Big Band in the Sky

Remembering Frank Morgan: Tears, Laughter and Music in Culver City

By CHUCK KOTON

Frank Morgan Memorial Celebration The Jazz Bakery Los Angeles (Culver City), CA January 5, 2008 2:00-5:30 P.M.

A memorial celebration is always a bittersweet affair. There is an inescapable sadness over the passing of a friend, but there is also joy in remembering the spirit of the departed who will remain forever in our hearts. On Saturday, January 5th at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City, the great altoist Frank Morgan was ...

November 2007

By FRADLEY GARNER

Specs Powell, 85, percussionist, pianist, vibraphonist. New York, NY, June 5, 1922--San Marcos (San Diego), CA, September 15, 2007.

Gordon “Specs Powell, who beat a distinguished path from a drum stool, started by doubling on piano in his own Swing era combo, and later became one of the first black musicians hired by a national radio network.

CBS took the drummer on in 1943 for the Ed Sullivan Show, where he backed Billie Holiday and other stars, continuing ...

October 2007

By FRADLEY GARNER

George Melly, 80, jazz and blues singer, author, raconteur. Liverpool, England, August 17, 1926--London, England, July 5, 2007.The Oscar Wilde of jazz? George Melly, an eccentric Englishman of many careers whose singing style invoked his idol, the blues singer Bessie Smith, died in London after a stretch of emphysema and dementia. He was 80.Melly was an exponent of the British brand of “trad jazz, a blend of Dixieland, music hall styles and blues. Clad ...

September 2007

By FRADLEY GARNER

Max Roach, 83, drummer, bandleader, composer, educator. Newland, NC, January 10, 1924--New York, NY, August 15, 2007.

Max Roach, widely deemed the most innovative percussionist in contemporary jazz and a composer who leaped the boundaries of four-four time and standard instrument combinations, died August 15 in a New York hospice. He was 83 and had suffered for several years with dementia.

Roach “built on the innovations of Kenny Clarke, elaborating the style, bringing more complex cross-rhythms into play, ...

March 2006

By FRADLEY GARNER

Pat Pace was the musical pride of Akron, Ohio, a classical and jazz pianist, accordionist, composer and teacher who made only two commercial recordings, decades ago, both released on obscure labels (one of them maybe his own). For the last 20 or so years, Pace had given up gigging and was living the quiet life, teaching younger pianists. I am grateful to Andrew Homzy of Montreal for e-mailing two articles from the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal. In his “Final Coda ...

February 2006

By FRADLEY GARNER

Romano Mussolini has joined the big band above. My scout, Jerry Gordon, forwarded a Reuters obit from Steve Barbone--a name that may ring a bell. “I am a jazz clarinetist based in Philadelphia, doing around 250 gigs a year," Barbone replied to my e-mail. “In 1999, I played at the Pee Wee Russell Memorial Stomp as a sideman in Ed Polcer's Band, with Joe Ascione, Daryl Hannah, Tom Artin, Ed and a bassist." Steve, who leads The Barbone Street Jazz ...

December 2005

By FRADLEY GARNER

New Orleans struck up the band one Sunday this fall for the first jazz funeral in the music's birthplace since Hurricane Katrina opened the levees and laid waste to the Crescent City. “The brass band ... toted donated instruments, reported Shaila Dewan in The New York Times. “The procession leaders wore salvaged bits of their traditional funeral finery. Just after 2 p.m. ... the strains of 'Just a Closer Walk With Thee' streamed past the heaps of stinking garbage and ...

November 2005

By FRADLEY GARNER

What was it like to record with Fats Waller? Fat's guitarist, Al Casey, called it “a light- hearted business. In the studio, “the record people would give him all those pop tunes the other artists refused. Fats would look through the music. 'OK,' he'd say. 'We'll try this one.' Then we'd make the record. Just like that. Sometimes we cut seven or eight numbers in three hours. Casey was 14 when Fats signed him to record. 'He insisted that I ...

June 2005

By FRADLEY GARNER

Around 1980, Hanne and I were at an art gallery in Copenhagen to hear “The Great Dane with the never-ending name." We stood four feet from Niels-Henningrsted Pedersen (Kenny Drew may have been on keyboard) as he took a long solo. My jaw dropped. “That's impossible," I whispered. “That's not a guitar. You can't play it that fast." But he did -- and the line he spun with four fingers sparkled with just the right notes and plinks of harmonics. ...

May 2005

By FRADLEY GARNER

This obituary column has run for nearly two years in Jersey Jazz, journal of the New Jersey Jazz Society. Thanks to Michael Ricci's invitation, and with my JJ editor Paul White's blessings, I am pleased to share it with AAJ readers. Concerning my sources: I subscribe to The New York Times news alert service, which e-mails me when key words like “jazz, “swing, “big band “vocalist turn up in a Times obituary. For some reason, the service never let me ...