Big Band in the Sky

(Continued from the February issue of Jersey Jazz Magazine) Howard Johnson Considered the preeminent tuba player in modern jazz, Howard

In the mid-1950s, vocalists Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks worked together to lyricize several Count Basie tunes with the hope of recording them. They received some interest from a young producer, Creed Taylor, who was just starting out with ABC-Paramount Records, and Lambert and Hendricks auditioned 13 singers. Most of them, according to Hendricks, “couldn’t swing.” But, one of them could.

When the Miles Davis Septet was beginning to record the now-classic album, Kind of Blue (Columbia: 1959), Davis reportedly said

Shortly after Holli Ross recorded her first solo album, You’ll See, on the Mile High Records label in 2011, JazzTimes‘

South Orange Village Mayor Sheena Collum said it perfectly: “Never easy to pay tribute to someone who was one in a bazillion. Lee May, who we all called Boz, is such a tremendous loss for the South Orange community but she wouldn’t want tears or sadness.”

“If you went to another city, and they knew you were from Philadelphia,” tenor saxophonist Larry McKenna told the Philadelphia

We have lost three more members of the jazz community. One, bassist Henry Grimes died from complications of the coronavirus. The others are: bassist Jymie Merritt and pianist Onaje Allan Gumbs.

“All I did was make sure they had the best so they could be the best. They did the rest.” That brief statement, in a 1993 Ebony Magazine interview, was pianist/educator Ellis Marsalis’ assessment of his influence on the success of his jazz musician sons — saxophonist Branford, trumpeter Wynton, trombonist Delfeayo, and percussionist Jason.

In 1969, Oscar Peterson released an album called Motions and Emotions on the MPS Records label. One of the tracks was the Antonio Carlos Jobim tune, “Wave”, and the writer Gene Lees sought to find out who the guitarist was. 

When Gerry Mulligan thought about recording a Re-Birth of the Cool album for GRP Records in early 1991, he hoped that Miles Davis would join him for that reunion. Unfortunately, Davis died before the recording could take place.