Jazz

(b Paris, Jan 16, 1920; d Suresnes, Hautes de Seine, France, March 29, 2020). French clarinetist and bandleader. In 1941 he put together a jazz band which by 1943 had been joined by Boris Vian and was considered the first revival band in France. At its peak, in the years 1944–6, Abadie introduced such musicians as Claude Luter, Jef Gilson, and, from 1945, the Fol brothers, who may be heard on Tin Roof Blues (1946, Swing 212) and I’ve found a new baby (1946, Pathé 1013 [EP]). The band was strongly influenced by the Chicagoans and Bix Beiderbecke. In 1949 Abadie assembled a new band with such young players as Benny Vasseur and Jean-Claude Fohrenbach. He then retired from music (1952–63), but from 1965 led a modern-jazz nonet or tentet, which included the tenor saxophonist Paul Vernon (playing in a style influenced by Lester Young), with a repertory consisting of compositions by Ahmad Jamal, John Lewis, John Coltrane, and others. Abadie continued to lead this group for the remainder of his life, to age 100, directing and playing clarinet solos; they perform compositions of Thelonious Monk in the video ...

(b Turin, Italy, March 21, 1952). Italian tenor and baritone saxophonist, bass clarinetist, and leader. He first played jazz in the Turin area in the early 1970s. In 1974 he was a founding member, with the guitarist Claudio Lodati, the double bass player Enrico Fazio, and the drummer Fiorenzo Sordini, of the quartet Art Studio, for which all four members provide compositions and arrangements; the group plays throughout Europe in a style mixing free improvisation techniques, extended forms, and contrapuntal work. In 1984 Actis Dato formed his own quartet, consisting of the saxophonist Piero Ponzo, Fazio, and Sordini; it toured internationally through the 1990s, from the USA to Africa to Japan. He was also a member of the Democratic Orchestra (1982–5), Mitteleuropa Orchestra (1982–90), Pino Minafra’s quintet (1984–9) and Sud Ensemble (from 1994), and the Italian Instabile Orchestra (from 1990). In ...

[Rama IX Bhumibol; Phoemipol Aduldej]

(b Cambridge, MA, Dec 5, 1927; d Bangkok, Oct 13, 2016). Thai clarinetist and reed player. He was brought up in the USA and in Switzerland, where he learned to play clarinet; he later mastered the whole family of reed instruments, favoring soprano saxophone. Although he was interested in early jazz he was influenced predominantly by Benny Goodman, and participated in jam sessions with Goodman and other jazz musicians who visited Thailand, notably Jack Teagarden and Lionel Hampton. He occasionally played with his court orchestra in a swing style of the 1940s that was modified by the strong influence of traditional Thai music, but, on account of his official status as the king of Thailand, no recordings by him have been authorized for distribution. (H. Esman and V. Bronsgeest: “Een jazz king: Koning Phoemipol,” ...

(Vilhelm)

(bLapinjärvi, nr Lovisa, Finland, Dec 10, 1918; d Finland, Aug 19, 2002). Finnish trumpeter and trombonist. He began his career in dance bands in the late 1930s in Helsinki and played with Eugen Malmstén and others. During World War II he led a band that introduced the big-band swing style to Finland; as the Rytmiorkesteri it made a series of recordings in ...

(b Boston, Sept 25, 1935; d Brooklyn, NY, June 14, 2006). American tenor and soprano saxophonist. He was born into a musical family and attended the Boston Conservatory (BM). In 1956 he recorded with Paul Chambers as a pianist. Having moved to New York in 1958, he worked with John Coltrane, Matthew Gee, and Sonny Rollins, and recorded with Charli Persip and Howard McGhee (both 1960), Max Roach (1965), the organist Freddie Roach (1967), Eric Gale (1969), the trombonist John Gordon (1975), and the orchestras of Archie Shepp (1972) and Sam Rivers and Clifford Thornton (both 1974). From 1972 to 1974 he worked with Abdullah Ibrahim’s large ensembles – the Dollar Brand Orchestra and the African Space Program – and in 1978 he performed and recorded as the leader of a six-piece group which included Malachi Thompson, Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, and John Betsch. Except for his having taken part as a tenor saxophone soloist in a recording session with James Spaulding in ...

(b New York, Dec 25, 1939; d New York, March 28, 2006). Drummer and percussionist. In 1957 he played with Dizzy Gillespie’s band at the Newport Jazz Festival, accompanying the singer Eartha Kitt. He studied biochemistry at the Carnegie Institute in Boston, but after graduating he focused on music, working locally with Chick Corea, Alan Dawson, Tony Williams, and, from 1964, Gene Perla. Having returned to New York in 1967, he played in salsa groups before working with Perla again in bands led by Nina Simone and Elvin Jones. He gained recognition through his work with Miles Davis on the albums Bitches Brew (1969, as Charles Alias) and On the Corner (1972), and on tour from November 1971 into 1972; he also made an important album with Weather Report (c1976). During the 1970s and 1980s Alias worked with many jazz, rock, and Latin artists, including Mongo Santamaria (recording in ...

(Creede)

(bWinnemucca, NV, May 26, 1915; dSan Francisco, Oct 3, 2004). Americandouble bass player. He grew up in San Francisco, played clarinet through his primary and high-school years, and took up double bass while at Sacramento Junior College. At the beginning of the 1940s he performed and made recordings with Lionel Hampton on double bass and electric bass guitar (1940–42; including Attitude, 1940, Vic. 27316) and with Count Basie (September–November 1942), with whom he may be seen in the film Reveille with Beverly (1943); at some point he also briefly accompanied Fats Waller at Sweet’s Ballroom in Oakland, California. After serving in the navy from November 1942 to 1947 he returned to San Francisco, where he led small bands and hosted the program “Down Vernon’s Alley” on both radio and television. His most important position was as leader of the house rhythm section and music director at the Blackhawk during the 1950s, though he played briefly with Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington and recorded with a dixieland band led by the cornetist and trombonist Jack Sheedy (...

[Allen, DavidDeLella, Albert David Robert]

(b Hartford, CT, July 19, 1919; d West Haven, CT, Nov 21, 2012). American singer. Details of his name, birth, and death are in the Connecticut Death Index, the 1920 census (incorrectly transcribed there as “Defella”), and a family tree. He sang on radio as Al DeLella in Connecticut in the late 1930s, then transferred to a New York City radio station to sing with the bandleader Buddy Rocco, who persuaded him to take the name David Allen. He performed and recorded with Jack Teagarden’s big band (1940–42); by this time he was using both forms of his new surname, Allen and Allyn. Drafted into the army in April 1942, he was discharged after being injured in March 1943. From 1944 he worked with Boyd Raeburn, sometimes singing complicated arrangements by George Handy; his style is well represented by I only have eyes for you, which he recorded with Raeburn in ...

(Jefimowitsch)[Misha]

(b Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukraine [then USSR], Nov 7, 1956; d Oslo, May 11, 2018). Moldavian pianist. Although he was born in Ukraine, he grew up in Bessarabia, in the eastern part of Moldavia, where he studied composition and piano while playing with local folk musicians. In 1980 he became a member of the Moldavian Jazz Ensemble, led by the saxophonist and violinist Semjon Shirman, and started to play jazz piano – listening for the first time to such pianists as Art Tatum and Keith Jarrett and transcribing, for the piano, solos by Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and other saxophone and brass players. In 1983 he moved to Moscow, where he formed a duo with the french horn and flugelhorn player Arkady Shilkloper, with whom he began to synthesize elements of Moldavian folk music with improvised jazz; the duo played regularly at Moscow’s Blueberry Jazz Club. A member of the Moscow Art Trio, with Shilkloper and the singer and clarinetist Sergey Starostin, Alperin also performed with many Russian and foreign musicians; his first album as an unaccompanied soloist, ...

[William ]

(b London, Aug 20, 1911; d London, December 19, 2005). English clarinetist and saxophonist. He took up piano when he was ten and taught himself alto saxophone from the age of 13. Although he began playing professionally in Glasgow, in 1930 he moved to London. In 1931 he played with the bandleader Roy Fox, and in September of that year he joined Bert Ambrose; after changing to tenor saxophone he became a principal soloist with the band (1932). He remained with Ambrose until summer 1940, apart from a period from April to July 1939, when he was with the bandleader Jack Harris. Having joined the RAF, he played in service bands (through 1943), then worked with the bandleader Geraldo (1944 – September 1945) and again with Ambrose (October 1945 – March 1947). Amstell spent six years in the dance orchestra of the BBC, after which he was active as a session musician with such leaders as George Chisholm. He also played on cruise ships. In the 1980s and 1990s he concentrated on playing clarinet and made recordings with his own quartet (including ...

(Edward )

(b Houston, Oct 11, 1927; d Los Angeles, June 5, 2002). American tenor and soprano saxophonist and leader. Published sources have given his year of birth as 1929, but the Texas birth index gives 1927, and Amy confirmed that the earlier year is correct. He learned to play clarinet as a child, took up tenor saxophone while playing in an army band, and attended Wiley College (Marshall, Texas) (1946–7), Texas Southern University (1950), and Kentucky State College (BS 1952). Later he studied television and film scoring at the University of Southern California (1968). He worked as a schoolteacher in Tennessee, performed in clubs in the Midwest, and in 1955 moved to Los Angeles, where he joined the sextet led by the rhythm-and-blues pianist Amos Milburn and recorded with Dizzy Gillespie. From 1960 to about 1967 he led groups which played hard bop, soul jazz, and modal jazz, at first with the organist Paul Bryant as his co-leader; members of these quartets, quintets, and sextets included at various times Carmell Jones, Marcus Belgrave, Dupree Bolton, Jimmy Owens, Roy Ayers, Bobby Hutcherson, Frank Strazzeri, Victor Feldman, Kenny Barron, Jimmy Bond, and Frank Butler. His group made two television appearances in ...

(b Monroe, LA, March 22, 1929; d Evanston, IL, June 24, 2010). American tenor saxophonist. He took up tenor saxophone while living in Evanston, Illinois, and also studied theory; his influences were Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and Gene Ammons, and later Ornette Coleman. Around 1962 he led a quartet which included Bill Brimfield. In 1965 he was a founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in Chicago and led a number of its groups, variously involving Brimfield, Joseph Jarman, Charles Clark, and Steve McCall; he also recorded as a sideman with Jarman (1966, 1968). In 1974 he toured Europe with his own quintet, in which Douglas Ewart was a sideman. He opened his own nightclub, the Birdhouse, in Chicago in May 1977, but it was active only intermittently until it closed in June 1978. In the latter year he performed in Germany with a new group, another quintet, among the members of which were Brimfield, Ewart, and George Lewis (ii). In Germany he also recorded with the group Neighbors (...

(Julius)

(b Manchester, CT, Nov 17, 1931; d New York, Aug 26, 2003). American trombonist. His full name appears in the Social Security Applications and Claims Index. After studying at the Schillinger House in Boston (1949–50) he performed and recorded with Charlie Spivak (1950–51). During the Korean War he served in an Air Force band (September 1951 – June 1955) and began writing arrangements. Following his discharge he performed and recorded with the Sauter–Finegan Orchestra (July 1955 – December 1956), and Woody Herman (Dec 31, 1955 – July 1956) and recorded with Kai Winding’s septet (July 1956 – May 1958). He also composed and arranged for Winding, and he plays a solo in his own piece Nutcracker on Winding’s Trombone Sound (1956, Col. CL936). He then studied at the Manhattan School of Music (BA 1962) and began working as a studio musician in New York (from ...

(b Pforzheim, Germany, Oct 6, 1929; d Königsbach-Stein, Germany, Aug 5, 2015). German soprano, tenor, and bass saxophonist. After receiving three lessons on guitar from a member of the Reinhardt clan he played in dance bands until 1950. He then contacted Sidney Bechet in Paris and learned to play soprano saxophone. He played in Germany with the arranger and bandleader Ernst Simon and also with American soldiers. In 1952 he founded the Quartier Latin Jazz Band, which he led to at least 2009; among its recordings is Dieter Antritter’s Quartier Latin Jazz Band (1996, Jazzpoint 1046). It gave concerts with many visiting musicians, including Mezz Mezzrow, Michel Attenoux, Benny Waters, Nelson Williams, and Peanuts Hucko. Antritter visited Canada in 1989 and worked with local musicians. His playing was influenced by the creole New Orleans jazz musicians and by swing musicians. He also wrote many articles for various newspapers and magazines....

(Richard)

(b Wallington, England, May 26, 1937; d Milford, Derbs., England, Feb 23, 2004). English composer. He first played piano and tenor saxophone, and after graduating from Bristol University (1959) he studied arranging and composition with Raymond Premru (1960–61) and Bill Russo (1962). From 1964 to 1968 he directed the New Jazz Orchestra, an ensemble that provided a forum for its members to perform their own compositions; among the musicians in the group were Harry Beckett, Jack Bruce, Ian Carr, Mike Gibbs, Jon Hiseman, Don Rendell, Barbara Thompson, and Norma Winstone. Several of these played in the occasional orchestra that Ardley subsequently led under his own name (1969–81). He wrote music for both orchestras, notably Greek Variations, incorporating small groups led by Carr and Rendell (1969); A Symphony of Amaranths (1971); and the multi-movement work Kaleidoscope of Rainbows (1976). From the 1970s Ardley also pursued a career as a writer; among his publications were ...

(Crook)

(b Lichfield, England, Jan 28, 1966). English saxophonist, brother of Steve Argüelles. He began clarinet and flute in 1975, and played as a teenager in the National Youth Jazz Orchestra and the European Community Big Band. He studied saxophone and flute at Trinity College, London, for six months in 1984 before joining Loose Tubes, with which he remained until 1989. In the 1990s he emerged as a striking improviser on tour and recordings with Kenny Wheeler, Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, the Tommy Smith Septet, Django Bates’s Delightful Precipice, the Mike Gibbs Orchestra, Hermeto Pascoal, Carla Bley, and, in 1996, Stan Tracey. Energized by a four-month stay in New York in 1994, he returned to England to make a series of recordings for the Babel label which exhibited his strong, individualistic writing.

Argüelles appeared in Bley’s big band in France in 2006 and recorded with the reed player Gebhard Ullmann’s band Basement Research (...

[Clarke, Stephen Argüelles]

(b Crowborough, England, Nov 16, 1963). English drummer, brother of Julian Argüelles. After playing with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra he joined the Ronnie Scott Quintet while still at school, and performed with many visiting Americans as a member of the house band at Scott’s club. In the mid-1980s he worked with Loose Tubes, in Human Chain with Django Bates, and with John Taylor, Dudu Pukwana, Steve Lacy (touring and recording as a duo in 1987), Iain Ballamy (also 1987), and others; he appeared with an all-star group in Baden-Baden on a West German television broadcast, Anglo-Polish Meeting (1985). Thereafter he focused on his own bands, which often reflected the influence of such Latin American composers as Astor Piazzolla and Egberto Gismonti. In 1992 he settled in Paris, where, with the pianist Benoit Delbecq, he formed the Recyclers, a band specializing in novel, somewhat surreal approaches to old material. He also co-led the Steve Argüelles–Nick Purnell Big Band. In ...

(b Prague, April 13, 1934; d New York, May 13, 2017). Czech double bass player. He first studied violin and trombone (1945–52), then double bass and theory (1957), in the interim earning a degree in mechanical engineering at České vysoké učení technické v Prazehe (Czech Technical University in Prague). In the early to mid-1960s he recorded many albums in Prague with Zdenek Bartak’s big band, Karel Vlach (1962–3), Karel Velebný’s quartet and quintet (1962–5), Jan Konopasek (1963), and the pianist Milan Dvořák (1964). In 1965 he toured with the Reduta Quintet and as director of the Czechoslovak National Jazz Orchestra, and played with Leo Wright and Booker Ervin in West Germany and France. Arnet smuggled his wife, hidden in a bass drum, and his daughter, in a suitcase, through Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin; their story is the subject of the television documentary ...

(Kenneth )

(b Kansas City, MO, March 27, 1925; d Manhattan, June 13, 2003). American tenor saxophonist. He took up clarinet and then alto saxophone as a teenager, but ceased playing while serving in the navy (1943–5). From 1946 he worked with Tommy Douglas and the singer Walter Brown in Kansas City (first recording with Brown in 1949), then in the early 1950s moved to Chicago, where he played with a number of blues bands. In 1957 he went to New York and performed with Milt Larkin and Mercer Ellington; he also deputized occasionally for Duke Ellington. He recorded with Ben Webster (1958), Johnny Hodges (1960), Paul Gonsalves (1961), and Lawrence Brown (1965). In July 1968 he became a regular member of Duke Ellington’s orchestra and, although he replaced the clarinet virtuoso Jimmy Hamilton, continued to be principal tenor saxophone soloist, taking up clarinet for ensemble parts only. Ashby remained with the band until ...

[William Michael Allingham]

(b Blackpool, England, Dec 6, 1936). English bandleader. He began playing saxophone and clarinet in school, and after service in an RAF band he organized two jazz bands while studying at Oxford University (1955–62). In the early 1960s he performed in several clubs in London. In 1965 he formed the London Schools Jazz Orchestra, which was later known as the London Youth Jazz Orchestra and then the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO); it became a professional organization in 1974 and is the only full-time big band of its kind in Great Britain. Through its ranks have passed some of Britain’s finest young musicians, including Julian and Steve Argüelles, Guy Barker, Chris Biscoe, Paul Lytton, Dave O’Higgins, Gerard Presencer, and Jamie Talbot. It has toured with Shorty Rogers (1982, 1983), and John Dankworth (1986), made regular appearances at Ronnie Scott’s Club in London, and made a large number of recordings, among them ...