Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Herbert Lee “Peanuts” Holland was born on February 9, 1910 in Norfolk, Virginia. Holland learned to play trumpet at the Jenkins Orphanage. A veteran of the Alphonse Trent territory band with whom he recorded and played with from 1928 to 1933, he also played with Al Sears, the Jeters-Pillars Orchestra, Willie Bryant Jimmie Lunceford and Lil Armstrong’s band.
In 1938 Peanuts led his own very successful band prior to moving to New York City the following year. There he joined the big bands of Coleman Hawkins and Fletcher Henderson. Through the first half of the Forties he was part of Charlie Barnet’s band and in 1946 with Don Redman toured Europe.
Holland elected to stay in Europe living in Paris and Stockholm and performing with his own small combo. He amassed a catalog of 46 recordings for European labels between 1946 and 1960 regularly working with such jazz names as Mezz Mezzrow, Don Byas, Billy Taylor and Claude Bolling.
Jazz trumpeter Peanuts Holland best known for his contributions to swing jazz, passed away on February 7, 1979 in Stockholm, Sweden, just two days shy of his 69th birthday.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Natalie Maria Cole was born February 6, 1950 in Los Angeles, California the daughter of Nat King Cole and former Ellington Orchestra singer Maria Cole. Exposed to a host of great singers as a child, she first sang on her father’s Christmas album at six and began performing at 11. At 15 she attended Northfield Mount Hermon School followed by University of Massachusetts – Amherst, transferred to University of Southern California, returned to U Mass and graduated with a degree in Child Psychology and a minor in German.
While in college Natalie was singing on weekends and was welcomed on the club circuit in hope of singing her father’s music. However she stayed as far from his music as managers would allow and it was her own style of soul that attracted R&B producers Chuck Jackson and Marvin Yancy. The subsequent partnership produced 1975’s “Inseparable” that garnered her a Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance for “This Will Be” and Best New Artist for the album. She returned to pick up Grammy awards in 1976 and 1977 along with two platinum albums and gold singles.
By 1978, she would star in her first television special on CBS to rave reviews and garnered another gold album in the classic Natalie Live set. A string of hits followed with more gold albums but by the early 80s Cole’s career paused as she entered rehab multiple times for heroin and cocaine addiction.
1985 saw her back in good health and on the comeback trail hitting the charts with songs like “Dangerous” and “Pink Cadillac” through the decade culminating with a 1990 performance of “Wild Women Do” on the soundtrack of Pretty Woman. In 1991 she returned to her vocal jazz roots producing her best selling album “Unforgettable…with Love” covering 22 of her father’s greatest hits, again winning several Grammy awards. Her release of several more jazz CDs brought her more recognition with the album “Take A Look” winning a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance and “When I Fall In Love” from her Stardust album won a 1996 Grammy.
Natalie Cole has received numerous other awards and accolades, has carved out a secondary career in acting both on television and the silver screen, appeared live in concerts or other music-related programs and continued to record and perform until her passing away of congestive heart failure on December 31, 2015.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jeannine “Mimi” Perrin was born February 2, 1926 in France and began private music instruction including piano as a child and pursued English studies at the Sorbonne. Recovering from tuberculosis, in 1949 she hit the French jazz scene in the cabarets of Saint-Germain-des-Pres and came to prominence with her trio. Towards the end of the 50s she worked as a studio background vocalist but was also a member of Blossom Dearie’s vocal group Blue Stars of France.
In 1959, she formed the vocal sextet Les Double Six, alluding to the fact that the group used overdubbing in the studio to sing twelve-part songs. The group became successful in the Sixties patterning itself to the vocalise of King Pleasure and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. Mimi toured her group throughout Europe and North America recording with Quincy Jones, Dizzy Gillespie and Ray Charles.
Perrin was the leader and principal soloist in the group and established herself as a soloist and one of the great jazz singers with John Coltrane’s “Naima”. A later group, founded in 1966 by Perrin, did not achieve her previous success, and she abandoned music after another bout of tuberculosis.
From 1972 onwards, she worked as a translator of science fiction and fantasy and in the 1980s and 1990, she translated such novels Dean Koontz and John LeCarre as well as Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, along with the biographies of Nina Simone, Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones and Steven Spielberg. Vocalist and pianist Mimi Perrin passed away on November 16, 2010 in Paris, France.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Onzy Matthews was born in Fort Worth, Texas on January 15, 1936, grew up in Dallas until he was 14, when his mother pulled up stakes and moved to Los Angeles for a better job. He graduated from high school at 16 and had already decided he wanted to sing. Nearly every day he walked to a nearby park, where he could play piano for hours in the recreation building.
Augmenting his early gospel roots with healthy doses of smooth California jazz and big band music, Matthews taught himself to accompany his singing on piano until he realized he needed arrangements.
He attended Westlake College of Music, studied ear training and harmony, started singing with a dance band and learning about arranging. After several years of performing, attending concerts and asking questions he had 21 original songs arranged for big band.
His musical career sprang from eight bars of music. As an aspiring singer, pianist and composer in 1963, a young Mr. Matthews gave his first professional arrangement to Les Brown for a tryout with the Band of Renown. Out of the arrangement came 8 bars that sounded good to Onzy and Les Brown advised him to take those 8 bars and start from there. Doing so he went on to become one of the most sought-after arrangers in jazz and pop music. It was later through Dexter Gordon that these first twenty-one were played by the best musicians in Hollywood that turned into a regular Wednesday night jam session. The word spread and he started getting courted by record labels to work with their artists.
Onzy’s first major arranging job was on Lou Rawls’ album Black & Blue, followed by his debut as a leader in 1964 on “Blues With A Touch Of Elegance” for Capitol. About a year later, with his career in full swing, he held a guest spot on a New York radio show hosted by mercer Ellington who introduced him to his dad, friendship was struck and four years later became collaborators, filling the void from Billy Strayhorn’s death.
Matthews tailors the arrangements according to the empathy of the artist by listening to the artist and arranging to bring out things in them they weren’t aware of. This was his magic. After Ellington death in ’74, he moved to Seattle, formed a big band for three years moved between Texas and New York and finally moved to Paris in ’79, put together another big band, played with Miles Davis and finally moved back to Dallas in 1994.
Onzy D. Matthews, whose 35-year career had him working with some of jazz’s most notables, was discovered in his Dallas apartment passed away at his typewriter by jazz singer Jeanette Brantley and her husband Hans Wango on November 15, 1997. He was 67.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Grady Tate was born January 14, 1932 in Durham, North Carolina who began singing at age four, drums at five. However music was not in his immediate future as he earned a degree from North Carolina Central University with a degree in English literature/drama, a minor in psychology and taught English and speech in Washington, DC. Fortunately for the jazz world his desire to pursue an acting career lead him to New York City and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and once in New York his reputation as an outstanding musician resulted in work with Quincy Jones.
Grady Tate’s drumming helped to define a particular hard bop, soul jazz and organ trio sound during the mid 1960’s and beyond. His slick, layered and intense sound is instantly recognizable for its understated style in which he integrates his trademark subtle nuances with sharp, crisp “on top of the beat” timing (in comparison to playing slightly before, or slightly after the beat). The Grady Tate sound can be heard prominently on the many classic Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery albums recorded on the Verve label in the 1960s.
He has been a member of the New York Jazz Quartet, the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson for six years, and his most widely heard vocal performances are the songs “I Got Six”, “Naughty Number Nine”, and “Fireworks” from Multiplication Rock and America Rock part of the Schoolhouse Rock series.
Grady Tate’s popularity as choice sideman of accomplished musicians is due to his remarkable intuitiveness and ability to make any style of music swing tastefully, and his interpretation of many different genres of music, in which he creates his own unique style of jazz led him to work with a host of talent, the short list including Lionel Hampton, Sarah Vaughan, Jimmy Smith, Grant Green, Stanley Turrentine, Lena Horne, Astrud Gilberto, Ella Fitzgerald, Cal Tjader, Bill Evans and Stan Getz.
Grady Tate, baritone vocalist and drummer has been on the faculty of Howard University since 1989.