Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Ginger Smock was born Emma Smock on June 4, 1920 in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in Los Angeles, California. She graduated from Jefferson High School and studied violin privately with Bessie Dones. By the time she hit the age of 10 she appeared as a soloist at the Hollywood Bowl. She was featured on Clarence Muse’s radio program at the age of thirteen performing Edward MacDowell’s To A Wild Rose. She earned degrees in music from Los Angeles City College, and the Zoellner Conservatory of Music. At the latter institution she was a pupil of Edith Smith.

During 1944 she led a trio with Nina Russell and Mata Roy. In 1951, she led an all-female sextette, featuring Clora Bryant, on the Chicks and the Fiddle show hosted by Phil Moore that broadcasted for six weeks on CBS. The next year she was the featured soloist on KTLA’s variety show, Dixie Showboat.

1953 had Smock recording as part of a group with Gerald Wiggins, Freddie Simon, Red Callender, and Rudy Pitts, accompanying the vocalist Cecil “Count” Carter.

During the mid 1970s, she spent ten years as concertmaster of show orchestras in Las Vegas. In addition to her work in jazz and rhythm & blues, she performed with the All City Symphony Orchestra of Los Angeles. A violin owned by Smock is in the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture

Violinist, orchestra leader, and local Los Angeles television personality Ginger Smock, who recorded as a leader but is perhaps best known from her recordings with the Vivien Garry Quintet, transitioned on June 13, 1995.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Edwin Branford “Eddie” Edwards was born on May 22, 1891  in New Orleans, Louisiana and started on violin at age 10 and five years later he picked up the trombone. In 1916, he was chosen to go to Chicago, Illinois by Alcide Nunez to play trombone with Johnny Stein’s Jazz Band. With a few changes of personnel, this band became the Original Dixieland Jass Band, which made the first jazz records in 1917. He played on one of the first commercially released jazz recordings, Livery Stable Blues, later released as Barnyard Blues.

Leaving the band after being drafted into the United States Army, he served from July 1918 to March 1919. After being discharged, Eddie led his own band and worked in Jimmy Durante’s band before returning to the Original Dixieland Jass Band. After that band broke up, he again led a band in New York City for most of the 1920s until retiring from music in the early Thirties. He then ran a newspaper stand and worked as a sports coach.

Coming out of retirement he returned to music in 1936 when Nick LaRocca reformed the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, playing with them until 1938. He played in other bands with Larry Shields, Tony Sbarbaro, and J. Russell Robinson in New York City into the 1940s. He continued playing professionally intermittently until shortly before his death.

His composition Sensation Rag or Sensation was performed at the 1938 Benny Goodman jazz concert at Carnegie Hall and was included on the album The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert. Darktown Strutters’ Ball, composed by  Shelton Brooks, a Black man, was recorded by the Original Dixieland Jass Band and inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2006.

Trombonist Eddie Edwards, who played both violin and trombone, and who also played minor-league baseball and worked as an electrician, transitioned on  April 9, 1963 in his hometown at the age of 71.

BRONZE LENS

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Lakshminarayana Shankar was born on April 26,1950 in Madras, India and raised in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. His father was a violinist and singer who worked as a teacher at the Jaffna College of Music. The young boy learned to play the violin and first performed in public in a Ceylonese temple at the age of seven.

In 1969 he traveled to the United States where he studied ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University. While attending college at Wesleyan University, he met jazz musicians like Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Garrison, and John McLaughlin. With McLaughlin, Shankar founded the group Shakti in 1975, one of the early groups in which Eastern and Western musical traditions met. They released three albums between 1975 and 1977 titled Shakti, A Handful of Beauty, and Natural Elements.

Post performing with various Indian singers for several years, Shankar founded a trio with his brothers, L. Vaidyanathan and L. Subramaniam and they performed throughout India. After the band dissolved, Shankar was a violinist with Frank Zappa for a short time, and then founded the group The Epidemics and released a number of albums as a band leader.

Collaborating with Peter Gabriel, he wrote the soundtrack for the film The Last Temptation of Christ, for which he received a Grammy Award. In the following years, Shankar worked on several of Gabriel’s albums. Since 1996, he has been working with his niece, the violinist Gingger Shankar as the duo Shankar & Gingger.

He has performed in trio with trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg and saxophonist Jan Garbarek and has stretched with Elton John, Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, Yoko Ono, Stewart Copeland, John Waite, Charly García, Steve Vai, Ginger Baker, Nils Lofgren, Jonathan Davis, The SFA, and Sting.

Better known as L. Shankar, Shankar and Shenkar, violinist, singer and composer Lakshminarayana Shankar continues to perform among other endeavors.

ROBYN B. NASH

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Oleg Leonidovich Lundstrem was born April 2, 1916 into a family of musicians in Chita, Transbaikal Oblast. His family moved to Harbin, China when he was five. By 1935, inspired by Duke Ellington’s Dear Old Southland record which he purchased, he joined forces with eight other young Russian amateur musicians and formed the Oleg Lundstrem Orchestra. The following year the band moved to Shanghai, China where they immediately became popular among the public. The band was an important part of Shanghai’s jazz scene until 1947, along with Buck Clayton Orchestra.

After World War II, in 1947 Oleg returned to the Soviet Union and settled in Kazan, where he worked as a violinist in the opera and ballet theatre, while keeping his jazz orchestra as a side act. 1956 saw the Oleg Lundstrem Orchestra moving to Moscow where he was appointed by the Soviet cultural authorities as the orchestra’s art director and conductor.

His orchestra was recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest continuously existing jazz band in the world, the official name being The State Oleg Lundstrem Chamber Orchestra of Jazz Music.

Composer and conductor Oleg Lundstrem, also spelled Lundstroem or Lundström, transitioned from natural causes at his home on October 14, 2005 in Korolyov, Moscow Oblast at the age of 89.

ROBYN B. NASH

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LESLIE DESHAZOR

2021 MPower Grant Recipient and  2021TedX speaker  Leslie DeShazor was named one of thirty Professional Movers and Shakers in the Performing Arts by Musical America in 2019. Violist, violinist, composer and arranger Leslie DeShazor is in demand as a soloist, teacher and recording artist.  Though classically trained, Mrs. DeShazor is a talented and diverse musician.  As a soloist, she has performed with the Toledo Symphony.  She is a freelance artists who performs and has performed with The Sphinx Symphony Orchestra, Michigan Opera Theatre Orchestra, Michigan Sinfonietta, CutTime Simfonica, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Gateways Orchestra, Flint Symphony, The River Raisin Ragtime Revue and Ann Arbor Symphony as well as jazz ensembles, Leigh Daniels Ensemble the Detroit-based, Musique Noire and Straight Ahead.  She has performed and recorded with international, Grammy award winning R&B stars, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, and Aretha Franklin and Grammy award winning gospel artists Fred Hammond, Michael W. Smith and Donnie McClurkin.  She has also had the pleasure of performing with jazz greats such as Roy Hargrove, Steve Wilson, Pat Metheny, Sheila Jordan, Diane Schuur, Regina Carter, Xavier Davis and Marcus Belgrave. She has recently expanded her versatility musically playing both viola and violin as a part of award winning hit musicals Hamilton and Hello Dolly.  An experienced instructor, she currently teaches students of Detroit with instructional music programs offered through the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Sphinx Organization and her own private studio.  A native of Michigan, Mrs. DeShazor holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan.

SEATING TIMES:
Wednesday – Thursday
1 Seating
Seating: 6:00pm-8:30pm
Band Performs: 7:00pm-8:30pm

Friday – Saturday
2 Seatings
1st Seating: 6:00pm-8:00pm
Band Performs: 6:30pm-7:30pm
2nd Seating: 8:30pm-10:30pm
Band Performs: 9:00pm-10:00pm

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