Freddie Green born 31 March 1911

Frederick William Green (March 31, 1911 – March 1, 1987) was an American swing jazz guitarist who played rhythm guitar with the Count Basie Orchestra for almost fifty years. 

Green was born in Charleston, South Carolina. He was exposed to music from an early age, and learned the banjo before picking up the guitar in his early teenage years. A friend of his father by the name of Sam Walker taught a young Freddie to read music, and keenly encouraged him to keep up his guitar playing. Walker gave Freddie what was perhaps his first gig, playing with a local community group of which Walker was an organizer. Another member of the group was William "Cat" Anderson, who went on to become an established trumpeter, working with notable figures such as Duke Ellington. Green toured with the Jenkins band as far north as Maine. 

After Freddie's parents died when he was in his early teens, he went to New York to live with his aunt and finishing his schooling. Eventually he began to play rent parties and in New York clubs such as the Yeah Man in Harlem and Greenwich Village's Black Cat. Tenor Saxophonist Lonnie Simmons got him one of his first jobs, working with the Night Hawks at the Black Cat. While at the club in 1937, Green was noticed by jazz talent scout John Hammond, who ultimately introduced him to Basie. 

Count Basie had just come from Kansas City to New York and was debuting at the famed Roseland Ballroom. Soon after discovering Green, Hammond took Basie, Lester Young, Walter Page, Jo Jones, trumpeter Buck Clayton, and Benny Goodman to hear Freddie at the Black Cat. Although Basie liked his current guitarist, Claude Williams, he let him go in favour of Green, who joined the band after the Roseland engagement. Green cut his first sides with Count Basie and his Orchestra (featuring Page and Jones) for Decca on March 26, 1937, playing rhythm on "Honeysuckle Rose", "Pennies From Heaven", "Swinging At The Daisy Chain", and "Roseland Shuffle". 

Throughout his career, Green played rhythm guitar, accompanying other musicians, and he rarely played solos. "His superb timing and ... flowing sense of harmony ... helped to establish the role of the rhythm guitar as an important part of every rhythm section." Green did play a solo on the January 16, 1938, Carnegie Hall concert that featured the Benny Goodman big band. In the jam session on Fats Waller's "Honeysuckle Rose," Green was the rhythm guitarist for the ensemble, which featured Basie, Walter Page (Basie's bassist), and musicians from Duke Ellington's band. After Johnny Hodges' solo, Goodman signalled to Green to take his own solo, which the musician Turk Van Lake described in his commentary on the reissued 1938 Carnegie Hall concert as a "startling move." 

                              

As bebop gained momentum in the late 1940s and the emphasis shifted to small group jazz, many big bands fell on hard times. Count Basie was no exception, and in the summer of 1950 he pared the orchestra down to a handful of players. Green found himself unemployed for the first time in 13 years. According to his son, Al, the situation didn't last for long. Shortly after being let go, Freddie showed up with his guitar at one of Basie's gigs insisting he was back in the group. From that moment on, the relationship between Basie and Green was cemented. The unit soon swelled to a septet that included clarinetist Buddy DeFranco and trumpeter Clark Terry.

Ellington, Green & Basie

In 1952 Basie was back with another big band, which eventually recorded memorable sessions represented on the reissue album Sixteen Men Swinging. Three years later, Freddie cut the classic Mr. Rhythm under the name Freddie Green and his Orchestra with trumpeter Joe Newman, trombonist Henry Coker, saxophonist Al Cohn, pianist Nat Pierce, drummers Osie Johnson and Jo Jones, and bassist Milt Hinton. The session was a neat blend of rhythmic swing and more bebop-oriented soloing, and much of the material was penned by Green, including "Back And Forth", "Feed Bag", "Little Red", "Free And Easy", and "Swingin' Back". 

From the late 1950s into the 1960s the band accompanied such notable vocalists as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Torme, Sarah Vaughn, Tony Bennett, Billy Eckstine, Sammy Davis Jr., and Judy Garland. In 1962, Green, Basie, bassist Ed Jones, and drummer Sonny Payne recorded the remarkable Count Basie and the Kansas City Seven, with cuts featuring flutists Frank Wess and Eric Dixon. 

The mid 1960s and 1970s brought numerous personnel changes to the aggregation; however, it mainly stayed with the Kansas City style swing it did best, despite brief flirtations with more contemporary material such as Beatles' songs and James Bond themes. 

Although big band jazz had long been a thing of the past, the group continued to record and tour extensively. Count Basie's death in 1984 closed a rich chapter in big band jazz. He and Green had been good friends onstage and off, and Freddie assumed the helm of the 19 piece group. On March 1, 1987, Freddie Green died of a heart attack after playing a show in Las Vegas. The sad event marked the end of an era in the history of jazz guitar.

 (Edited from Freddie Green.org & Wikipedia)

George Chisholm born 29 March 1915

George Chisholm OBE (29 March 1915 – 6 December 1997) was a Scottish jazz trombonist and vocalist whose career lasted more than 60 years and for most of it he was regarded as the finest jazz trombonist in Europe. As well as being the first British jazz musician to rank with the American giants, he was a spontaneous and inspired comedian. His extrovert humour and jazz playing covered a shy and extraordinarily modest personality. 

George Chisholm was born into a musical family in Glasgow. His father was a drummer and his mother was a pianist. His brother Ron also became a pianist while another brother, Bert, was a trumpeter. Chisholm's first professional work was as a pianist in a Glasgow cinema and he made his first broadcast in 1932. He began working on trombone in 1934 and he doubled on both instruments for the next few years. He moved to London in 1935 to play in Teddy Joyce's band and then settled on trombone in a variety of "society" bands in the West End. He was a regular at the all-night jam sessions in clubs like the Bag o' Nails and the Nest. It was then that he first played with the American saxophone players Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter. 

Carter was impressed with Chisholm's playing when he heard him in London in 1937 and invited him to join him for a three-month stay in Holland. On his return Chisholm joined the band led by Bert Ambrose, then the top band in the country. He worked off and on for Ambrose during the next two years at the Cafe de Paris and at the Mayfair Hotel and also freelanced with the singer George Elrick and the dancer Ken "Snakehips" Johnson. 

Fats Waller came to England in June 1939 and took part in the first ever television broadcast. It was decided that he should record while in London and Chisholm interrupted his honeymoon in Jersey to play at the session. That same year Leonard Feather organised a recording by George Chis-holm's Jive Five. Feather, who became the leading jazz critic in the United States, later described Chisholm as "one of the half-dozen most inventive and emotionally mature trombonists in jazz - regardless of country: a superlative musician with an ageless style." 

In 1939 he was a founder member of a big band called the Heralds of Swing, but it didn't survive. At the outbreak of war Chisholm, along with other musicians from Ambrose's band, joined the RAF, where he played lead trombone and wrote arrangements for the Squadronaires. The band was so popular it survived long after the war. Chisholm stayed with it until 1950. He followed this with freelance work and a five-year stint with the BBC Showband (a forerunner of the BBC Radio Orchestra) and with the trumpeter Kenny Baker's Dozen, one of the best of all British jazz groups. Chisholm was also a core member of Wally Stott's orchestra on BBC Radio's The Goon Show, for which he made several acting appearances, joining the team of Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Ray Ellington. 

                             

In December 1956 he was chosen, along with Sid Phillips, Dill Jones, Jack Parnell and a symphony orchestra, to accompany Louis Armstrong at the Hungarian Relief concert at the Royal Festival Hall. Armstrong hadn't appeared here since the Thirties and such was the heady rarity of his visit that Humphrey Lyttelton held up a three-stone tape recorder to a backstage loudspeaker to capture the occasion. The tape shows Armstrong often out of sync with the symphony, but Chisholm's solos are suitably inspired and confident. 

In the 1960s and George was as busy as ever, his involvement with The Black and White Minstrel Show involved not only straight playing but also a lot of comedy, George stayed with the show and then toured the country with it as it played to packed theatres, but received bad reviews from the music press especially jazz critics who saw him being involved in a show of bad taste. 

Chisholm toured the country with Alex Welsh's band during the Sixties and Seventies and also formed his own band, the Gentlemen of Jazz. Lyttelton joined him with the Welsh band in "Salute to Satchmo" in 1978. Chisholm also had roles in the films The Mouse on the Moon (1963), The Knack ...and How to Get It (1965) and Superman III (1983). He was also part of the house band for the children's programmes Play School and Play Away. He also sang and was a storyteller on Playschool occasionally.

After a heart bypass operation in 1982 he continued to tour the country with the trumpeter Keith Smith's band and working with his own band the Gentlemen of Jazz. He also played live with touring artists. Chisholm's virtuosity as a brass player brought him invitations to play with leading brass bands and amongst those he played with were the Yorkshire Imperial, Grimethorpe and Royal Doulton. He was appointed an OBE in 1984. 

The mid 1990s were not good for George as he started to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. He retired from public life to Milton Keynes and unfortunately passed away on December 6th, 1997 at the age of 82.

(Edited from The Independent & Wikipedia)

Here’s the national Youth Jazz Orchestra in 1977 with NYJO's World of Music marking a return to BBC 2. Hosted by George Chisholm who you can see playing “Lift Off” between 21:25 and 27:13. 

Cripple Clarence Lofton born 28 March 1887

Cripple Clarence Lofton (March 28, 1887 - January 9, 1957), was a noted boogie-woogie pianist and singer and an integral figure in the boogie-woogie genre in Chicago. Some of his more popular songs include "Strut That Thing", "Monkey Man Blues", "I Don't Know" and "Pitchin' Boogie". His talent was likened to that of Pinetop Smith and other prominent boogie-woogie artists, including Meade Lux Lewis, Cow Cow Davenport and Jimmy Yancey. Lofton was also said to have influenced Erwin Helfer. 

There is uncertainty over when and where he was born. Many sources state that he was born Albert Clemens in 1887, in Kingsport, Tennessee However, the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc state that, based on information in official records, he was born Clarence Clemens in 1896 or 1897, in Burns, Tennessee, and may have been adopted as Clarence Ramsey. They also concluded that Albert (or Elbert) Clemens, born c. 1903, who was also a singer and pianist who recorded for Bluebird Records, was his brother. 

Lofton was born with a limp, from which he derived his stage name, but he began his career as a tap dancer. He then began performing in the blues idiom known as boogie-woogie and settled in Chicago, Illinois. The distinctive feature of his performances was his energetic stage presence; he would dance and whistle as well as sing. A description of Lofton in performance is provided by William Russell, in his essay "Boogie Woogie": 

No one can complain of Clarence's lack of variety or versatility. When he really gets going he's a three-ring circus. During one number, he plays, sings, whistles a chorus, and snaps his fingers with the technique of a Spanish dancer to give further percussive accompaniment to his blues. At times he turns sideways, almost with his back to the piano as he keeps pounding away at the keyboard and stomping his feet, meanwhile continuing to sing and shout at his audience or his drummer. Suddenly in the middle of a number he jumps up, his hands clasped in front of him, and he walks around the piano stool, and then, unexpectedly, out booms a vocal break in a bass voice from somewhere. One second later, he has turned and is back at the keyboard, both hands flying at lightning-like pace. His actions and facial expressions are as intensely dramatic and exciting as his music." 

                              

Lofton started recording as an accompanist, the most significant example being Sammy Brown’s The Jockey Blues made in 1927, almost 10 years before Lofton’s first solo recording. With his performance style, Lofton became a mainstay in his genre. His first recording was made in April 1935 for Vocalion Records with guitar accompaniment by Big Bill Broonzy. Lofton also accompanied Red Nelson on several sides for Decca Records in 1935 and 1936. His wild, high-energy act got the young showman noticed quickly and by the early '30s, he was so much a fixture of Chicago night life firmament that he had his own Windy City nightclub, the oddly named Big Apple where he ran his own boogie school teaching youngsters the art form. 

Lofton with Jimmy Yancey. c. 1950's 

Between 1935 and 1943 he cut close to forty sides for Vocalion, Swaggie, Solo Art and Session including exuberant pieces such as “Brown Skin Girls,” “Policy Blues,” “Streamline Train,” and “I Don’t Know.”  When the boogie-woogie craze cooled off and eventually died down in the late '40s, Lofton went into early retirement. He lived in Chicago for the rest of his life and died of a blood clot in his brain in Cook County Hospital in 1957. A marker was eventually provided for his unmarked grave by The Killer Blues Project.

(Edited from Wilipedia, AllMusic & Sunday Blues)

Johnny Copeland born 27 March 1937

John “Clyde” Copeland (March 27, 1937 – July 3, 1997) was an American Texas blues guitarist and singer.

Johnny Copeland was born in Haynesville, Louisiana, about 15 miles south of Magnolia, Arkansas (formerly Texarkana, a hotbed of blues activity in the '20s and '30s). The son of sharecroppers, his father died when he was very young, but Copeland was given his father's guitar. His first gig was with his friend Joe "Guitar" Hughes. Soon after, Hughes "took sick" for a week and the young Copeland discovered he could be a frontman and deliver vocals as well as anyone else around Houston at that time. 

His music, by his own reasoning, fell somewhere between the funky R&B of New Orleans and the swing and jump blues of Kansas City. After his family (sans his father) moved to Houston, a teenage Copeland was exposed to musicians from both cities. While he was becoming interested in music, he also pursued boxing, mostly as an avocation, and it is from his days as a boxer that he got his nickname "Clyde." 

Copeland and Hughes fell under the spell of T-Bone Walker, whom Copeland first saw perform when he was 13 years old. As a teenager he played at locales such as Shady's Playhouse ( which was Houston's leading blues club and host to most of the city's best bluesmen during the '50s) and the Eldorado Ballroom. Copeland and Hughes subsequently formed the Dukes of Rhythm, which became the house band at the Shady's Playhouse. After that, he spent time playing on tour with Albert Collins during the '50s, and also played on-stage with Sonny Boy Williamson II, Big Mama Thornton, and Freddie King. 

He began recording in 1958 with "Rock 'n' Roll Lily" for Mercury, and moved between various labels during the '60s, including All Boy and Golden Eagle in Houston, where he had regional successes with "Please Let Me Know" and "Down on Bending Knees," and later for Wand and Atlantic in New York. In 1965, he displayed a surprising prescience in terms of the pop market by cutting a version of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" for Wand. 

                              

After touring around the "Texas triangle" of Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, he relocated to New York City in 1974, at the height of the disco boom. It seems this move was the best career move Copeland ever made, for he had easy access to clubs in Washington, D.C., New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Boston, all of which still had a place for blues musicians like him. Meanwhile, back in Houston, the club scene was hurting, owing partly to the oil-related recession of the mid-'70s. Copeland took a day job at a Brew 'n' Burger restaurant in New York and played his blues at night, finding receptive audiences at clubs in Harlem and Greenwich Village. 

He recorded seven albums for Rounder Records, beginning in 1981 and including Copeland Special, Make My Home Where I Hang My Hat, Texas Twister, Bringing It All Back Home, When the Rain Starts a Fallin', Ain't Nothing But a Party (live, nominated for a Grammy), and Boom Boom; he also won a Grammy award in 1986 for his efforts on an Alligator album, Showdown! with Robert Cray and the late Albert Collins. 

Although Copeland had a booming, shouting voice and was a powerful guitarist and live performer, what most people don't realize is just how clever a songwriter he was. His latter-day releases for the PolyGram/Verve/Gitanes label, including Flyin' High (1992) and Catch Up with the Blues, provide ample evidence of this on "Life's Rainbow (Nature Song)" (from the latter album) and "Circumstances" (from the former album). 

Because Copeland was only six months old when his parents split up, and he only saw his father a few times before he passed away, he never realized he had inherited a congenital heart defect from his father. He discovered this in the midst of another typically hectic tour in late 1994, when he had to go into the hospital in Colorado. After he was diagnosed with heart disease, he spent the next few years in and out of hospitals, undertaking a number of costly heart surgeries. In 1995, he appeared on CNN and ABC-TV's Good Morning America, wearing his L-VAD, (a then-recent innovation for patients suffering from congenital heart defects) offering the invention valuable publicity. 

Despite his health problems, Copeland continued to perform his always spirited concerts. After 20 months on the L-VAD (the longest anyone had lived on the device) he received a heart transplant on January 1, 1997 and for a few months, the heart worked fine and he continued to tour. However, the heart developed a defective valve, necessitating heart surgery in the summer. Copeland died of complications during heart surgery on July 3, 1997 at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, in New York City. He was 60 years old.

(Edited from AllMusic)

Billy Wallace born 26 March 1917

Billy Wallace (26 March 1917- 3 June 1978) was a Country and rockabilly singer, songwriter and guitarist. 

Billy Wallace had one of the most unique voices in rockabilly music and played a different guitar style than most of the guitarists back then would do. Both, his voice and full-bodied guitar play worked well together on his classic session with the Bama Drifters in 1956 for Mercury Records, on which he laid down four songs. But Wallace had also a long and more successful (but also unknown) career in songwriting. He never achieved the honour he should have.  

Wallace was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1917, but his family moved soon after to Athens, Alabama. Previously, his father had worked on the oil fields in Oklahoma. He grew up on his father’s farm and learned to play the guitar at an early age. As a teenager, he began to write songs and was later influenced by the country music stars back then like the Delmore Brothers, Rex Griffin and Roy Acuff but also listened to Hank Smith, Ernest Tubb and Hal Smith.   

In 1943, Wallace got married and moved to Huntsville, Alabama. His career as a songwriter began, when Bill Carlisle recorded one of his songs. After that, Wallace and his wife moved to Nashville, Tennessee, hoping to be discovered in the “Music City USA”. In 1950-51, he recorded his first three singles for the small Tennessee record label based in Nashville. “Southwind” is a worthy addition to the train-song catalogue and is performed in typical Wallace style. The flipside is “I’m Gonna Turn You A’Loose”  and features excellent fiddle playing from Nashville session-man Tommy Tucker. Others included “ Dog Hauled Around/You Got Some Explaining To Do”. 

None of them charted but in 1952, he was signed to a contract with Decca Records. Although Wallace was signed as a performer, his songwriting took off at Decca instead of his recording career. His first single on the label, “Back Street Affair”, wasn’t a hit but was covered by Webb Pierce, who hit #1 on the country charts. That was the ticket for Wallace to songwriter stardom. The next two years saw Wallace being a successful composer and writer of songs for artists such as Red Foley, Kitty Wells, Johnny Bond, Billy Walker, Bill Carlisle, Little Jimmy Dickens and Patsy Cline. An entire 4-song Decca session remains unissued today.

               

After recording for various labels, Wallace moved to Mercury Records in 1956, but only cut two sessions for the label. On these days, Wallace recorded all of the material which would become favourites among rockabilly collectors years after. An exact recording date is not know, but it seems probable that Wallace recorded his Mercury material in the spring of that year, then in August. He was backed by the Bama Drifters, a session group that consisted of a guitarist and a bass player. It sounds that the bass player also backed Johnny T. Talley on his Mercury session, but that’s only a guess. All four songs were dominated by Wallace’s unique guitar style that was influenced by traditional blues music, just as his lyrics. 

It was during his days at Mercury that Wallace suffered a stroke. He couldn’t play guitar anymore because his entire left side was paralyzed. Although Bill Carlisle and A&R manager Dee Kilpatrick tried to help Wallace, Mercury dropped him. He had to learn to play guitar again and in the fall of 1957, he had out his next releases on Deb Records. None of his records didn’t catch on or even showed up a sign of success, but Wallace kept on recording. He was a man who never saw the happy site of live, but he “had that strong desire that stayed there.”

Wallace continued to record a great amount of singles for small labels like Del-Ray, Republic (the fine bluesy “ I Can’t Run Away (from these blues)”in 1956 (the original being issued on the very small Lewisburg, TN, Harvest label), Nashville, Pace, Gig, Canadian Arcadia and also releases on Sims. His health didn’t grow better and in 1968, Wallace and his wife returned to Huntsville, where he spent the rest of his life until he died on 3 June 1978. 

(Edited from Boppin)

Aretha Franklin born 25 March 1942

Aretha Louise Franklin (March 25, 1942 – August 16, 2018) was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Referred to as the "Queen of Soul", she has twice been placed ninth in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". With global sales of over 75 million records, Franklin is one of the world’s best-selling music artists. 

Franklin’s mother, Barbara, was a gospel singer and pianist. Her father, C.L. Franklin, presided over the New Bethel Baptist Church of Detroit, Michigan, and was a minister of national influence. A singer himself, he was noted for his brilliant sermons, many of which were recorded by Chess Records. Her parents separated when she was six, and Franklin remained with her father in Detroit. Her mother died when Aretha was 10. As a young teen, Franklin performed with her father on his gospel programs in major cities throughout the country and was recognized as a vocal prodigy. Her central influence, Clara Ward of the renowned Ward Singers, was a family friend. Her album The Gospel Sound of Aretha Franklin (1956) captures the electricity of her performances as a 14-year-old. 

At age 18, with her father’s blessing, Franklin switched from sacred to secular music. She moved to New York City, where Columbia Records executive John Hammond, who had signed Count Basie and Billie Holiday, arranged her recording contract and supervised sessions highlighting her in a blues-jazz vein. From that first session, “Today I Sing the Blues” (1960) remains a classic. But, as her Detroit friends on the Motown label enjoyed hit after hit, Franklin struggled to achieve crossover success. Columbia placed her with a variety of producers who marketed her to both adults (“If Ever You Should Leave Me,” 1963) and teens (“Soulville,” 1964). Without targeting any particular genre, she sang everything from Broadway ballads to youth-oriented rhythm and blues. Critics recognized her talent, but the public remained lukewarm until 1966, when she switched to Atlantic Records, where producer Jerry Wexler allowed her to sculpt her own musical identity. 

                              

At Atlantic, Franklin returned to her gospel-blues roots, and the results were sensational. “I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)” (1967), recorded at Fame Studios in Florence, Alabama, was her first million-seller. Surrounded by sympathetic musicians playing spontaneous arrangements and devising the background vocals herself, Franklin refined a style associated with Ray Charles and raised it to new heights. As a civil-rights-minded nation lent greater support to black urban music, Franklin was crowned the “Queen of Soul.” 

“Respect,” her 1967 cover of Otis Redding’s spirited composition, became an anthem operating on personal, sexual, and racial levels. “Think” (1968), which Franklin wrote herself, also had more than one meaning. For the next half-dozen years, she became a hit maker of unprecedented proportions; she was “Lady Soul.” 

In the early 1970s she triumphed at the Fillmore West in San Francisco before an audience of flower children and on whirlwind tours of Europe and Latin America. Amazing Grace (1972), a live recording of her performance with a choir at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, is considered one of the great gospel albums of any era. By the late 1970s disco cramped Franklin’s style and eroded her popularity. But in 1982, with help from singer-songwriter-producer Luther Vandross, she was back on top with a new label, Arista, and a new dance hit, “Jump to It,” followed by “Freeway of Love” (1985). A reluctant interviewee, Franklin kept her private life private, claiming that the popular perception associating her with the unhappiness of singers Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday was misinformed. 

In 1985, Franklin released an album which featured a unique never before heard element of rock. The album, "Who's Zoomin Who?", and soon went on to receive platinum-certified success.  In 1987 Franklin became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition, she received a Kennedy Centre Honour in 1994, a National Medal of Arts in 1999, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005. While her album sales in the 1990s and 2000s failed to approach the numbers of previous decades, Franklin remained the Queen of Soul. In 2009 she electrified a crowd of more than one million with her performance of “My Country ’Tis of Thee” at the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, and her rendition of Carole King’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” during the Kennedy Centre Honours ceremony in 2015 was no less breathtaking. 

In February 2017, the 74-year-old Queen of Soul told Detroit radio station WDIV Local 4 that she was retiring that year, she said in the interview, "I feel very, very enriched and satisfied with respect to where my career came from and where it is now.” 

On August 12, 2018, it was reported that a "gravely ill" Franklin was bedridden in her Detroit home, surrounded by family and friends. As news of her condition spread, more luminaries paid a visit to express their well wishes, including Wonder and Jesse Jackson.Four days later, on the morning of August 16, Franklin succumbed to her illness, which her family revealed to be pancreatic cancer. 

(Edited from Britannica & Biography)

Dave Appell born 24 March 1922

David Appell (March 24, 1922 – November 18, 2014) was an American musician, musical arranger and record producer who had a track record in the music business that stretched from the dance band era of the 1940s through to the 1970s. 

Appell (pronounced "AP-el") is associated mainly with the Cameo-Parkway record label, in whose history he played a substantial part. He was born in the Fishtown neighbourhood of Philadelphia in 1922 and when he played the ukulele, showed musical promise. He started working as an arranger for several United States Navy big bands in the mid-1940s during his service in World War II, including Jimmie Lunceford's black orchestra. 

Dave Appell & Mike Pedicin

He later arranged for dance orchestras, including Benny Carter and Earl "Fatha" Hines. He recorded for a while on Decca Records as the Dave Appell Four, until Paul Cohen of Decca suggested he change the group name to the Applejacks. Appell also became a publisher, joining ASCAP in 1955, collaborating with Max Freedman. 

He appeared prominently in the 1956 Alan Freed film, Don't Knock the Rock, and worked for a while as the studio band and music director on the Ernie Kovacs TV and radio shows in Philadelphia. Next Appell and the Applejacks were playing in Las Vegas, but they soon began to pine for their hometown and returned to Philadelphia, where they started working for Cameo Records, a label founded by Kal Mann and Bernie Lowe. 

Appell did background vocals, session work as a guitarist, engineering, arranging and producing. The first hit artist on the Cameo label was Charlie Gracie with "Butterfly". Appell's band backed Gracie on that million-seller in 1957, and on the singer's subsequent hits, "Fabulous", "Ninety-Nine Ways" and "Wander in' Eyes". In 1958 Appell and his group backed John Zacherle on his Top 10 novelty hit "Dinner With Drac". 

                            

In the summer of 1958, Appell got an idea for a song from the Philadelphia String Band of a marching-type song with a dance beat. He wrote an instrumental song called "The Mexican Hat Rock", a jumped-up version of the old "Mexican Hat Dance", that he had his studio band record. The song was released under their own name on Cameo that fall and became a big dance hit on American Bandstand, reaching # 16 on the charts. The Applejacks also charted with "Rocka-Conga" (# 38) later in the year. 

Kal Mann & Dave Appell

Appell went on to become the leader of Cameo-Parkway's house band, backing such artists as Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell, The Dovells, Dee Dee Sharp and The Orlons. In the cases of the aforementioned act's records Appell also arranged and, in many instances, produced, and even co-wrote with Kal Mann, songs such as "Let's Twist Again", "Bristol Stomp", "Mashed Potato Time", and "South Street". These were the years of the twist and other dance crazes, in the launching of which Appell played a vital role. Appell left Cameo in 1964. 

In the 1970s he had success with his productions for Tony Orlando and Dawn, including the # 1 hits "Knock Three Times" (1970) and "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree" (1973), on Bell Records in New York City. Appell's co-producer at the time was Hank Medress, a founding member of The Tokens musical group. Appell also produced Mac Davis and Frankie Valli and in later years ran a recording studio in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, as well as writing music for television dramas. 

He died on November 18, 2014 in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, aged 92.Cause of death is unknown. 

(Edited from Wikipedia)