Irene Reid, Singer, Bandleader and Actress, Dies January 5th at Age 77
By PETER KEEPNEWS
January 12 / NY Times
Irene Reid, a singer who toured and recorded with Count Basie’s band and appeared on Broadway in “The Wiz,” died last Saturday in the Bronx. She was 77. (She was an inductee into the Coastal Jazz Association Hall of Fame).
The cause was cardiac arrest, said Wendy Oxenhorn, director of the Jazz Foundation of America, which had been helping to provide Ms. Reid with health care for more than a decade.
A jazz vocalist whose style was heavily laced with elements of gospel and the blues, Ms. Reid never achieved as much success as contemporaries like Dinah Washington and Esther Phillips who took a similar approach. But she worked steadily, and she finished her life on a high note with a surprising career resurgence.
Born in Savannah, Ga., on Sept. 23, 1930, Ms. Reid began singing in a church choir there and moved to New York in 1947 to pursue a singing career. After winning the Apollo Theater’s amateur contest several times, she spent two years with the Dick Vance band at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem before going out on her own. She joined the Basie band in 1961 and stayed for a year, then formed her own small group, Irene Reid and Company, and recorded two big-band albums for Verve, one of the leading jazz labels of the period.
But probably her most prominent job in the post-Basie years was on Broadway, where she briefly joined the cast of “The Wiz” as the wicked witch Evillene, the role originated by Mabel King. In 1997, after two decades spent largely under the show-business radar, Ms. Reid began recording for the small Savant label with the organist Charles Earland. Her album “Million Dollar Secret” was the first of six she released as a leader in her last years — more than she had in her entire career up to that time.
She also worked frequently at Smoke, the Lenox Lounge and other New York nightclubs until a few years ago, when health problems forced her to stop performing. She is survived by a daughter, Gwendolyn Reid; four sons, Michael Leon Redfield, Bernard Redfield, James Raymond Reid and Gregory Reid; 13 grandchildren, and 9 great-grandchildren.
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HERBERT KING
February 27, 1942 - November 6, 2007
HERB KING, percussionist, was a native of Savannah, Georgia and an inductee into the Coastal Jazz Association Hall of Fame. He attended the New England Conservatory of Music and worked in big bands and small ensembles with such diverse performers as Helen Humes, Sheila Jordan, Slide Hampton, Webster Lewis, and Claudio Roditi. He began his career in southern resort hotels backing The Pips, Sam and Dave, and Little Willie John.
A resident of Massachusetts since the mid-1960s, and a notable favorite throughout New England for his highly skilled and sensitive performance across an enormous range of musical styles, he often toured this continent and Europe with popular jazz and blues artists. He taught drums through the Symphony Shoppe in the New Bedford/Dartmouth area for over three decades, always insisting his students take piano and/or guitar lessons as well to become complete musicians. Herb also taught through workshops and performances via the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New England Foundation for the Arts, and Young Audiences of Massachusetts, Inc.
He was the founder and managing director of Hemisphere Associates, a collaboration of performing artists, producing events and developing programs that promote jazz and related art forms for student, as well as general audiences. Partnered with vocalist/educator Semenya McCord for over twenty years, establishing an annual musical tribute to Martin L. King, Jr. called “Journey Into A Dream” in 1982 and he co-produced McCord’s debut CD Good for Me! in 1996.
He was inducted into the Coastal Jazz “Hall of Fame” in Savannah, Georgia in 1993. Sigma Alpha Iota Music Fraternity initiated King as a Friend of the Arts through the Boston alumnae chapter. The City Council of New Bedford honored King with a Resolution in June, 1998.
He is survived by three children: daughters Connie Brown of Savannah, GA, and Jade Rabineau, Paris, France, and son Sean of New Bedford, MA; and several grandchildren.
There will be a MEMORIAL CONCERT in New Bedford on Sunday, Jan. 20th
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The 2007 Savannah Jazz Festival is “Festival of Firsts”
Yes, the Coastal Jazz Association has presented the Savannah Jazz Festival twenty-five times before the 2007 event rolls around in late September. During those many years, the organization has always sought to have a balance between creativity and accessibility. This time around, all the stops have been removed as a series of “firsts” dominate this year’s festival.
For the first time, the jazz festival is expanding to Wednesday (Sept 26th) as a full festival evening. Simultaneously with the extra evening, the event is moving to the Savannah Southside --to be held at Armstrong Atlantic State University. Headlining the evening, two jazz legends will be presented together: Bassist, Ben Tucker will be performing along with vocalist, Lynn Roberts. Also on the playbill for Wednesday night will be the Gypsy Jazz group, One Leg Up. This will be the first time that this genre of jazz (a form of music based primarily on the jazz expressions of Django Reinhardt) has been presented as part of the festival.
Friday night is also is a night of firsts for more than one reason. Most significantly, for the first time, the Savannah Jazz Festival is presenting a night entirely composed of Contemporary Jazz. Headlining the evening is perhaps the most popular group in modern jazz, The Yellowjackets. Friday evening also has been designated as “Military Appreciation Night” at the festival. During these times when brave men and women are answering the call to duty, to possibly make the ultimate sacrifice, the Coastal Jazz Association is paying honor to those who are serving. As part of this, CJA has partnered with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to offer $1,000 tuition assistance for their university, to an Active Duty or Reserve, Air National Guard, Coast Guard, or an Active Duty military spouse, or Veteran. The drawing to determine the winner of the tuition assistance will be held between Friday’s jazz performances.
The Savannah Jazz Festival is pleased to have joined forces with the downtown jazz venue, Kokopelli’s, to host the festival Kick-off, Monday and Tuesday’s concerts, as well as the nightly “after-festival” jazz jams. Both partners in this musical venture hope that this will be only the first of countless collaborations between the two Savannah jazz institutions.
For the first time in the history of the festival, Sunday’s Youth Festival will be part of “Harmony for Humanity.” Harmony for Humanity is an internationally recognized series of musical events presented annually, to pay tribute to Daniel Pearl - the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and killed in 2002 by terrorists in Pakistan. Mr. Pearl was a classically trained violinist, an avid fiddler and a mandolin player who used his passion for music to form friendships across cultural and verbal divides.
Mr. Pearl lived a life that knew no geographical boundaries, with a spirit that knew no prejudice. He joined musical groups in every community in which he lived, leaving behind a long trail of musician-friends around the globe. Around his October 10th birthday, musicians around the world reach out in friendship to join in “Harmony for Humanity.” This year, this tribute to peace without prejudice will be the underlying theme of Sunday’s Youth Festival.
It appears that the only thing that isn’t a first about the 2007 Savannah Jazz Festival is the week in September that the event will be held. As always, the festival takes place the last full-week in September (23rd - 30th). And -of course- the outstanding quality of the music!
This year, like every year since it’s beginning, the Savannah Jazz Festival strives to remain artistically fresh while at the same time paying homage to the historical foundation of the music. This balancing of topical and tradition is perhaps why the Savannah Jazz Festival is one of the most important and influential jazz events on the Southeast Coast. Whether you are an aural sophisticate or someone who just wants to settle in for a fantastic week of music, food and fun, the Savannah Jazz Festival is right around the corner.
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August 17, 2007
Max Roach, Master of Modern Jazz, Dies at 83
By PETER KEEPNEWS (NY Times)
Max Roach, a founder of modern jazz who rewrote the rules of drumming in the 1940s and spent the rest of his career breaking musical barriers and defying listeners’ expectations, died early yesterday in Manhattan. He was 83.
His death, at an undisclosed hospital, was announced by a spokesman for Blue Note Records, Mr. Roach’s last label. No cause was given. Mr. Roach, who had lived on the Upper West Side for many years, had been known to be in poor health for some time.
Mr. Roach’s death closes a chapter in American musical history. He was the last surviving member of a small circle of adventurous musicians — among them Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and a handful of others — whose innovations brought about wholesale changes in jazz during World War II and immediately afterward.
Their music, which came to be known as bebop, had its roots in the jazz tradition, but it was different enough to scandalize many listeners and even many of their fellow musicians. Its rhythms were more jagged and unpredictable; its harmonies were more advanced, at times dissonant; its technical demands could be daunting. Despite the skepticism and hostility they initially inspired, the beboppers established the template for how jazz was played for decades to come.
Mr. Roach, a percussion virtuoso capable of playing at the most brutal tempos with subtlety as well as power, was an important architect of this musical revolution. He remained adventurous, and modern, to the end.
Mr. Roach challenged both his audiences and himself by working not just with standard jazz instrumentation but in contexts well beyond the confines of jazz as it is generally understood.
He led a “double quartet,” consisting of his working group of trumpet, saxophone, bass and drums plus a string quartet. He led an ensemble consisting entirely of percussionists. He played duets with avant-gardists like the pianist Cecil Taylor and the saxophonist Anthony Braxton. He performed unaccompanied. He wrote music for plays by Sam Shepard and dance pieces by Alvin Ailey. He collaborated with video artists, gospel choirs and hip-hop performers.
Mr. Roach explained his philosophy to The New York Times in 1990: “You can’t write the same book twice. Though I’ve been in historic musical situations, I can’t go back and do that again. And though I run into artistic crises, they keep my life interesting.”
He was in historic situations from the beginning of his career. He was still in his teens when he played drums with the alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, a pioneer of modern jazz, at a Harlem after-hours club in 1942. Within a few years, Mr. Roach was himself recognized as a pioneer.
He was not the first drummer to play bebop — Kenny Clarke, 10 years his senior, is generally credited with that distinction — but he quickly established himself as both the most imaginative percussionist in modern jazz and the most influential.
In Mr. Roach’s hands, the drum kit became much more than a means of keeping time. He saw himself not just as a supporting player but as a full-fledged member of the front line.
Layering rhythms on top of rhythms, he paid as much attention to a song’s melody as to its beat. He developed, as the jazz critic Burt Korall put it, “a highly responsive, contrapuntal style,” engaging his fellow musicians in an open-ended conversation while maintaining a rock-solid pulse. His approach “initially mystified and thoroughly challenged other drummers,” Mr. Korall wrote, but it quickly earned the respect of his peers and established a new standard for the instrument.
Mr. Roach was an innovator in other ways. In the late 1950s, he led a group that was among the first in jazz to perform pieces in waltz time and other unusual meters in addition to the conventional 4/4. In the early 1960s, he was among the first to use jazz to address racial and political issues, with works like the album-length “We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite.”
In 1972, he became one of the first jazz musicians to teach full time at the college level when he was hired as a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. And in 1988, he became the first jazz musician to receive a so-called genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation.
Maxwell Roach was born on Jan. 10, 1924, in the small town of Newland, N.C., and grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. He began studying piano at a neighborhood Baptist church when he was 8 and took up the drums a few years later.
Even before he graduated from Boys High School in 1942, savvy New York jazz musicians knew his name. As a teenager he worked briefly with Duke Ellington’s orchestra at the Paramount Theater and with Charlie Parker at Monroe’s Uptown House in Harlem, where he took part in jam sessions that helped lay the groundwork for bebop.
By the middle 1940s, he had become a ubiquitous presence on the New York jazz scene, working in the 52nd Street nightclubs with Parker, the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and other leading modernists. Within a few years he had also become ubiquitous on record, participating in such seminal recordings as Miles Davis’s “Birth of the Cool” sessions in 1949 and 1950.
He also found time to study composition at the Manhattan School of Music. He had planned to major in percussion, he later recalled in an interview, but changed his mind after a teacher told him his technique was incorrect. “The way he wanted me to play would have been fine if I’d been after a career in a symphony orchestra,” he said, “but it wouldn’t have worked on 52nd Street.”
Mr. Roach made the transition from sideman to leader in 1954, when he and the young trumpet virtuoso Clifford Brown formed a quintet. That group, which specialized in a muscular and stripped-down version of bebop that came to be called hard bop, took the jazz world by storm. But it was short-lived.
In June 1956, at the height of the Brown-Roach quintet’s success, Brown was killed in an automobile accident, along with Richie Powell, the group’s pianist, and Powell’s wife. The sudden loss of his friend and co-leader, Mr. Roach later recalled, plunged him into depression and heavy drinking from which it took him years to emerge.
Nonetheless, he kept working. He honored his existing nightclub bookings with the two surviving members of his group, the saxophonist Sonny Rollins and the bassist George Morrow, before briefly taking time off and putting together a new quartet. By the end of the ’50s, seemingly recovered from his depression, he was recording prolifically, mostly as a leader but occasionally as a sideman with Mr. Rollins and others.
The personnel of Mr. Roach’s working group changed frequently over the next decade, but the level of artistry and innovation remained high. His sidemen included such important musicians as the saxophonists Eric Dolphy, Stanley Turrentine and George Coleman and the trumpet players Donald Byrd, Kenny Dorham and Booker Little. Few of his groups had a pianist, making for a distinctively open ensemble sound in which Mr. Roach’s drums were prominent.
Always among the most politically active of jazz musicians, Mr. Roach helped the bassist Charles Mingus establish one of the first musician-run record companies, Debut, in 1952. Eight years later, the two organized a so-called rebel festival in Newport, R.I., to protest the Newport Jazz Festival’s treatment of performers. That same year, Mr. Roach collaborated with the lyricist Oscar Brown Jr. on “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite,” which played variations on the theme of black people’s struggle for equality in the United States and Africa.
The album, which featured vocals by Abbey Lincoln (Mr. Roach’s frequent collaborator and, from 1962 to 1970, his wife), received mixed reviews: many critics praised its ambition, but some attacked it as overly polemical. Mr. Roach was undeterred.
“I will never again play anything that does not have social significance,” he told Down Beat magazine after the album’s release. “We American jazz musicians of African descent have proved beyond all doubt that we’re master musicians of our instruments. Now what we have to do is employ our skill to tell the dramatic story of our people and what we’ve been through.”
“We Insist!” was not a commercial success, but it emboldened Mr. Roach to broaden his scope as a composer. Soon he was collaborating with choreographers, filmmakers and Off Broadway playwrights on a variety of projects, including a stage version of “We Insist!”
As his range of activities expanded, his career as a bandleader became less of a priority. At the same time, the market for his uncompromising brand of small-group jazz began to dry up. By the time he joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts in 1972, teaching had come to seem an attractive alternative to the demands of the musician’s life.
Joining the academy did not mean turning his back entirely on performing. In the early ’70s, Mr. Roach and seven other drummers formed M’Boom, an ensemble that achieved tonal and coloristic variety through the use of xylophones, chimes, steel drums and other percussion instruments. Later in the decade he formed a new quartet, two of whose members — the saxophonist Odean Pope and the trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater — would perform and record with him off and on for more than two decades.
He also participated in a number of unusual experiments. He appeared in concert in 1983 with a rapper, two disc jockeys and a team of breakdancers. A year later, he composed music for an Off Broadway production of three Sam Shepard plays, for which he won an Obie award. In 1985, he took part in a multimedia collaboration with the video artist Kit Fitzgerald and the stage director George Ferencz.
Perhaps his most ambitious experiment in those years was the Max Roach Double Quartet, a combination of his quartet and the Uptown String Quartet. Jazz musicians had performed with string accompaniment before, but rarely if ever in a setting like this, in which the string players were an equal part of the ensemble and were given the opportunity to improvise. Reviewing a Double Quartet album in The Times in 1985, Robert Palmer wrote, “For the first time in the history of jazz recording, strings swing as persuasively as any saxophonist or drummer.”
This endeavor had personal as well as musical significance for Mr. Roach: the Uptown String Quartet’s founder and viola player was his daughter Maxine, who survives him. Mr. Roach, who was married three times, is also survived by two other daughters, Ayo and Dara, and two sons, Raoul and Daryl.
By the early ’90s, Mr. Roach had reduced his teaching load and was again based in New York year-round. He was still touring with his quartet as recently as 2000, and he remained active as a composer.
For all his accomplishments, Mr. Roach often said that he was proudest of the role he played in raising the profile of his instrument. “I always resented the role of a drummer as nothing more than a subservient figure,” he said in a 1988 interview with the writer Mike Zwerin. “The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of the instrument.”
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Embry-Riddle Awards $1,000 Tuition Assistance to Winner of Drawing
To show our support and appreciation of our nation’s military, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Savannah Campus is sponsoring an opportunity for one student to receive tuition assistance in the amount of $1,000. This award will be presented Sept. 28, 2007 during the Savannah Jazz Festival’s “Military Appreciation Night.”
Selection Criteria --
· must be a current student in, or an entering adult student into an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide academic course of study.
· Tuition Assistance recipient must be Active Duty or Reserve, Air National Guard, Coast Guard, or an active duty military spouse, or Veteran
· Must fill out Interest Form available Sept 27-28
· Must be present at the time of the drawing and meet all selection criteria
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the world’s largest, fully accredited university specializing in aviation and aerospace, offers more than 30 degree programs in its colleges of Arts and Sciences, Aviation, Business, and Engineering. The university educates more than 34,000 students annually in undergraduate and graduate programs at residential campuses in Prescott, Ariz., Daytona Beach, Fla., and Worldwide at more than 130 centers in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Middle East, and through online learning.
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Tommy Newsom former "Tonight Show" bandleader dies at 78
Johnny Carson called him "Mr. Excitement"
PORTSMOUTH, Virginia (AP) -- Tommy Newsom, the former backup bandleader on "The Tonight Show" whose "Mr. Excitement" nickname was a running joke for Johnny Carson, has died. He was 78.
Newsom died of cancer Saturday at his home in Portsmouth, the city of his birth, according to his nephew, Jim Newsom.
Newsom, who played saxophone, joined "The Tonight Show" in 1962 and rose from band member to assistant music director. He retired along with Carson in 1992.
Newsom won music direction Emmys for "Night of 100 Stars" in 1982 and "The 40th Annual Tony Awards Show" in 1986. "The Tonight Show" received five Emmy awards during Newsom's years on it.
"I hope he will be remembered as a gifted musician," Jim Newsom said Monday in a telephone interview. "I'm sure he will be remembered for his wit and deadpan humor on 'The Tonight Show.' And to some of us a certain age, he will always be remembered as Mr. Excitement."
That was the name Carson gave Newsom to make light of his low-key personality and drab brown and blue suits -- a sharp contrast to the flashy style of bandleader Doc Severinsen.
"He became a running character in Carson's monologue," Jim Newsom said. "Tommy enjoyed that."
Not long after the Carson era ended in 1992, Newsom remarked that his image as an ordinary guy was "fairly accurate -- compared to Rambo."
"I realize things have to end sometime," Newsom said at the time. "I felt regrets at it ending and there was a sense of relief in a way."
Along with his work on "The Tonight Show," Newsom arranged and composed music for Skitch Henderson, Woody Herman, Kenny Rogers, John Denver and other performers.
He also released several albums as a bandleader, including "Live From Beautiful Downtown Burbank" in 1978 and "I Remember You, Johnny" in 1996.
Newsom was born in 1929 and got his first horn for Christmas at age 8. He graduated from the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, then toured with a U.S. Air Force jazz ensemble during a four-year enlistment.
Before landing his "Tonight" gig, he toured the Soviet Union and South America with Benny Goodman and played in "The Merv Griffin Show" orchestra.
Newsom is survived by his wife of 50 years, Patricia, and their daughter, Candy Newsom.
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| Photo by Jack Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos, 2006 |
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Andrew Hill, 75, Jazz Artist Known for His Daring Style, Dies
Ben Ratliff NY Times/ April 21, 2007
Andrew Hill, a pianist and composer of highly original and sometimes opaquely inner-dwelling jazz whose work only recently found a wide audience, died yesterday at his home in Jersey City. He was 75.
The cause was lung cancer, said his wife, Joanne Robinson Hill.
It took almost 40 years for Mr. Hill’s work to be absorbed into jazz’s mainstream. From the first significant album in his discography (“Black Fire,” 1963) to the last (“Time Lines,” 2006), his work is an eloquent example of how jazz can combine traditional and original elements, notation and pure improvisation, playing both outside and inside strict time and harmony.
Mr. Hill was born in Chicago in 1931 — not Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as his early biographical information read, and not in 1937, as he often stated. He started playing music at 7, by learning the accordion; beginning at 10, he said, he taught himself how to play piano.
He eventually played be-bop with local musicians in Chicago, and worked on the road with Dinah Washington, Johnny Hartman and Dakota Staton. He got a chance to play with Charlie Parker at the Greystone Ballroom in Detroit in 1954. A job with Roland Kirk (later Rahsaan Roland Kirk) brought him to New York in the early 1960s.
In those years Mr. Hill was perceived as a kind of extension of Thelonious Monk, 20 years after Monk’s emergence. Both were brilliant composers, and played in a style suited to their own writing. And both careers benefited from the enthusiasm of Alfred Lion, from Blue Note Records, who was so enthusiastic about Mr. Hill that he recorded five albums’ worth of material in eight months.
Those five albums were “Black Fire,” “Smokestack,” “Judgment,” “Point of Departure” and “Andrew!!!,” and much of Mr. Hill’s reputation rests on them. With some of the best musicians at the time — Joe Henderson, Kenny Dorham, Roy Haynes and others — the records occupied an area between hard bop and abstract jazz. Some of the music was structured strangely, yet there was a strange emotional resonance in the writing, a cloudy romanticism.
Mr. Hill was unsuccessful in finding much of an audience for his work after the mid-1960s, and found it hard to maintain bands or work in clubs. But he was also committed to the idea that the jazz bandleader could live as a composer, not just a nightclub entertainer. He sought arts grants and worked increasingly as a solo performer on the college circuit. He lived in upstate New York during the early 1970s, and then in California; in the 1980s, he recorded for the Soul Note label in Milan.
In 1989 he was signed again to Blue Note, which had been recently resurrected by EMI, making the albums “Eternal Spirit” and “But Not Farewell,” and beginning a renewal of interest in his early work. That same year, after the death of his wife Laverne, he moved to Oregon to teach at Portland State University until 1996, when he returned to the New York City area, and re-entered the map of jazz. His wife Joanne Robinson Hill survives him.
In his remarkable final decade, Mr. Hill led several bands, including a sextet, a big band and a quartet including the trumpeter Charles Tolliver. He made three new albums, all well received. In 2003 he received the Danish JazzPar Award, the biggest international honor in jazz.
Finally he was signed for the third time to Blue Note, recording “Time Lines.” Much of his early recorded work came out on CD, including 11 albums recorded for Blue Note during the 1960s that had never been released. At last, his challenging music was being performed or adapted by other musicians.
Mr. Hill’s last performance was at Trinity Church in Manhattan on March 29. On May 12 he is to receive an honorary doctorate posthumously from Berklee College of Music.
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New Orleans Jazz Historian Dick Allen DiesApril 14, 2007
Jazz historian Dick Allen, whose scholarly command of traditional New Orleans jazz was matched only by his role as a French Quarter character, has died. He was 80.
Allen died Thursday at the Veterans Memorial Hospital in Dublin, Ga., where he had been confined to a bed since leaving New Orleans in 2003. His older sister, Betty Smith, said he died of heart failure.
"One of the nurses said, 'Our clown has died,"' Smith said a bout her brother's death. "He just loved New Orleans. He must have had a premonition that he had to leave because he probably would have drowned (during Hurricane Katrina) because he was in a nursing home there."
"In a town that enshrines and cherishes characters, Dick was one of the great ones," said Robert H. Patterson, who worked with Allen at Tulane University's Hogan Jazz Archive, a premier collection of oral histories of traditional jazz which Allen began in 1958.
Allen and Bill Russell began recording interviews with traditional jazz musicians in the mid-1950s in an oral history project that grew into the William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane. He was associate curator of the archive from 1958 to 1965 and curator from 1965 to 1980. He retired in 1992.
"He was very good at listening, but above all as a friend to many of these musicians they forgot about the tape recorder and revealed themselves to him," said Bruce Raeburn, the curator of the Hogan Jazz Archive.
Whitney Balliett, the jazz historian and critic, introduced Allen at a conference in New York in 1967 as not only the curator of the Tulane jazz archive but also "the curator of present-day New Orleans jazz."
"He has been directly involved with the music since the early '50s," Balliett said at the time, "and in that time he has run a record shop in New Orleans, made recordings, done countless interviews, become the friend and confidant of all New Orleans musicians and been an adviser and guide to everyone from television networks to old ladies in pursuit of George Lewis."
Allen also was the author of numerous articles, liner notes and program notes. He was also a consultant, instructor, production adviser, producer or curator for many institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution.
In addition, he was among the original founders of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which draws thousands of people to the city annually.
He studied trombone under "Professor" Manuel Manetta, the teacher of Jelly Roll Morton, Red Allen and many other New Orleans musicians.
His knowledge of New Orleans jazz was encyclopedic, and William M. Weinberg in his "Studies in Jazz Discography" praised Allen as someone who "has probably done more than any other individual on the university level to develop jazz archives."
Allen was born on Jan. 29, 1927, near Milledgeville, Ga., at Allen's Invalid Home, a home for mentally ill patients established by his grandfather, Dr. Henry Dawson Allen, and later operated by his father and uncle.
Like other family members, Allen attended elementary and high school at Georgia Military College in Milledgeville. He studied at Princeton University before serving in the Navy during World War II and returned to the United States to graduate from the University of Georgia.
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Dakota Staton, 76, Jazz Singer With a Sharp, Bluesy Sound, Dies
By Margalit Fox / NY Times / April 13, 2007
Dakota Staton, a highly respected jazz and blues singer known from the 1950s on for her bright, trumpetlike sound and tough, sassy style, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. She was 76 and had lived in New York for many years.
Sharynn Harper, a spokeswoman for Ms. Staton’s family, confirmed the death, citing no specific cause. She said Ms. Staton had been in declining health in recent years.
In 1957, Ms. Staton (pronounced STAY-ton) burst on the scene with her first full-length album, “The Late, Late Show,” released by Capitol Records. The album was a hit, and the title track became her most famous number. Her other well-known songs include “Broadway” and “My Funny Valentine,” from the same album, and “What Do You Know About Love?,” which she recorded earlier as a single for Capitol.
Ms. Staton, who recorded more than two dozen albums, was widely praised by critics and worked with many distinguished musicians, among them the pianist George Shearing and the arrangers Nelson Riddle and Sid Feller. But she never attained the fame of singers like Dinah Washington, whom she cited as a deep influence. This may have been partly because Ms. Staton was born a hair too late; by the time she began recording albums, rock ’n’ roll was shouldering aside her brand of bluesy jazz.
She continued performing well into her 60s, however. Writing in The New York Times in 1998, Robert Sherman called Ms. Staton “one of America’s great vocal stylists.”
Dakota Staton was born in Pittsburgh on June 3, 1930, and began singing and dancing as a child. By the time she was 18, she was singing in nightclubs in Detroit and other Midwestern cities; she later settled in New York. In 1955, Down Beat magazine voted her the most promising newcomer of the year.
In the late 1950s, Ms. Staton married Talib Dawud, a trumpeter; the marriage ended in divorce. (Ms. Staton, who converted to Islam after her marriage, used the name Aliyah Rabia for a time.) Her brother, Fred Staton, a saxophonist who lives in New York City, is her only immediate survivor.
Among Ms. Staton’s other albums are “Dynamic!” (Capitol, 1958); “Dakota at Storyville” (Capitol, 1961); “Isn’t This a Lovely Day” (Muse, 1992); and “Live at Milestones” (Caffe Jazz), released last month.
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Marsalis highlights tribute to King Oliver
John Stoehr, Savannah Morning News / Savannahnow.com
America's new king of jazz came to Savannah on Saturday to commemorate the legacy of the old king.
Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, spoke to more than 100 people at 514 West, a restaurant on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Marsalis paid tribute to one of the pioneers of New Orleans jazz - Joe "King" Oliver.
The event, organized by the Savannah Music Festival and the Friends of King Oliver, culminated in the unveiling of a plaque in Oliver's honor. The plaque was affixed to the exterior of the restaurant's historic brick wall.A cornetist and trumpeter, Oliver was a mentor to Louis Armstrong, who went on to greater achievement and fame. Armstrong idolized Oliver, endearingly calling him "Papa Joe."
Oliver led one of the best and most important bands in early jazz, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. He was the inventor of the Harmon mute and grew famous for using mutes, derbies, bottles and cups to alter his sound. The band's 1923 jam sessions are considered milestones in jazz history, introducing Armstrong's first recorded solo on Oliver's "Dippermouth Blues" and "West End Blues."
"King Oliver was a great man for bringing Louis Armstrong into the world," said Rob Gibson, director of the Savannah Music Festival. "Armstrong is the man who is arguably the most important 20th century musician. He was able to not die tragically, but die heroically. Duke Ellington always said that Armstrong was born poor and died rich and never hurt anyone along the way."
The same can't be said of Oliver. He died penniless and unknown on April 10, 1938, at 308 Montgomery St., near the location of the commemorative plaque.
"The real thing that King Oliver stood for was dignity," said Marsalis, who - after speaking - performed with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra at Johnny Mercer Theatre. "When we come together, we come to together to fulfill the great legacy of jazz, to stick together and have pride in ourselves."
Boo Hornstein, a spokesman for Friends of King Oliver, had been pursuing the idea of commemorating Oliver for the past 50 years. Hornstein said the commemoration is, to his knowledge, the only one of its kind for King Oliver.City aldermen Edna Jackson and Van Johnson attended Saturday's dedication.
"We hope your stay is exciting," Jackson said to Marsalis before the latter delivered his remarks. "But just so you know, it's most exciting to us."
Johnson added a final thought.
"We can never understand where we are going," he said, "until we understand where we have been."
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Five Members of Savannah Arts Academy’s SkyeLite Jazz Band Selected for 2007 All-State Jazz Band
Eight members of Savannah Arts Academy’s SkyeLite Jazz Band traveled to North Georgia College and State University in Dahlonega, Georgia this past weekend for auditions to be members of the 20 member, 2007 All-State Jazz Band. Five members were selected to be a part of this year’s ensemble.
Savannah Arts Academy (SAA) junior Jaron McCarr was selected to play first trombone, Mark Spradley, also a junior, was selected to play third trombone, 10th grader Brendan Polk was picked to play principal piano, senior Alan Reese was selected as piano alternate and junior Charles Hodge was chosen as a bass alternate.
This is Jaron McCarr’s third time performing in the All-State Jazz Band and Brendan Polk’s second. Savannah Arts Academy has had at least one person selected to perform in the All-State Jazz Band since the school was formed.
The 2007 All-State Jazz Ensemble will perform at the GMEA In-Service Conference January 25-27 in Savannah.
For more information about the 2007 All-State Jazz Ensemble, click on this link: http://www.gmea.org/info/Band/ASjazz.htm. For more information on the SkyeLite Jazz Band, contact Director Michael Hutchinson at 201-5000.
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Bucky Burnsed
Director of Communications and Media Relations
208 Bull Street, Room 105
Savannah, Georgia 31401
Phone: (912) 201-5656
Fax: (912) 201-5628
bucky.burnsed@savannah.chatham.k12.ga.us
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WALTER BOOKER
Born: Dec 17, 1933 Died: November 24, 2006
Bookie has been sick for sometime. Some people have said he
had 9 lives - always came back with a good fight. Having been discharged from
the hospital on Tuesday or Wednesday (I believe), he came home. Yesterday his
sister came up from DC with some of Bookie's favorite foods... he passed last
night. He was 73.
(November 25, 2006) Walter Booker was born in Prairie View, Texas in 1933 and moved with his family to Washington, D.C. in the mid 1940s. It wasn’t until 1959, at the age of 26, that Bookie began playing the bass while in the army (serving side-by-side in the same unit with Elvis Presley). Shortly after leaving the service, he became a member of Andrew White’s JFK Quintet, a group of young D.C. musicians accomplished enough to attract the attention of Cannonball Adderly, who produced a recording for them. Bookie’s next gig was to tour the United States with the Shirley Horn Trio, along with Billy Hart on drums.
In 1964 Bookie moved to New York City. Almost immediately he was hired by trumpeter Donald Byrd. From there he went on to join Stan Getz, and throughout 1965 and ’66, alternated between Getz’s group and that of Sonny Rollins. Between 1967 and ’69 Bookie recorded and toured with Ray Bryant, Art Farmer, Harold Vick, Betty Carter and, most notably, with Thelonious Monk’s last group.
In 1969 Bookie was invited to join the Cannonball Adderly Quintet, an association which lasted until Cannonball’s untimely death in 1975. Also during that time he designed, built, and ran the Boogie Woogie Studio, a mecca for musicians from all over the world.
From 1975 to 1981 Bookie was Sarah Vaughan’s bassist and continued to produce recordings at his studio. He and the studio helped shape a number of up-and-coming young groups, including Natural Essence. And he became deeply involved with Brazilian music, ultimately forming Love Carnival and Dreams, one of the more successful Brazilian jazz groups on the New York scene.
After leaving Sarah Vaughan, Bookie went to California with the John Hicks Trio to record an album, a trip which resulted in a West Coast tour with the trio accompanying saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders. The tour culminated in the recording of an unforgettable live video/concert. Shortly thereafter, Nat Adderly asked Bookie to join his new quintet. Bookie played with the quintet until Nat’s demise last year.
For the last five years Bookie, together with Jimmy Cobb, has been actively touring as part of the Bertha Hope Trio. In addition to the Walter Booker Quintet, Bookie has also formed Elmollenium, based on the same core group as the Quintet (plus Bertha Hope) and dedicated to playing the music of Elmo Hope.
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ANITA O'DAY
Born: October 18, 1919 Died: November 23, 2006
Jazz Vocal legend Anita O¹Day passed this morning October 23, 2006 at 6:17AM in West Los Angeles. The cause of deathn was cardiac arrest according to her manager Robbie Cavalina.
Born Anita Belle Colton in Chicago, Illinois on October 18, 1919, O'Day got her start as a teen. She eventually changed her name to O'Day and in the late 1930¹s began singing in a jazz club called the Off- Beat, a popular hangout for musicians like band leader and drummer Gene Krupa. In 1941 she joined Krupa¹s band, and a few weeks later Krupa hired trumpeter Roy
Eldridge. O'Day and Eldridge had great chemistry on stage and their duet "Let Me Off Uptown" became a million-dollar-seller, boosting the popularity of the Krupa band. Also that year, "Down Beat" magazine named O'Day "New Star of the Year" and, in 1942, she was selected as one of the top five big band singers.
After her stint with, Krupa, O'Day joined Stan Kenton's band. She left the band after a year and returned to Krupa. Singer Jackie Cain remembers the first time she saw O'Day with the Krupa band. "I was really impressed," she recalls, "She (O'Day) sang with a jazz feel, and that was kind of fresh and new at the time." Later, O¹Day joined Stan Kenton¹s band with whom she cut an album that featured the hit tune "And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine"
In the late¹40s, O'Day struck out on her own. She teamed up with drummer John Poole, with whom she played for the next 32 years. Her album "Anita", which she recorded on producer Norman Granz¹s new Verve label, elevated her career to new heights. She began performing in festivals and concerts with such illustrious musicians as Louis Armstrong, Dinah Washington, George Shearing and Thelonious Monk. O'Day also appeared in the documentary filmed at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 called "Jazz on a Summer Day", which made her an international star.
Throughout the O60s Anita continued to tour and record while addicted to heroin and in 1969 she nearly died from an overdose. O'Day eventually beat her addiction and returned to work. In 1981 she published her autobiography "High Times, Hard Times" which, among other things, talked candidly about her drug addiction.
Her final recording was "Indestructible Anita O'Day" and featured Eddie Locke, Chip Jackson, Roswell Rudd, Lafayette Harris, Tommy Morimoto and the great Joe Wider. A documentary, "ANITA O'DAY-THE LIFE OF A JAZZ SINGER" will be released in 2007.
For more info visit: http://www.anitaoday.com/
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Georgia Public Broadcasting Expands Its Jazz Programming with Jazz Without Borders
Beginning Saturday, October 7 -GPB is pleased to add another original program to its jazz line-up.
Mitchell Feldman hosts "Jazz Without Borders" midnight to 3AM from the studios of WACG/90.7FM in Augusta. This new show expands the stylistic and geographic spectrum of jazz currently heard during GPB’s other jazz offerings such as “The Jazz Spot,” “Piano Jazz” and “Jazz With Bob Parlocha”. Jazz aficionado Feldman mixes post-1950s modern jazz (i.e. the music of such masters as Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, etc.), classic jazz-rock fusion (electric Miles, Weather Report, Return to Forever, John McLaughlin, etc.) and freer forms of jazz (Art Ensemble of Chicago, World Saxophone Quartet, Air, etc.) from their heydays in the 1970s ; current releases by artists keeping the mainstream jazz tradition alive today (i.e. Wynton Marsalis, Pat Martino, the Clayton Brothers, Cedar Walton, Eldar, etc.); established and emerging visionaries extending jazz’s stylistic horizons (e.g. Dave Holland, Joe Lovano, Uri Caine, Dave Douglas, Ravi Coltrane, Vijay Iyer, Chris Potter, Avishai Cohen, the Bad Plus, etc.); “Jam Bands” (Charlie Hunter, Medeski Martin & Wood, Soulive, etc.); non-American artists from Europe, the Caribbean, South America, Africa, etc. (Enrico Rava, Paolo Fresu, Gianluca Petrella, Michel Portal, Tomasz Stanko, Jan Garbarek, Chucho Valdes, Oscar Castro Neves, Eddie Palmieri, etc.).
Mitchell Feldman has been publicizing, promoting and marketing jazz, classical and world music since 1976. As he says “My formative years that laid the foundation for success I would have both in the U.S. and abroad were spent in Georgia — on the Contemporary Concert Committee and as Music and Jazz Director at WUOG-FM while attending journalism grad school at the University of Georgia in the late 70s; as Music Program Director and producer of the 1980 Atlanta Free Jazz Festival and 1981 World Concert Series while working for the City of Atlanta Department of Cultural Affairs; and as the weekly freelance jazz critic for The Atlanta Constitution, music editor of Atlanta
Magazine and jazz columnist for Creative Loafing in the early-mid 80s.”
From 2004-2006 Feldman hosted “Friday Night Jazz” on Jazz 89 KUVO in Denver, the #1 major market jazz station in the U.S. He has recently relocated to Augusta, GA and will host "Jazz Without Borders" live each week. So, all you night owls, join GPB for even more great jazz on "Jazz Without Borders," Saturdays, midnight to 3AM.
Listen to Georgia Public Broadcasting Radio online at www.gpb.org
The GPB Network consists of: Albany 91.7 FM • Athens 91.7 FM • Augusta 90.7 FM • Brunswick 88.9 FM • Carrollton 90.7 FM • Columbus 88.1 FM • Dahlonega 89.5 FM • Demorest 88.3 FM Fort Gaines 90.9 FM • Macon 89.7 FM • Rome 97.7 FM • Savannah 91.1 FM • St. Marys 1190 AM • Tifton 91.1 FM • Valdosta 91.7 FM • Waycross 90.1 FM
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Dewey Redman, 75, Jazz Saxophonist, Dies
By Ben Ratliff (NY Times) Published: September 4, 2006
Dewey Redman, an expansive and poetic tenor saxophonist and bandleader who had been at the aesthetic frontiers of jazz since the 1960’s, died on Saturday in Brooklyn. He was 75 and lived in Brooklyn.
The cause was liver failure, said Velibor Pedevski, his brother-in-law.
Walter Redman was born and grew up in Fort Worth. He started off on clarinet at 13, playing in a church band. Not long after, he met Ornette Coleman when they both played in the high school marching band. Their friendship would become one of the crucial links in his life.
Typical of late-1950’s jazz tenor saxophone players, Mr. Redman was informed by the sound and style of Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. But he didn’t immerse himself in technique and harmonic theory, as those musicians did, or lead a band until his mid-30’s. Until then, he said, he was largely playing by ear.
Consequently his playing always kept a rawness, a willingness to play outside tonality, a closeness to the blues and above all a powerful sound: an expressive, dark-toned, vocalized expression that he could apply in any situation. (This power could also come through his second instrument — he played a double-reed instrument he called a musette.) He has often been called a free-jazz musician, and he could indeed put a logic and personality into music that had no chord changes. But that designation doesn’t acknowledge how authoritatively Mr. Redman could play a traditional ballad like “The Very Thought of You,” or how his solos could become dramatic diversions in someone else’s written music, as in parts of Tom Harrell’s 1998 album “The Art of Rhythm.”
After attending Prairie View A&M University in Texas, where he played alto and tenor saxophone in the college band, and then a stint in the Army, Mr. Redman taught fifth grade in Bastrop, Tex., near Austin. In 1959 he moved to Los Angeles and then San Francisco, playing with Pharoah Sanders, Donald Rafael Garrett and others.
Mr. Redman missed the ascension of his old friend Ornette Coleman, moving to New York to join the band only in 1967. His performances with Mr. Coleman over the next seven years, on albums like “New York Is Now!,” “Love Call” and “Science Fiction,” on which his tenor saxophone meshes with Mr. Coleman’s alto, are good ways to understand some of the great jazz of the period, intuitively finding a third way between general conceptions of the jazz tradition and the avant-garde.
Mr. Redman also recorded with Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra in 1969 and then, beginning in 1971, spent five years off and on with a band known to historians as Keith Jarrett’s American quartet, which included Mr. Jarrett, Mr. Haden and the drummer Paul Motian. Underrated by the public and ever important to musicians, it played a music that was more determined by harmonic structure than Mr. Coleman’s, but equally challenging and prescient in its drive to make organic sense of various schisms in jazz since post-bop.
Mr. Coleman then provided the impetus for the next phase of Mr. Redman’s work, but in absentia. Old and New Dreams was a quartet of mainstays from different Coleman bands: Mr. Redman, Mr. Haden, Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell. They recorded and toured from 1976 to 1984, relying mostly on Mr. Coleman’s repertory. Though he had stopped playing with Mr. Coleman’s bands, he never stopped proclaiming his admiration for his old friend’s work and performed brilliantly during Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2004 concert of Coleman music, with Mr. Coleman in the audience.
From the mid-60’s on, Mr. Redman often led his own bands, usually quartets with piano, bass and drums; he recorded twice with his son Joshua Redman, the popular jazz saxophonist. Most recently his band included the pianist Frank Kimbrough, the bassist John Menegon and the drummer Matt Wilson. He played his final concert on Aug. 27 at the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival in Tompkins Square Park on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
He is survived by his wife, Lidija Pedevska-Redman, and two sons Joshua, of Berkeley, Calif., and Tarik.
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ASCAP TO ADD SIX MUSIC GREATS TO JAZZ WALL OF FAME
INDUCTEES INCLUDES THREE JAZZ GIANTS OF THE PAST AND LIVING LEGENDS FRANK FOSTER, HORACE SILVER AND CLARK TERRY
New York, NY, June 12, 2006. ASCAP President and Chairman Marilyn Bergman today announced that ASCAP will add six music greats to the ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame at the organization's New York City offices at a special reception on Wednesday, June 21, 2006.
The event will be highlighted by the induction of three ASCAP Jazz Living Legends: saxophonist/bandleader Frank Foster, pianist/composer Horace Silver, and trumpeter Clark Terry. The latest group of inductees also includes three posthumous honorees: guitarist Freddie Green, pianist/bandleader Fletcher Henderson, and vocalist Sarah Vaughan.
Participating in the event as presenters and performers will be Dr. Billy Taylor, James McBride, Rufus Reid, Roberta Flack, Steve Tyrell, Marc Cary & Focus Trio and the Bill Saxton Quartet
In addition, emergent and critically-acclaimed guitarist/composer Ken Hatfield will be presented with The ASCAP Foundation Vanguard Award for his innovative musical activity as a composer, instrumentalist and performer in the field of Jazz.
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Hilton Ruiz, 54, Pianist Fluent in Jazz and Latin Rhythms, Dies
Hilton Ruiz, a versatile and prolific pianist equally at home in the worlds of modern jazz and Latin music, died yesterday in New Orleans. He was 54 and lived in Teaneck, N.J.
His death was announced by his agent, Joel Chriss. Mr. Ruiz had been hospitalized in a coma since May 19, when he was found unconscious on Bourbon Street in New Orleans with severe head injuries. The police said that he had injured himself in a fall.
He had been in New Orleans since May 18 to promote a CD benefiting victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Mr. Ruiz spent his career shuttling between two separate if not entirely dissimilar musical words. He spun dazzling, harmonically sophisticated improvisations in the bands of Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Betty Carter, in groups he led, and occasionally as a solo pianist. He also provided rhythmically insistent support in the ensembles of Tito Puente and Mongo Santamaria.
He could probably have had a concert career if he had chosen that path. Born in New York to Puerto Rican parents, he was a classical piano prodigy and made his debut at Carnegie Recital Hall when he was 8. But jazz and Afro-Cuban music won his heart.
Mr. Ruiz began working with Latin bands in the New York area while still in high school, and around the same time he also began studying jazz piano with various teachers, most notably the pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams.
"She showed me a lot about what not to do," he once said of Williams. "When I did something wrong, she'd say, 'No, that's not right, that's corny, that's not happening. Do it like this. Move over. Let me show you how it's done.' "
He was barely out of his teens when he first attracted national attention in 1973 as a sideman with the saxophonist and flutist Rahsaan Roland Kirk. With his striking technique and his grasp of a wide variety of jazz styles, Mr. Ruiz was a good match for the famously flamboyant and eclectic Kirk, whose repertory ranged from boogie-woogie to the avant-garde.
"All the music I enjoyed was part of the Rahsaan experience," he later recalled. "We had to play all these musical flavors every night. I had to research."
After four years with Kirk, Mr. Ruiz became an active freelance sideman, working with Clark Terry, Chico Freeman, Abbey Lincoln and many others. He also performed regularly in New York as the leader of a trio and in duos with various bassists. During the last 20 years he worked primarily as a leader and recorded for Novus, Candid and several other labels.
He had been scheduled to perform at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, part of the Jazz at Lincoln Center complex in New York, at a Latin jazz festival in July.
Mr. Ruiz was the co-author of the three-volume guide "Jazz and How to Play It" and contributed to the soundtracks of the films "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and "American Beauty."
Survivors include his former wife and his daughter, both named Aida, of Teaneck.
By Peter Keepnews (NY Times June 7, 2006)
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