Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ernest Hood was born on June 2, 1923 in Portland, Oregon. During the 1940s he was a jazz guitarist in the Portland, Oregon area in the 1940s. He played with his brother Bill and saxophonist Charlie Barnet.
Hood contracted polio in the 1950s, which confined him to using a wheelchair for the rest of his life. No longer able to hold a guitar, he started playing the zither. He played zither on some of Flora Purim’s early albums.
His only studio album, Neighborhoods, was recorded and self~released in 1975 and is a work of ambient music that explores the soundscapes of Portland, Oregon suburbia through a collage of field recordings layered with Hood’s zither and synthesizer melodies. Only one thousand copies were pressed during its original production run. After remaining in obscurity for over 40 years, it was reissued by Freedom to Spend in 2019.
Hood, who often went by Ern or Ernie, was a major figure in Portland’s music scene. He helped found KBOO, a nonprofit FM radio station that still exists today in the city. The radio show he hosted, Radio Days, on KBOO and KOAP, aimed for the same kind of audience his record Neighborhoods did, one that wanted to relive the serenity of the past.
He was also involved in launching the city’s first jazz club, The Way Out. Avant~garde zither and keyboardist, and radio host Ernest Hood, passed away in 1995.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Malachi Favors was born August 22, 1927 in Lexington, Mississippi. He began playing double bass at age fifteen and began performing professionally upon graduating high school. His early performances included work with Dizzy Gillespie and Freddie Hubbard. But by 1965, he was a founding member of the AACM – Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and a member of Muhal Richard Abrams’ Experimental Band.
Malachi was a protégé of Chicago bassist Wilbur Ware. His first known recording was a 1953 session with tenor saxophonist Paul Bascomb and four years later recorded with pianist Andrew Hill. He began working with Roscoe Mitchell in 1966 and this group eventually became the Art Ensemble of Chicago, for which he is most prominently known. Favors also worked outside the group, with artists including Sunny Murray, Archie Shepp and Dewey Redman.
Favors’ most notable records include “Natural and the Spiritual”, “Sightsong” andthe 1994 Roman Bunka collaboration and recording at the Berlin Jazz Fest of the German Critics Poll Winner album “Color Me Cairo”.
At some point in his career Malachi added the word “Maghostut” to his name and because of this he is commonly listed on recordings as Malachi Favors Maghostut.
Most associated musically with bebop, hard bop and particularly free jazz, Favors not only plays the double bass but electric bass, guitar, banjo, zither, gong and other instruments. Malachi Favors died of pancreatic cancer in Chicago, Illinois on January 30, 2004 at the age of 76.
