Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alan Lee da Silva was born on January 22, 1939, in Bermuda, British Empire to an Azorean/Portuguese mother, Irene da Silva, and a black Bermudian father known only as Ruby. Emigrating to the United States at the age of five with his mother, he was raised in Harlem, New York City. Here he first began studying the trumpet, and moved on to study the upright bass. He eventually acquired U.S. citizenship by the age of 18 or 19 and in his twentieshe adopted the stage name of Alan Silva.
As one of the most inventive bass players in jazz, Silva has performed with avant-garde jazz musicians Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Sunny Murray, and Archie Shepp. He performed in 1964’s October Revolution in Jazz as a pioneer in the free jazz movement, and for the 1967 live album Albert Ayler in Greenwich Village.
Since the early 1970s, Alan has lived mainly in Paris, France where he formed the Celestrial Communication Orchestra, dedicated to the performance of free jazz with various instrumental combinations. In the 1980s, Silva opened a music school, Institute for Art, Culture and Perception (I.A.C.P.) in Central Paris, together with François Cotinaud and Denis Colin.
In the 1990s he picked up the electronic keyboard, the electric violin and electric sarangi on his recordings. Since around 2000, he has continmued to perform more frequently as a bassist and bandleader, notably at New York City’s annual Vision Festivals.
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JOHN CRANFORD & ALICE GOULD
Junior Jazz Rising Star Alice Gould is a fiddler, vocalist & songwriter from Savannah, Georgia who began her big stage performances at 5, participating in her first Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival. She was chosen as an Acoustic Kids Ambassador and has performed at Merlefest or Walnut Valley each year since.
Alice has competed in fiddle contests from CO to NC winning multiple awards. Alice was chosen as the Junior Jazz Rising Star and will be the first 2024 Strings intern at Hilton Head Jazz Camp. She regularly performs in the Low Country as a soloist, in a rock duo, jazz and classical violinist, and in many bluegrass groups.
Tickets: $20.00 | Only a few seats left.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Franklin “Ellington” Blair was born November 8, 1943 in Toledo, Ohio. He grew up in California and began taking violin lessons as a child, graduating with honors from Lincoln High School in San Diego, California in 1961.
Blair became a heavy academic, holding degrees from Eastman and Curtis conservatories. He even founded a school, The Universal Natural System. He is best known as the inventor of the Vitar, an acoustic combination of violin and guitar.
He was featured on many jazz funk records in the early 1970s and released a few sought after psych-funk releases on Mercury, Columbia and CTI. During the 1980s Ellington disappeared off of the map, never to return.
Violinist & guitarist Ellington Blair, suffered from heart failure and was homeless when he died on June 3, 2006 in New York City, New York
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William Stewart was born on October 1, 1957 in Glasgow, Scotland and started playing classical violin at the age of 10. After winning first prize in the Scottish Central Counties Music Festival in 1970, 1971, 1972 and first prize in the Glasgow Music Festival in 1973, he won the McFarlane scholarship to attend the Royal Scottish Academy of Music in Glasgow at the age of fourteen.
While at the Academy he won the first prize in the Robert Highgate Scholarship for violin in 1975, and went on to play with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, BBC Scotland, Scottish Opera, Scottish Baroque Ensemble, Virtuosi Scotland. At 19 Stewart toured Britain as leader of the Scottish Ballet Orchestra.
When he turned 21 William left Scotland to take a position as leader of the Passau State Opera Orchestra in Germany before joining the world famous Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Herr. Prof. Karl Munchinger. By twenty-six, as a member of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra Quartet, he had played in some of the most famous concert halls in the world, including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York City.
For a few years now Stewart has been working on his own compositions and music, blending influences from his traditional Scottish up-bringing, classical music, and love of Eastern-European fiddle music. After many solo concerts, and support for, among others, Nikki Sudden, and Hazel O’Conner at the “Left Bank”, he began playing with local groups like the Jazz Lads and Ellamental. He formed the Klazz with whom he played at the Derry Jazz Festival.
He has recorded with his own quintet “The Bill Stewart Quintet”, and with the gypsy-jazz trio “Gitane Swing”. Violinist William Stewart is now playing jazz, swing jazz, and composing his own works, blending influences from classical and Eastern-European violin music to create a sound that is truly unique.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Wilfred Theodore Wemyes, known to the world as Ted Weems, was born on September 26, 1901 in Pitcairn, Pennsylvania. He learned to play the violin and trombone, and his start in music came when he entered a contest, hoping to win a pony. He won a violin instead and his parents arranged for music lessons, and was a graduate of Lincoln School in Pittsburgh. While still at Lincoln, he organized a band there, initially providing some instruments himself.
As an enterprising young man he reinvested money given him by his teacher and that collected from band members to buy better instruments for the band. His family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he enrolled at West Philadelphia High School, joined the school’s band and became its director. Ted went on to the University of Pennsylvania, where he and his brother Art organized a small dance band that became the All American Band. They soon started receiving offers to perform in well-known hotels throughout the United States. They were one of the bands that played at the inaugural ball of President Warren G Harding in 1921.
Going professional in 1923, Weems toured for the MCA Corporation and began recording for the Victor Talking Machine Company. His first #1 hit was Somebody Stole My Gal in early 1924 and recorded for Victor/RCA Victor and their Bluebird Records arm. He then signed with Columbia, and on to Decca. He also co-wrote several popular songs: The Martins and the McCoys, Jig Time, The One-Man Band, Three Shif’less Skonks, and Oh, Monah!, which he co-wrote with band member Country Washburn.
Moving to Chicago, Illinois with his band around 1928, his orchestra charted more success in 1929 and the band gained popularity in the 1930s, making regular radio broadcasts. He would go on to enlist with his entire band into the United States Merchant Marine in 1942, directing the Merchant Marine Band. After the war, with his new-found popularity of the 1938 Heartaches, Decca continued to re-release several of his hits, however, he reaped no benefit as his contract expired while he was in the military.
Weems made front-page news in 1947 when he publicly repaid his debt to disc jockey Kurt Webster, who had revived Heartaches and thus his career. He staged a benefit performance by his band and gave all proceeds going to war veteran Webster. Decca cashed in once again on his new popularity by reissuing another oldie, I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now with vocals by Perry Como, which became another major chart hit.
The hits dried up after 1947 but Ted continued touring until 1953 then accepted a disc jockey position in Memphis, Tennessee, later moving on to a management position with the Holiday Inn hotel chain.
Violinist, trombonist and bandleader Ted Weems, who operated a talent agency in Dallas, Texas with his son, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, died of emphysema in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 6, 1963.
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