Pia Beck born 18 September 1925

Pia Beck (18 September 1925 – 26 November 2009) was a Dutch jazz pianist and singer. She was one of the most popular entertainers in the Netherlands during the 1950s and achieved international success in Europe and the United States. She had an allure that transcended her homeland and with her carefully sculpted platinum blonde quiff, her glitter jackets and blouses, her love of sports cars and the smile chiselled on her face, jazz pianist Pia Beck had a glamour that you hardly saw here in the Netherlands, especially in the fifties, when she was at the height of her fame.

Pieternella Beck was born into a middle-class family in The Hague. She was the daughter of Floor Beck, a merchant and procuration holder, and Johanna Westerbaan. From an early age she displayed musical talent and later claimed that she could play several instruments as a child. Beck eventually focused on the piano. Attempts at formal musical training were unsuccessful; according to Beck, her teacher, the later conductor Bernard Haitink, dismissed her because of her 'unique gypsy talent' and advised her to pursue her music elsewhere.

During the German occupation of the Netherlands (1940–1945), Beck performed with the female vocal group the Samoa Girls. After the Second World War, she joined the Miller Sextet as a pianist and singer. With this ensemble she toured Europe, performed for American soldiers in Germany, and spent six months entertaining Dutch troops in the former Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). In 1949 Beck left the Miller Sextet and formed her own trio. Throughout the 1950s she performed across the Netherlands, particularly at the venue De Vliegende Hollander in Scheveningen. 

                                   

Her repertoire consisted mainly of boogie-woogie and jazz standards, alongside German and French songs. Her first major hit was Pia's Boogie. Beck regularly toured Europe and from 1952 she also travelled to the United States, where she enjoyed a certain popularity during the fifties. She performed her boogie-woogie and the songs from the Great American Songbook in famous jazz clubs such as Birdland (New York), The Blue Note (Chicago) and Crazy Horse (Hollywood). She was now so famous that all the Dutch newspapers reported on her departure, and wrote again relieved when she had set foot in the Netherlands again. She was also the first Dutch artist for whom a fan club was founded, which was a rare phenomenon in the fifties. She played with many well-known artists and to her considerable pride she even made it to Time Magazine in 1956, which gave her the title 'The Flying Dutchess'. 

Pia reached the height of her popularity in Europe in the 1950's and 1960's, particularly through her interpretations and unique phrasing of standards like 'Dancing on the Ceiling' and George Shearing's 'Lullaby of Birdland'. On several of her recordings from that period, she was accompanied by noted American jazz musicians, such as Milt Hinton and Barry Galbraith. Fine, mythical stories could be told about Pia in America. How Billie Holiday in her twilight years, jealously threw a bottle at her head. How Sarah Vaughan shoved a birthday cake in her face. Although unable to read music she could still play boogie woogie, jazz, rock'n roll or blues. Oscar Peterson was so impressed he called her the best female jazz pianist in the world. She also played for General Eisenhower, fashion kings, intellectuals and the English royal family.

Pia & Marga

Despite appearances in Las Vegas in the early 1960s, she never permanently established herself in the American music scene, which she attributed partly to homesickness for the Netherlands. From the mid-1960s Beck's popularity declined as boogie-woogie fell out of fashion. Around 1965 she moved to Torremolinos in southern Spain, where she lived with her partner Marga Samsonowski and helped raise Marga's children. Beck largely withdrew from public performance and ran various businesses, including a piano bar and a radio programme. Following that she worked in real estate and wrote travel books about the Costa del Sol.

In the mid-1970s she made a successful comeback in the Netherlands, attracting an older, nostalgic audience. Beck was widely regarded as a flamboyant and charismatic performer, noted for her distinctive piano style, stage presence, and ability to connect with audiences. Although she achieved international recognition, her later success was largely nostalgic. In 1977 Beck drew public attention by participating in protests against American anti-gay activist Anita Bryant. In 1982 her life story was published under the title The Pia Beck Story.

In the autumn of 2000, Pia Beck celebrated her 75th birthday and also her 60th anniversary as an artist during a large-scale gala in the Royal Theatre in The Hague. Beck continued to perform until 2003 when she retired at the age of 78. In the end, she even got rid of her piano, although that was officially because the instrument suffered from the drought of the Spanish climate. Beck remained in Churriana near Torremolinos, where she died on 26 November 2009, aged 84, several months after the death of her partner Marga Samsonowski. According to a friend the cause of death was heart failure.

(Edited from Wikipedia, The Hague Municipal Archives & Huygens Institute) 

St. Clair Pinckney born September 17, 1930

 

St. Clair Pinckney Jr. (September 17, 1930 – February 1, 1999), often nickname "Pink," was an American tenor and baritone saxophonist and flautist, best known for his long-standing collaboration with James Brown. 

Not much is known about St. Clair Pinckney's early years from his birth in Charleston, West Virginia, even then there are two possible dates given. One is January 1st and the other is September 17,1930. I've gone with September as it seems to be more widely used. The World Of Sax states "his journey as a saxophonist began with classical training, which provided a solid foundation for his later explorations in jazz and funk", but does not elaborate as to when and where. His earliest mention is in 1962, when he became a charter member of The J.B.'s, backing James Brown across several decades. 

Recognized as the oldest member of the group—often distinguished by a patch of grey hair—he remained in Brown's band for virtually its entire existence until health issues forced him to step down shortly before his death in 1999.  He performed as both a sideman and session musician on seminal funk and soul recordings, including Grits & Soul (1964), Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud (1969), Sex Machine (1970), Hot Pants (1971), and The Payback (1973).

                                  

With a rich, robust tenor sound, Pinckney was a solid, calm and dependable character, the kind of cement that held a band together through knowing the leader's ways and how best to survive them.  When he briefly stepped away from James Brown during band line-up changes in the early 1970s, he recorded with former bandmates in Maceo & All The King's Men before returning to Brown's roster. His collaboration with James Brown was not limited to the band alone. Pinckney also featured as a session musician on several of Brown’s studio recordings, adding depth and vitality to the tracks with his expressive saxophone playing. His contributions to songs like “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and “I Got You (I Feel Good)” played a significant role in shaping the sound of soul and funk music.

In addition to his work with Brown, Pinckney released solo jazz-funk projects late in his career via Ichiban Records, including the albums Do You Like It (1987) and Private Stock (1989), alongside singles like "Summer Breeze" and "As We Lay". During his later years Pinckney ha been suffering from Emphysema and his last recording was in October 1998 for the Jabo Starks and Clyde Stublefields album Born To Groove. Although he was very ill and on oxygen 24 hours a day they managed to roll St. Clair in his wheelchair into Audioarts Recording Studio and capture a wonderful flute solo he titled "Dynaflo." 

'Pink' died due to complication of Emphysema disease 1st February 1999 (aged 68). His funeral at the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia was attended by a large contingent of orchestra members, J.B's and Soul Generals. James Brown spoke warmly of the musician and man. He was buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens, South Fulton, Fulton County, Georgia, USA.

Although St. Clair Pinckney is gone, his music will live on, deeply embedded in the tight horn voicing of James Brown and JBs songs like "I Feel Good," "Cold Sweat," "I've Got The Feeling," "The Big Payback," "Pass The Peas" and his own original, "Hot Pants Road."

(Scant information edited from a Fred Wesley article, Wikipedia, The Life of James Brown & The World of Sax)

Janis Paige born September 16, 1922

Janis Paige (September 16, 1922 – June 2, 2024) was an American actress and singer. With a career spanning nearly 60 years, she was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood who shone in films and numerous television shows.

Paige was born Donna Mae Tjaden in Tacoma, Washington state. Her parents, George and Hazel, separated when she was four, a year before she started singing in public in local amateur shows. After graduating from high school, Donna and her mother moved to Los Angeles, where she was soon spotted by a Warner Bros talent scout and given a contract, adopting Janis Paige as her stage name. Paige’s film career started with a walk on part in Hollywood Canteen (1944) after which Warner Bros, cast her mainly as the heroine’s best friend or as the flirtatious “other woman”, often linked with the humorous character actor Jack Carson.

Among the films for the duo were Romance on the High Seas (1948), Day’s debut feature, in which Paige played Elvira Kent, and a few light-hearted musical comedies teaming Carson and the tenor Dennis Morgan (Warners’ answer to Bob Hope and Bing Crosby), namely Two Guys from Milwaukee (1946), The Time, The Place and the Girl (1946) and One Sunday Afternoon (1948). She also played the part of innocent Sally Athelny, who contrasted with the worldly waitress Mildred Rogers (Eleanor Parker) in Of Human Bondage (1946), the second film version of the Somerset Maugham novel. In a change of tone were two westerns, Cheyenne (1947), starring Morgan and Jane Wyman, in which Paige was a saloon girl, and The Younger Brothers (1949), as the nasty ring leader of a gang of outlaws.

                                  

Paige was dissatisfied with the quality of her roles and the pictures, and after seven years this prompted her to leave Warner Bros. However, Paige’s initial acting persona was soon to change. Her greatest triumph came in the Richard Adler/Jerry Ross Tony award-winning Broadway musical The Pajama Game in 1954. Paige created the role of “Babe” Williams, the spirited leader of the union grievance committee at the Sleep Tite pajama factory, vigorously belting out the numbers I’m Not at All in Love, Small Talk and There Once Was a Man. It is likely that her fame would have widened even more had she reprised the role of Babe in the 1957 film version of the Pajama Game. Initially, Warner Bros wanted to transfer the entire stage company to the screen, with the proviso that one of the two leads had to be a well-known movie star. Unfortunately for Paige, the studio offered her role to Doris Day when Frank Sinatra turned down the male lead, which was taken by the relatively unknown John Raitt.

As compensation for losing out to Day on The Pajama Game movie, Paige was third-billed (under Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse) in Rouben Mamoulian’s film version of the Cole Porter hit Broadway musical Silk Stockings, released in 1957. In it, Paige, as a seductive Hollywood film star, genially takes off Esther Williams, MGM’s swimming sensation, periodically hitting the side of her head as if to get water out of her ears. Paige delivers three self-mocking show-stopping numbers, in one of which, Stereophonic Sound, she dances with Astaire. The other numbers are Josephine, a song from a putative vulgar musical based on Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Satin and Silk, which eulogises the importance of the right underwear. Paige was given a star in the Motion Picture section of the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6624 Hollywood Boulevard on February 9, 1960.

Astaire & Paige in Silk Stockings

After Silk Stockings, Paige made rare visits to the big screen. The few exceptions were Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960), in which she wittily portrayed a Broadway star who makes a play for an acerbic theatre critic (David Niven), much to the chagrin of his wife (Day); and The Caretakers (1963), set in a psychiatric hospital run by an over-the-top Joan Crawford. By then, Paige’s long television career was well under way. She had her own sitcom, It’s Always Jan (1955-56), and became a very familiar face for a further six decades, appearing in almost any series one cares to name.

Janis Paige in Mame

Her singing voice and vibrant personality were perfectly suited when she replaced Angela Lansbury on Broadway in Mame in 1968, and toured in shows including Gypsy, Applause, Annie Get Your Gun and Guys and Dolls. In the 1970's she was seen in Columbo, Banacek, Police Story, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Hawaii Five-O, Charlies Angels & The Rockford Files to name but a few. In the 1980s and 1990s, she was seen on several soap operas, including Capitol (1987, as Sam Clegg's first wife, Laureen), General Hospital (1989–1990, as Katharine Delafield's flashy Aunt Iona, a lady counterfeiter), and Santa Barbara (1990–1993, replacing Dame Judith Anderson as matriarch Minx Lockridge). Her last film appearance was in the 1994 thriller "Natural Causes". Her last television appearance was in a 2001 episode of the legal drama series Family Law.

She was married three times and divorced twice. Her third husband, the lyricist Ray Gilbert, died in 1976. Paige turned 100 on September 16, 2022, and died at her Los Angeles home on June 2, 2024, at the age of 101.

(Edited from Ronald Bergan Guardian obit & Wikipedia) 

Johnny Sparrow born November 13, 1919.

Johnny Sparrow (November 13, 1919 - April 24, 1990) was an American tenor saxophonist and bandleader active primarily during the 1940s and 1950s, bridging the gap between trad jazz, bebop, jump blues, and early R&B/rock 'n' roll.  

Not much is known about John P. Sparrow's early years  from his birth in Grenada in the West Indies or his relocation to the US mainland. Some sources suggest he originated from the American South or Southwest (possibly Texas). No account can be found as to his career in jazz until early 1944 when he took over Charlie Parker's seat during Jay McShann's Orchestra's residency at the Club Plantation in Los Angeles. He played with them through the spring of that year. unfortunately, the group didn't get to record during this period, and its work has survived best in the form of armed forces radio broadcasts. The band finally broke up in May of 1944 when McShann was drafted.

                                  

Sparrow then played with Louis Armstrong's band in 1946 and 1947, and got to record with the group as well. From Armstrong's band, Sparrow spent two years with Lionel Hampton's ensemble, where he was frequently showcased alongside saxophonist Morris Lane. In 1947, he appeared in Billie Holiday's famous performance at Carnegie Hall (February 8). Sparrow left Hampton in 1949 to form his own band, Johnny Sparrow & His Bows and Arrows, and took the nickname "Mad Sax Man. " They recorded for a pair of small New York-based labels, Melford and National, of which the National sides were far more numerous and successful. Their biggest early success was "Sparrow's Flight," which charted in 1950. 

In 1951, the group moved its base to Philadelphia, maintaining a regular residency at Club 421. During the spring of 1952, they were signed to the Philadelphia-based Gotham Records. At that time, the group consisted of Sparrow on tenor sax, Eugene Burrell (drums), Thomas Moultrie (bass), and Thomas Holloway (piano), later expanding to include flute, trombone, baritone sax, and vibraphone.  Their up-tempo jump instrumentals (such as "Boudoir Boogie", "Jump Steady", and "Paradise Rock") were featured on Alan Freed's influential WINS radio show in New York as early predecessors to rock 'n' roll.  

After his Gotham contract ended in 1953 and a brief, largely unreleased 1954 session for RCA, interest in the band had declined, records were no longer sold and it broke up, and with it, Johnny Sparrow disappeared from the music scene and faded into history. Nothing was heard about him for thirty six years until according to a few sources, he died on April 24, 1990 in Baltimore, Maryland.

(Reference - AllMusic & GeoCities)

Bill Berry born September 14, 1930

Bill Berry (September 14, 1930 – November 13, 2002)was an American jazz trumpeter and cornetist, best known for playing with the Duke Ellington Orchestra in the early-1960s, and for leading his own big band.

Born William Richard Berry in Benton Harbor, Michigan, he was the son of a bass player in a touring dance band. He spent his early years traveling with his parents. From the age of five, he took piano lessons at his parents' home in South Bend, Indiana. In high school in Cincinnati, he switched to trumpet and after graduating in 1947, he went out on the road for three years, playing one-nighters throughout the Midwest in a band led by Don Strickland. “All the bands had sleeper buses because they didn’t pay enough to afford hotels,” Berry recalled. “We used to check in once a week on Mondays, just to take a bath.”

                                  

After playing in Air Force bands for four years while stationed in Texas and Iceland in the early ‘50s, Berry studied at the Cincinnati College of Music, then attended Berklee College of Music in Boston before landing a job playing with Woody Herman. In 1960, he joined Maynard Ferguson’s band. While playing with Ferguson’s band at Birdland in New York City in 1961, Berry recalled in a 1997 interview with The New York Times, “this guy came into the club almost every night where we were playing and kept asking me, ‘Don’t you think you should meet Ellington?’ And I’d say, ‘Everybody should meet Ellington.’ Berry finally accompanied the man to the Apollo Theater, where he met Ellington. As Berry climbed down a narrow, winding wrought-iron stairway from the dressing room, he recalled, “This guy stops me and asks me if I can go out with the band later that week. It turned out to be the band manager, and the guy I was with turned out to be Duke’s press agent.”

He became one of the Duke Ellington orchestra's first white members. As Berry recalled, “I went through all the civil-rights era with Ellington. None of the bands were integrated except Maynard’s. Berry once described his old boss as “the only guy I ever met that I knew right off the bat was a genius.” “Duke Ellington changed my whole life,” Berry told The Times last year. “He changed my outlook about everything, and not just music.” After his working with Ellington, he played with The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra and led his own big band in New York. It featured other former Ellington sidemen over the years, and was described as one of “the definitive interpreters of Duke Ellington’s music.”

In 1965, he began his 15-year association with the “Merv Griffin Show” band and ghosted the trumpet playing for Frank Sinatra in the 1966 film A Man Called Adam. He formed his own big band, the New York Band, in 1970. After the Griffin show moved to the West Coast a year later, Berry re-formed his ensemble as Bill Berry and the L.A. Band, which he continued to lead on a part-time basis for the next 30 years. Jack Nimitz, a baritone saxophonist in his band, said "He knew how to get what he wanted out of the band in a very relaxed way — nice and easy, no shouting." 

In the 1980s, Berry visited Japan regularly with Benny Carter and made well-received solo tours in Britain. He had by then permanently adopted the cornet because it suited his use of plunger mutes and was more his size. Among the most successful of his own recordings was Shortcake (Concord, 1978), an album of jazz for small group in the Ellington style; he appeared on many albums by other musicians, including Rosemary Clooney (Everything's Coming Up Rosie), Scott Hamilton (Scott Hamilton Is a Good Wind Who Is Blowing Us No Ill), Jake Hanna (Live at Concord), and Coleman Hawkins (Wrapped Tight). In 1981, Berry began a seven-year stint as musical director of the Monterey Jazz Festival. He taught at Californian schools and colleges and at the same time began directing the Monterey Jazz Festival High School All Star Band. 

Heart bypass surgery in 1995 did not slow Berry down. He continued to travel as a soloist several times a year to Britain, Europe and Japan, as well as playing locally and doing studio work. From 1991 to 2000, he served as musical director and his wife produced the annual International Jazz Party, which brought Japanese and American musicians together for a one-night performance in Monterey and three in Los Angeles. 

His yearlong battle with cancer didn’t prevent him from taking the latest student all-stars on a tour of Japan in August or from conducting them in September at the Monterey Jazz Festival. He succumbed to the disease on Nov. 13, 2002 at the UCLA Medical Center. He was 72 years old.

(Edited from Wikipedia & L.A. Times)

Joe Paul Nichols born September 13, 1941

Joe Paul Nichols (September 13, 1941 - 27 July, 2011) was a Country and gospel singer. 

Joe Paul Nichols was born in Cundiff, Texas, on September 13, 1941. He was the son of O. W. “Jack” and Myrtle Iva (Riggs) Nichols. When he was nine years old, Nichols learned to play guitar from his father. He listened to country music broadcast from programs such as the Grand Ole Opry, Big D Jamboree, and Louisiana Hayride. At the age of sixteen, he had a successful audition in Fort Worth for a weekly country show called Cowtown Hoedown, and Nichols performed there every other week for three years. He graduated from Jacksboro High School, where he had been active in sports, student council, and agricultural clubs, in 1960.

                                    

In the early 1960s Nichols became a regular performer on Big D Jamboree, broadcast from the Sportatorium in Dallas. He married high school sweetheart Carolyn Martin in Jacksboro on June 28, 1963. They had two children. In 1970 Nichols formed his own band, The Five Pennies, and together they performed country, western swing, and country gospel for more than three decades. Nichols and his Five Pennies toured Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Missouri and performed at rodeos, fairs, clubs, conventions, and school auditoriums. 

The shows included a performance for Lady Bird Johnson in Austin and for Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating at a barbecue. During his career Nichols worked with or shared the stage with a number of famous names in country music, including George Jones, Charley Pride, Johnny Cash, Ernest Tubb, Sonny James, Ferlin Husky, and Hank Thompson.

Nichols’s prolific recording output included some twenty-six albums and more than 300 songs during the course of his career. His song, “Jesus is the Same in California,” hit Number 1 on the country gospel charts in 1999 and won numerous honours, including the Country Gospel Music Guild’s “Golden Harp Award” for Song of the Year in 2000. Another hit song, “Eleven Eighteen Nadine Lane,” won the Song of the Year Award from the Academy of Western Artists in 2006. In addition to his professional musical endeavours, Nichols served as music director at Cundiff Baptist Church for forty-eight years.

Nichols maintained a day job throughout his musical career and worked as a state inspector for the Texas Department of Transportation for thirty-four years until retiring in 1993. He then started, with his wife and business partner Terry Beene, a bus tour business. He was elected a county commissioner in Jack County and served in that office for ten years. He was also active on the board of the Jack County Farm Bureau for twenty-three years.

Throughout his career, Nichols received recognition and honours for his musical contributions. The city of Fort Worth designated June 8, 1984, as “Joe Paul Nichols Day.” He was inducted into the International Country Gospel Music Association’s Hall of Fame in 1991 and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from that organization in 2009. He was named Male Entertainer of the Year by the Country Gospel Music Guild in 2000 and inducted into the Texas International Music Association’s Hall of Fame in 2007. That same year Texas Governor Rick Perry paid tribute to Nichols as a “Country-Western Icon.”

In September 2007 Nichols was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease. He retired from music in 2008 but continued to reach audiences through his recordings. His song, “Take My Hand Precious Lord,” reached Number 1 on the country gospel chart in 2010 and remained in the Top 10 for several months. He died on July 27, 2011, in Jacksboro and was buried in Cundiff Cemetery in Jack County.

(Ref: Texas State Historical Association) 

Bill Jennings born September 12, 1919

Bill Jennings (September 12, 1919 – November 29, 1978) was an American jazz guitarist and composer. An outstanding musician's musician, totally original, exceptionally gifted, and unfortunately under-rated and mostly unknown today. 

Because he was such a prolific sideman in the early years of the electric guitar on jazz, blues, early rock ‘n’ roll, and R&B, Bill Jennings is surely one of the most influential guitarists that only a few have heard of. Called “the architect of soul jazz,” and “one of my biggest influences” by B.B. King, he was left-handed and played the guitar upside down without reversing the strings, giving him a style all his own.

                                   

Jennings was born in Indianapolis. Hanging out on Indiana Avenue, he started playing professionally as a teenager and in 1937, he and his brother Al joined with former Ink Spot member Jerry Daniels to form a group called The Three Spades. After serving in the Navy during World War II, Jennings made his first recordings in 1946, performing with jazz violinist Stuff Smith. In 1949, he joined Louis Jordan and the Tympani Five and appeared on a 1950 recording the band made with Ella Fitzgerald. He also appeared with Louis Armstrong.

Bill with Louis Jordan

Many of Jennings' '50s recordings were made for Cincinnati's King label, often accompanying high-profile R&B players like King Curtis, Leo Parker, Wild Bill Davis and Bill Doggett  Jennings was unique in his ability to play in many styles, including swing, bop, jump blues, R&B, and pop. He played electric guitar on many early rock ‘n’ roll recordings with various vocalists, sometimes singing himself. His recording of “Fever” with Little Willie John went to Number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 1958, he recorded an album with Etta James.

A left-handed player, Jennings played guitar upside down, with the high strings at the top, which gave him a different approach to phrasing and bending the strings. He was an R&B showman with an earthy sound and urgent attack. Unlike Tiny Grimes, a straight-up blues player, Jennings had more hip soul and wry wit in his inventive lines. As a sideman, he appeared on 10 Prestige albums led by saxophonist Willis “Gator” Jackson from 1959 to 1968. He returned to Indianapolis in the early 1960s and for a while continued to play in night clubs with the Buddy Parker Four which included Erroll Grandy. 

Later in his career, he lost a finger on his fretting hand and began playing bass guitar. Jennings died at Veterans Hospital in Indianapolis on November 29, 1978 and was buried in an unmarked grave. But the story doesn’t end there. In 2023, a national organization dedicated to providing headstones for musicians such as Jennings, the Killer Blues Headstone Project, placed a monument at his grave, with respect to this important musician.

(Edited from Crown Hill Foundation, Wikipedia & All About Jazz)