Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Clare Teal was born May 14, 1973 in Kildwick, Yorkshire and developed an interest in jazz from an early age, through her father’s collection of 78 rpm records. She became obsessed with big band singers like Ella Fitzgerald and big bands like Joe Loss. Taking music lessons first on the electronic organ, then more formally on clarinet, before studying music at Wolverhampton University. While there she found herself without a clarinet for an unexpected examination.
Deciding to sing, after graduation, she started a career in advertising, singing in her spare time with amateur and semi-professional bands. She recorded her first album Nice Work in 1995 but her big break came when she was asked to stand in for Stacey Kent at a weekend festival in Llandrindod Wells. This led to a three-album contract with the jazz label Candid Records and her popularity soared, with appearances on radio and television bringing her to the attention of a wider public. In 2004 Clare released her debut album Don’t Talk for Sony Jazz in what was the biggest recording deal by any British jazz singer. It topped the jazz charts and entered the UK Top 20 UK Albums Chart.
While the majority of her recordings are cover versions of standards, her albums feature original songs and contemporary cover versions, Teal has toured throughout the UK and the world, with her pianist, trio, mini big band, or Hollywood Orchestra. She has worked with the Hallé Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, and the John Wilson Orchestra as well as other top big bands.
Her concerts have been broadcasted across the BBC radio and television network, opened for Liza Minnelli, collaborated with Van Morrison, won British Jazz Vocalist of the Year for three years and BBc Jazz vocalist of the Year among others. Vocalist and songwriter Clare Teal has recorded fifteen albums and continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Barbara Dane was born May 12, 1927 in Detroit, Michigan. Out of high school she began singing regularly at demonstrations for racial equality and economic justice and while still in her teens, she sat in with bands around town and won the interest of local music promoters. Getting an offer to tour with Alvino Rey’s band, she turned it down in favor of singing at factory gates and in union halls.
Moving to San Francisco,California in 1949, Dane began raising her own family and singing her folk and topical songs around town as well as on radio and television. When a jazz revival was then shaking the town by the 1950s she became a familiar figure at clubs along the city’s Embarcadero with her own versions of women’s blues and jazz tunes. New Orleans jazz musicians like George Lewis and Kid Ory and locals like Turk Murphy, Burt Bales, Bob Mielke and others regularly invited her onto the bandstand.
Her first professional jazz job was with Turk Murphy at the Tin Angel in 1956. Ebony Magazine did a seven page spread on the alto voiced songstress who would moan of trouble, two-timing men and freedom aided and abetted by some of the oldest names in jazz who helped give birth to the blues, with photos of her performing with Memphis Slim, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Clara Ward, Mama Yancey, Little Brother Montgomery and others.
By 1959 she appeared with Louis Armstrong on the Timex All-Star Jazz Show hosted by Jackie Gleason. She went on to tour the East Coast with Jack Teagarden, appeared in Chicago with Art Hodes, Roosevelt Sykes, Otis Spann and others, played New York with Wilbur De Paris and his band, and appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson as a solo guest artist. She would guest perform on The Steve Allen Show, Bobby Troop’s Stars of Jazz, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
In 1961, the singer opened her own club, Sugar Hill: Home of the Blues, on San Francisco’s Broadway in the North Beach district, with the idea of creating a venue for the blues in a tourist district where a wider audience could hear it. There Dane performed regularly with her two most constant musical companions: Kenny “Good News” Whitson on piano and cornet and Wellman Braud, former Ellington bassist.
During the Sixties while working as a solo performer on the coffeehouse circuit Barbara also became an activist in the peace and civil rights movements, touring around the nation and performing at demonstrations and anti-war establishments worldwide and became the first U.S. musician to tour post-revolutionary Cuba.
In 1970 Dane founded Paredon Records with husband Irwin Silber, a label specializing in international protest music. She produced 45 albums, including three of her own, over a 12-year period. The label was later incorporated into Smithsonian-Folkways, a label of the Smithsonian Institution, and is available through their catalog. Arhoolie Records, Tradition Records, Runt Distribution, and DBK Works label have issued a compact discs of her music within the last twenty years. She as well has released her earlier blues and jazz recordings on CD on the Barbara Dane CDs site.
At 90 years old vocalist Barbara Dane has retired from music but has left these accolades in her wake: Jazz critic Leonard Feather wrote “Bessie Smith in stereo,” in the late 1950s, Time Magazine stated “The voice is pure, rich … rare as a 20 karat diamond” and quoted Louis Armstrong’s exclamation upon hearing her at the Pasadena Jazz Festival: “Did you get that chick? She’s a gasser!”
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Guy Warren, also known as Kofi Ghanaba was born Warren Gamaliel Kpakpo Akwei in Accra, Ghana on May 4, 1923. Educated at the Government Boys’ School, his interest in music had him playing in the school band. After passing with distinction he enrolled as a student/founder at Ordorgonno Secondary School in 1940 and also joined the Accra Rhythmic Orchestra under Yeboah Mensah as a drummer.
He won a government teacher training scholarship to Achimota College, Accra, in 1941 with the intention of becoming a teacher at his father’s school. By 1943 Warren had enlisted in the Office of Strategic Services, a branch of the United States Army that dealt with overt and covert operations in World War II. Returning to Accra he went on to become a reporter and then held various journalistic positions before beginning to broadcast jazz programmes while working at the Gold Coast Broadcasting Service under the name Guy Warren, which he continued using for the next three decades.
Teaming up with E. T. Mensah and others they formed The Tempos, considered the greatest jazz band in Africa. In 1955 Guy left for Chicago, Illinois to join the Gene Esposito Band as co-leader, percussionist and arranger. With them he recorded his first album, Africa Speaks, America Answers on the Decca label in 1956. And confirmed his reputation as the musician who established the African presence in jazz. During his American stay, he met and worked with Duke Ellington, Max Roach, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong and many other leading jazz musicians.
By 1974 he had returned to Ghana, and changed his name to Ghanaba. In the 1990s, he played a role in the film Sankofa, Ghanaba continued to make music until his death. Drummer Guy Warren, pioneer of the African renaissance and author of I Have A Story To Tell that chronicled his sojourn in America, passed away on December 22, 2008.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
April Barrows was born on April 28, 1954 in Milford, Connecticut and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area where she moved with her family when she was five. The first music she heard came from listening to her mother’s collection of boogie-woogie 78s by such pianists as Meade “Lux” Lewis, Albert Ammons and Pinetop Smith. Singing along with the records and imitating the sounds she learned the formats. She became a record collector herself as a teenager and was always interested in older styles.
She played violin for a few years and in high school sang and played rhythm guitar. Barrows performed duets with a country singer, frequently performing roots music, and learned both steel guitar and electric bass. For a time she had a regular day job as a chemist but her main dream was to become a professional musician.
In the late ’70s she spontaneously quit her job and headed for Nashville where her talents were quickly recognized. She played electric bass in a variety of bands for the next six years working with the Judds’ first band, the Memphis Horns, Vassar Clements, and even Woody Herman. In 1985 she switched her focus and became a songwriter and while she had success writing country, bluegrass, and blues songs, her true love was writing and performing her own new swing tunes.
In addition to her jazz inspirations of Ella Fitzgerald, the Boswell Sisters, Mildred Bailey, Louis Armstrong, Ivie Anderson, Bing Crosby, Ruth Etting, Annette Hanshaw and Cliff Edwards, she listened to Bob Dylan, country music and rock of the ’60s. While continuing in the commercial field, she has recorded as a leader, her debut release of original swing tunes on My Dream Is You followed by her sophomore project All You Need Is the Girl. Vocalist, guitarist and composer April Barrows is currently working on a third project with clarinetist Evan Christopher and cornetist Duke Heitger, and continues to compose and perform.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Theodore “Wingie” Carpenter was born on April 15, 1898 in St. Louis, Missouri. He lost his left arm as the result of an accident during his early teens, with the amputation 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, and in 1921 he toured with Herbert’s Minstrel Band.
By 1926 he had settled in Cincinnati, Ohio and worked with Wes Helvey, Clarence Paige, Zack Whyte, and Speed Webb. In 1927, Wingie 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 the trumpeter was featured with Smiling Boy Steward’s Celery City Serenaders and another Florida band led by Bill Lacey. In the mid-1930s, he became a touring regular with bandleaders including Jack Ellis, Dick Bunch, and Jesse Stone. By the late 1930s, Carpenter settled in New York City, where he worked with Skeets Tolbert and Fitz Weston.
From 1939 on, Wingie worked as the leader of his own band through the 1960s, playing occasional dance dates and working for periods at well-known clubs such as The Black Cat, The New Capitol, Tony Pastor’s The Yeah Man, and other venues. He composed several works not limited to 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 Wingie Carpenter, who was one of several one-armed trumpeters who worked in the music business, including similarly nicknamed Wingy Manone, passed away on July 21, 1975 in New York City.
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