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…
Jan Garber was born Jacob Charles Garber on November 5, 1894 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He had his own band by the time he was 21. He became known as “The Idol of the Airwaves” in his heyday of the 1920s and 1930s, playing jazz in the vein of contemporaries such as Paul Whiteman and Guy Lombardo.
It was during World War II that Garber began playing swing jazz with arranger Gray Rains and vocalist Liz Tilton. However, the recording restrictions in America during the war eventually made his ensemble unfeasible, and he returned to “sweet” music after the war, playing violin with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra.
Jan formed the Garber-Davis Orchestra with pianist Milton Davis from 1921–1924. After parting with Davis, he formed his own orchestra, playing both “sweet” and “hot” 1920s dance music. He was hit hard by the Great depression and in the thirties he refashioned his ensemble into a big band and recorded a string of successful records for Victor.
Violinist and bandleader Jan Garber continued to lead ensembles nearly up until the time of his death on October 5, 1977 in Shreveport, Louisiana.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ray Biondi was born Remo Biondi on July5, 1905 in Cicero, Illinois. As a child, he started with violin and down a road that was not supposed to lead to ditties with suggestive titles. His early training was classical at the American Conservatory of Chicago. Mandolin was a natural double at age 12 and a gateway into the world of string bands. He remained focused mostly on violin but added guitar and then trumpet into his musical arsenal as he began thinking outside the classical idiom.
In 1926 Ray began playing professionally with the Blanche Jaros Orchestra, and the following year started an eight-year period of heavy freelancing in Chicago, enjoying sets with trumpeter Wingy Manone and reedman Bud Freeman and many others. He joined Earl Burtnett’s band as a violin and trumpet double, ending up on the road gigging in Kansas City, Cincinnati, New York and distant destinations.
He played violin and trumpet with clarinetist Joe Marsala, often adding guitar when Eddie Condon double-booked himself. This relationship continued until 1938, when Gene Krupa hired Biondi to work solely as a guitarist. He left Krupa a year later and went on his own in a series of small groupings. He opened a short-lived club, rejoined Krupa on the road in the early ‘50s and became a guitar and mandolin session player outside straight jazz.
By 1961 Ray began made a serious shift to teaching all of his instruments except the trumpet, while continuing to perform with groups both large and small, including the Dick Schory orchestra and stride pianist Art Hodes in the latter. Multi-string instrumentalist Ray Biondi passed away on January 28, 1981 in Chicago, Illinois.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Claude “Fiddler” Williams, born on February 22, 1908 in Muskogee, Oklahoma, by the age of 10 had learned to play guitar, mandolin, banjo and cello and was inspired to learn the violin after hearing Joe Venuti play. He played around Oklahoma with bassist Oscar Pettiford and by 1927 had his first professional gig with Terence Holder’s territory band that soon became known as the Clouds of Joy led by Andy Kirk after Holder’s ouster.
Claude enjoyed a great deal of success due to the performing and composing talents of Mary Lou Williams. Their short-lived relationship ended due to health issues but during the thirties he worked with Alphonse Trent, George E. Lee, Chick Stevens, Nat King Cole and his brother Eddie.
In 1936 Claude became the first guitarist to record with Count Basie and throughout the 30’s and 40’s worked Chicago, Cleveland and Flint with the Four Shades of Rhythm. Throughout the 50’s he worked with Jay McShann, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson and Hank Jones.
Settling in Kansas City in 1953 he spent most of the next 20 years leading his own groups. By the 70’s a gig with McShann led to his first recordings in three decades and his second career was born. Over the next two decades he toured with McShann, worked as a feature soloist at jazz festivals, Parisian musical Black & Blue, a New York date with Roland Hanna and Grady Tate, played Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and President Bill Clinton’s first inauguration. In 1997 Williams was the first inductee of the Oklahoma Jazz Hall Of Fame.
Claude “Fiddler” Williams, the venerable elder statesman of jazz, who outlasted virtually all his contemporaries and achieved his greatest successes at an advanced age and was the last surviving jazz musician to be recorded before 1930, passed away at the age of 96 of pneumonia in Kansas City on April 26, 2004.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Didier Lockwood was born on February 11, 1956 in Calais, France and began studying classical violin and composition at the Calais Conservatory at six years old. But thanks to his brother Francis, Didier’s world was opened to other forms of music and he quit his studies in 1972. Entranced by the improvisation of Jean-Luc Ponty’s playing he took up the amplified violin. He credits being influenced by Polish violinist Zbigniew Siefert and fellow Frenchman Stephane Grappelli with whom he toured. By 1975 he joined progressive rock group Magma followed by fusion group Uzeb.
During the 70’s he played in Paris with Aldo Romano and Daniel Humair among others, led a fusion group called Surya and recorded with Tony Williams. The 80’s saw Didier performing at the Montreux Jazz Festival teamed with guitarist Allan Holdsworth, bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce, drummer Billy Cobham and keyboardist David Sancious, playing in the U.S. and recording with violin colleagues John Blake and Michal Urbaniak.
Lockwood’s career has been diverse ranging from fusion to swing to advanced hard bop but he first gained fame for exploring new musical landscapes and performing various sound imitations such as seagulls and trains. Although slated as the heir apparent to the line of great French violinists behind Grappelli and Ponty, by the nineties he maintained a very low profile. He established a string instrument improvisation school in 2001 called Centre des Musiques Didier Lockwood, has been touring with jazz guitarist Martin Taylor since 2006 and written several film scores.
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