Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Emilie-Claire Barlow was born June 6, 1976 in Toronto, Canada to professional musician parents, so she grew up in recording studios. By age seven she had begun a career singing television and radio commercial
Encouraged by her parents to sing and study several instruments Emilie chose piano, cello, clarinet and violin. She went on to study voice at the Etobicoke School of Arts and music theory and arranging at Humber College. She lists Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett and Stevie Wonder amongst her musical influences.
Barlow’s first album Sings was released in 1998. She has been named Female Vocalist of the Year at the 2008 National Jazz Awards, has been nominated five times for Canada’s Juno Awards and won Best Jazz Vocal Recording for her album Seule ce soir in 2013. The album also won Album of the Year – Jazz Interpretation at the 2013 ADISQ Awards. The same year she also picked up Best Jazz Vocalist of the Year from Sirius XM Independent Album of the Year.
Beyond music Emilie has also provided voices for many animated television series, including Sailor Venus and Sailor Mars in Sailor Moon, Bakugan Battle Brawlers and Courtney in Total Drama Island.
To date the jazz singer, arranger, record producer and voice actress has released 10 self produced jazz albums on her own label and has voiced dozens of characters for animated television series. She has performed and recorded with Melanie Doane, Peter Appleyard, Matt Dusk, Jay Oliver and Dave Weckl to name a few. Emilie-Claire Barlow continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Valaida Snow was born on June 2, 1903 in Chattanooga, Tennessee into a family of musicians where her mother taught her and sisters Alvaida and Hattie, and brother Arthur Bush how to play multiple instruments. She was taught to play cello, bass, violin, banjo, mandolin, harp, accordion, clarinet, saxophone and trumpet. By the young age of fifteen she was already a recognized professional singer and trumpeter and while her beauty attracted audiences, it was her incredible talent as a jazz trumpeter which truly captivated them. Obtaining the nickname, “Little Louis” due to her Louis Armstrong-like playing style, hitting those high C’s just like Louis.
Snow toured and recorded frequently in the United States, Europe and the Far East both with her own bands and other leaders’ bands. She took part in a session with Earl Hines in New York in 1933 and also performed with Count Basie, Teddy Weatheford, Willie Lewis and Fletcher Henderson at various places and times.
Not limiting herself to jazz she branch out to the stage and as an actress she debuted on Broadway in 1924 as Mandy in Eubie Blake and Noble Sissles’s musical ‘Chocolate Dandies.’ Later, she appeared on Broadway in Ethel Waters’ show, ‘Rhapsody in Black’ in 1934; she appeared in the London production of ‘Blackbirds’ in 1935 with Johnny Claes and also in its Paris production. She could be seen in ‘Liza’ across Europe and Russia in the 30’s and was also in the Hollywood films ‘Take It from Me’ in 1937, ‘Irresistible You,’ ‘L’Alibi’ and ‘Pieges’ in 1939 with her husband Ananais Berry. Valaida Snow shocked people in the USA, with her eccentric behavior. She traveled in an orchid colored Mercedes, dressed in an orchid suit, her pet monkey rigged out in an orchid jacket and cap, with the chauffeur in orchid as well.
Snow’s incarceration has been written about several times and debunked by a few that while touring through Denmark in 1941, she was arrested by the Nazis during the German occupation and kept at Vestre Faengsel (Western Prison), a Danish prison in Copenhagen that was run by the Nazis. She was released on a prisoner exchange in May 1942. What is know is that Snow stayed in wartime Denmark by choice, that she survived the Nazis and was never shy about using and stretching the truth to suit her purposes.
By the early 1950s Valaida recorded for the Derby label with the Jimmy Mundy Orchestra. The result was “Tell Me How Long The Train’s Been Gone” and “When A Woman Loves A Man”. The record does nicely in certain areas, especially Philadelphia and St. Louis. The Derby release is her first real effort since her tragic imprisonment and it does well. She embarked on a tour of the Northeast and is a particular favorite at the Monte Carlo in Pittsburgh. In the fall she is at the 845 Club in New York and is held over. In a bit of a surprise she leaves Derby Records and signs with Apollo Records late in the year.
In February of 1951 she records “Porgy” and “The More I Know About Love” for Apollo with the Bobby Smith Orchestra. She continues her many in person appearances throughout the country, and in early 1952 embarks on a true R & B tour with Joe Liggins & His Honeydrippers up and down the West coast. Her records are sporadic, and after a well-attended stay at Chicago’s Crown Propeller Lounge in late 1953, Snow signed with that city’s Chess label. “I Ain’t Gonna Tell” and “If You Mean It” are released by Chess. The next two years are spent mostly appearing in the musical revues that have always been her first love.
It is just at this time that the final curtain descends on Valaida Snow, who spoke seven languages, was billed as “Queen Of The Trumpet”, performed in the top theatrical productions of her day, wrote and recorded her theme song, “High Hat, Trumpet and Rhythm” and was the toast of Paris and London, passed away on May 30, 1956 of a cerebral hemorrhage backstage at the Palace Theater in New York. She left this world doing what she loved most, entertaining the public with her great talents.
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Hollywood On 52nd Street
Stormy Weather is both title track composed by Harold Arlen in 1933 and title of the 1943 film starring Lena Horne, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Cab Calloway, Katherine Dunham, Fats Waller, Ada Brown, Dooley Wilson and the Nicholas Brothers, Fayard and Harold. The romantic role of Selina, was invented for the film as Robinson did not have such a romance in real life. The song has been performed by Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, Frank Sinatra, Red Garland, Charles Mingus, Don Byas to name a few. But the classic Horne is what you’ll hear.
The Story: The film is based upon the life and times of its star, dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson who plays Bill Williamson, a talented born dancer who returns home in 1918 after fighting in World War I and attempts to pursue a career as a performer. With his perpetually broke friend Gabe Tucker (Dooley Wilson along the way, he meets a beautiful singer named Selina Rogers (Lena Horne) at a soldiers’ ball and promises to come back to her when he “gets to be somebody.” Years go by, and Bill and Selina’s rising careers intersect only briefly, since Selina is unwilling to settle down.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Wycliffe Gordon was born May 29, 1967 in Waynesboro, Georgia and was heavily influenced musically by the church music his organist father played at several churches in Burke County as well as being a classical pianist and teacher.
It wasn’t until 1980 that Gordon became particularly inspired in jazz at age thirteen, listening to jazz recordings inherited from his great aunt. The collection included a five-LP jazz anthology produced by Sony-Columbia and was drawn in particular to Louis Armstrong and the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens.
Wycliffe attended, at that age, Sego High School in Augusta, Georgia and played in the band under direction from Don Milford. He graduated from Butler High in 1985, performed in New York City as part of the McDonald High School All-American Band, went on to study music at Florida A&M where he played in the marching band.
His early works as a professional were with Wynton Marsalis but in recent years he expanded beyond swing and experimented with new instruments, notably the indigenous Australian wind instrument, didgeridoo. In 1995, Gordon arranged and orchestrated the third version of the theme song for NPR’s All Things Considered, the widely recognized melody composed in 1971 by Donald Joseph Voegeli.
In 2006 he founded Blues Back Records, his was an independent jazz label and released his Rhythm On My Mind album, a collaboration with bassist Jay Leonhart. His desire for full artistic control was the impetus for creating Blues Back. Blues Back had produced other artists in Wycliffe’s universe who met Gordon’s criteria for originality, however, since 2011 has been inactive.
Jazz trombonist, arranger, composer, bandleader and music educator at the collegiate-conservatory level, Wycliffe Gordon also plays didgeridoo, trumpet, tuba, piano, and sings. To date he has a catalogue of 19 albums as a leader and another eight as a sideman performing with John Allred, Marcus Roberts, Randy Sandke, Maurice Hines, Ron Westray, and Chip White. He continues to perform, tour, record and educate.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Archie Shepp was born on May 24, 1937 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida but was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano, clarinet and alto saxophone before focusing on the tenor saxophone. He studied drama at Goddard College from 1955-59, eventually turning professional.
Shepp played in a Latin jazz band for a short time before joining the band of avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor. His debut recording as a leader was under his own name, Archie Shepp-Bill Dixon Quartet on the Savoy label. The 1962 session included an Ornette Coleman composition was the initial link to the formation of the New York Contemporary Five, which included Don Cherry. Two years later with the admiration of Coltrane he recorded Four For Trane on Impulse Records with trombonist Roswell Rudd, bassist Reggie Workman and alto John Tchicai.
Archie participated in the sessions for Coltrane’s A Love Supreme in late 1964, but none of the takes were included on the final release but has since been made available on a 2002 reissue. He would cut Ascension with Coltrane in 1965, and his place alongside Coltrane at the forefront of the avant-garde jazz scene was epitomized when the pair split the record New Thing At Newport, the first side a Coltrane set, the second a Shepp set.
During the decade he would develop his political consciousness and Afrocentric orientation, recording albums that reflected. His albums Fire Music and The Magic of Ju-Ju put him at the forefront of the free-form avant-garde movement along with Pharoah Sanders. He continued to experiment into the new decade, at various times with harmonica players and even spoken word poets. Never far from political and social commentary Archie released Attica Blues for the prison riots and The Cry Of My People that spoke to civil rights. He also wrote for theater including The Communist and Lady Day: A Musical Tragedy.
In 1971, Shepp was recruited to the University of Massachusetts Amherst that began a thirty-year career as a professor teaching Revolutionary Concepts in African-American Music and Black Musician in the Theater, also teaching African-American Studies at SUNY in Buffalo, New York.
In the late 1970s and beyond Archie would record blues, ballads, spirituals, tributes to traditional jazz musicians, as well as R&B. He would perform with Sun Ra’s Arkestra, French trumpeter Eric Le Lann, with Michel Herr creating the original score for the film Just Friends. He also appeared on the Red, Hot Organization’s tribute to Fela Kuti titled Red, Hot and Riot.
He has been featured in two documentary films, 1981’s Imagine The Sound, in which he discusses and performs his music and poetry, and Mystery Mr. Ra in which he discusses and performs his music and poetry. Shepp also appears in Mystery, Mr. Ra, a 1984 French documentary about Sun Ra.
In 2004 he founded his own record label, Archieball, together with Monette Berthomier in Paris. Tenor and soprano saxophonist, pianist, vocalist Archie Shepp continues to perform, collaborate and record.
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