for various periods of time. Warlop had to sit out for two months and Legrand for one year. He never played again in Paris or recorded after this incident in 1945.

His tuberculosis had finally caught up with him along with his heavy consumption of alcohol and cocaine and violinist Michel Warlop, who preferred to tour as a jazz soloist and in small groups in the south of France, passed away at 36 on March 6, 1947 in Bagnères-de-Luchon, France. His last engagement was with Jimmy Réna’s small group at the Grand Hotel Superbagnières above Luchon, France in the Pyrenees Mountains near the border with Spain.

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