Summer Break

 No more posts till I get back. Staying a few miles from home to re-charge batteries.

Elmo Hope born 27 June 1923

St. Elmo Sylvester Hope (June 27, 1923 – May 19, 1967) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger, chiefly in the bebop and hard bop genres. He grew up playing and listening to jazz and classical music with Bud Powell, and both were close friends of another influential pianist, Thelonious Monk. 

St. Elmo Sylvester Hope was born in New York and began piano studies by age seven. He went on to win prizes for his piano recitals. He was a childhood friend of Bud Powell, and Thelonious Monk and they would play piano for each other. He continued to play and improve and upon his return from the army in 1943, he dedicated his life to jazz piano, paying his dues in small clubs in the Bronx, Greenwich Village, and Coney Island. 

After a short stint with Snub Mosely's combo he joined Joe Morris in 1948, working with him into 1951. That band recorded for Atlantic, and there was also a date in 1949 for Decca where the pianist is listed in Jepsen's discography as Elmore Sylvester. However, the only numbers which would have given an indication of Elmo's jazz abilities remain unreleased to this day. It was not until June of ’53 where dates with Lou Donaldson and Clifford Brown for Blue Note started to give Elmo Hope a name in jazz circles. He followed quickly with some sessions as leader, and another with Frank Foster, both for Prestige. There were further Prestige sides cut with top players as John Coltrane, Donald Byrd, with Paul Chambers bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. 

Elmo’s piano style was overshadowed by the growing popularity of both Powell and Monk, and though he was in there since the beginning of the bebop movement, he was compared to and judged against the other two. His cabaret license was pulled for a previous drug conviction and this severely limited where he could work if at all. This would start a cycle of disillusionment and frustration that would hound him all his life. 

In April 1956 he was supposed to be the pianist on a Gene Ammons session later released as The Happy Blues, but after arriving at the Prestige offices on West 50th Street ahead of time, he left and had to be replaced by Duke Jordan before the band motored to New Jersey and Van Gelder's studio. That was a Friday Afternoon. The following Tuesday, Elmo showed up, explaining he had gone to "visit a sick aunt" at Roosevelt Hospital about nine blocks away and had lost track of the time. It was obvious that Hope was caught up in the pursuit of the "horse" that many musicians were riding at the time. 

           Here’s “All The Things You Are” from above album.

                             

California seemed like the place to try it next, and so in 1957 he went west with Chet Baker. Hope was suffering from respiratory aliments, and the dry climate suited him just fine. There was a brief spell working with Lionel Hampton, then joining Harold Land, with whom he recorded “The Fox” in ’59, followed by a session with his own trio. In 1958 he met his wife-to-be Bertha, also a pianist, and married her in 1960 and was at least happy and healthy. But there was not much work out on the coast for a bebop pianist, and he grew restless again. 

So it was back to New York, where in ’61 he recorded “Homecoming” (Riverside) with Blue Mitchell, Jimmy Heath, and Frank Foster, these sessions included Percy Heath on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums, who were on his trio sides at this time. There was a solo piano effort where he was joined by his wife Bertha, also a pianist. There were a couple of more recordings in ’61 for the Celebrity and Beacon labels, which were remakes of some of his older material. 

His next recording was not until 1963 and, by its very title and context, Jazz From Riker's Island, indicated that Hope was again involved with his heroin habit. He had not been visible on the New York club scene in any prominent way and this was also the case during the next few years. It was commonly believed that the 1963 album had been his last as a leader but in May and August of 1966 he did two trio sessions for Herb Abramson's Festival Records, but not released for 11 years. Hope's final concert was at Judson Hall in New York City in 1966. Fellow pianist Horace Tapscott reported that, later, Hope's "hands were all shot up and he couldn't play". 

Visits to one hospital that was experienced in addressing the health problems of drug addicts left Hope feeling that he was being experimented on, so he went to another, St. Clare's. Here, according to his wife, the treatment was not adjusted for the methadone program he was on, putting added strain on his heart. Hope was hospitalized with pneumonia in 1967 and died a few weeks later, on May 19, of heart failure. His wife was aged 31 at the time of his death. 

Bertha Hope has released albums dedicated to her former husband's compositions. She and her later husband, bassist Walter Booker, created a band named "Elmollenium" in 1999, which played Elmo's compositions. She transcribed recordings to recreate his arrangements, following an apartment fire that destroyed most of the original manuscripts. 

(Edited from All About Jazz & Wikipedia)

Dave Grusin born 26 June 1934

Robert David Grusin (born June 26, 1934) is an American composer, arranger, producer, jazz pianist, and band leader. He has composed many scores for feature films and television, and has won numerous awards for his soundtrack and record work, including an Academy Award and 10 Grammy Awards. In 1978, Grusin founded GRP Records with Larry Rosen, and was an early pioneer of digital recording. 

Grusin was born in Littleton, Colorado, to Henri and Rosabelle (née de Poyster) Grusin. Grusin’s family originates from Gruzinsky princely line of the Bagrationi dynasty, the royal family that ruled the Kingdom of Georgia in the 9-19th centuries. In Slavic languages, "Grusin" is an ethnonym for Georgians.  Grusin’s father, who was a violinist, was born and raised in Riga, Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire, from where he emigrated to the United States in 1913. Grusin's mother was a pianist. 

Grusin studied music at the University of Colorado at Boulder and received his degree in 1956. Grusin's teachers included Cecil Effinger and Wayne Scott, pianist, arranger and professor of jazz. Grusin produced his first single in 1962, "Subways Are for Sleeping", and his first film score, for Divorce American Style, in 1967. Other scores followed, including The Graduate (1967), Winning (1969), The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), The Midnight Man (1974), and Three Days of the Condor (1975). 

In 1978, Grusin founded GRP Records with his business partner, Larry Rosen, and began to produce some of the first commercial digital recordings. Grusin was the composer for On Golden Pond (1981), Tootsie (1982), and The Goonies (1985). In 1988, he won the Oscar for best original score, for The Milagro Beanfield War. Grusin composed the musical signatures for the 1984 TriStar Pictures logo and the 1993 Columbia Pictures Television logo. 

In 1998, Grusin ranked No. 5 and No. 8 on Billboard's Top 10 Jazz Artists, at mid-year and at year's end, respectively, based on sales of his album, "Dave Grusin Presents West Side Story." From 2000-11, Grusin concentrated on composing classical and jazz compositions, touring and recording with collaborators, including jazz singer and lyricist Lorraine Feather and guitarist Lee Ritenour. Their album Harlequin won a Grammy Award in 1985. Their classical crossover albums, Two Worlds and Amparo, were nominated for Grammys. 

                    Here’s the main theme from above album.

                    

Grusin has a filmography of about 100 titles. His many awards include an Oscar for best original score for The Milagro Beanfield War, as well as Oscar nominations for The Champ, The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Firm, Havana, Heaven Can Wait, and On Golden Pond. 

He received a Best Original Song nomination for "It Might Be You" from the film Tootsie. Six of the fourteen cuts on the soundtrack from The Graduate are his. Other film scores Grusin has composed include Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?, Three Days of the Condor, The Goonies, Tequila Sunrise, Hope Floats, Random Hearts, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Mulholland Falls and The Firm. 

For television, he was the conductor for The Andy Williams Show (1963–1965) and the composer of the theme songs for such series as Dan August (1970), The Sandy Duncan Show (1971-1972) Maude (1972), Good Times (1974), Baretta (1975), and St. Elsewhere (1982). He also composed music for individual episodes of each of those shows. His other TV credits include It Takes a Thief, The Wild Wild West, and Columbo - Prescription: Murder (1968). He also did the theme song for One Life to Live (1968) from 1984–92. 

Grusin received honorary doctorates from Berklee College of Music in 1988 and University of Colorado, College of Music in 1989. Grusin was initiated into the Beta Chi Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia at the University of Colorado in 1991. In 1994, GRP was in charge of MCA's (soon to be renamed Universal Music Group) jazz operations. Founders Grusin and Rosen left in 1995 and were replaced by Tommy LiPuma. In 1997, Grusin and Rosen co-founded N2K Encoded Music (after renamed N-Coded Music). 

In addition to his numerous GRP releases, Grusin has also recorded for Columbia, Sheffield Lab, and Polygram. In 2011, he released the concert album and DVD An Evening with Dave Grusin, which featured him backed by the 75-piece Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra revisiting works from throughout his varied career. His latest release in 2022 is Tokyo Connection, Budokan 1982 – 2022, a joint effort with guitarist Lee Ritenour. 

Dave is the father of music editor Stuart Grusin, music editor and musician Scott Grusin, engineer Mike Grusin, artist Annie Vought, and elder brother of keyboardist Don Grusin and sister Dee Grusin. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic & Jazz Blues News) 

 

T-Model Ford born 24 June 1924

James Lewis Carter Ford (probably June 24, 1923 – July 16, 2013) was an American blues musician, using the name T-Model Ford. Unable to remember his exact date of birth, he began his musical career in his early 70s, and continuously recorded for the Fat Possum label, then switched to Alive Naturalsound Records. His musical style combined the rawness of Delta blues with Chicago blues and juke joint blues styles. 

According to records, Ford was born in Forest, Mississippi, between 1921 and 1925. Researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc indicate June 24, 1923, though at the time of his death his record company gave his age as 94, suggesting a birth in 1918 or 1919. According to an interview recorded for his album "The Ladies Man", Ford's passport gives his date of birth as June 24, 1921 but his Mississippi driver's licence gives it as June 27, 1924. Starting with an abusive father who had permanently injured him at eleven, Ford lived his entire life in a distressed and violent environment, towards which he was quite indifferent. 

Ford, an illiterate, worked in various blue collar jobs as early as his preteen years, such as plowing fields, working at a sawmill, and later in life becoming a lumber company foreman and then a truck driver. At this time, Ford was sentenced to ten years on a chain gang for murder. Allegedly, Ford was able to reduce his sentence to two years. He spent many of his years following his release in conflicts with law enforcement. Ford lived in Greenville, Mississippi and for a time wrote an advice column for Arthur magazine. Reportedly, he had twenty six children. 

In 1973 he moved to Greenville, in the Mississippi Delta. For years, black Greenvilleans had gone for their entertainment to Nelson Street, where every juke-joint had a Seeburg in it, and every Seeburg had 50 records. Ford listened to discs by homeboys who had gone to Chicago, such as Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters; in his 50s, he took up the guitar and began to sing their songs himself. He hung out with locally celebrated figures such as Frank Frost and Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes, and worked regularly with the harmonica player Willie Foster at house parties and juke-joints all over the Delta and central Mississippi. 

                          

For a while Ford opened for Buddy Guy and in 1995, was discovered by Matthew Johnson of Fat Possum Records, under which he released five albums from 1997 to 2008. In 1997 T-Model Ford was featured in a 26-minute documentary JUKE Directed by Mary Flannery and produced by Yellow Cat Productions. T-Model appeared along with Farmer John and John Horton. All this made him an attractive-sounding proposition to promoters, and he was booked for several visits to Britain and Europe. The Living Blues reporter had noted that Ford could usually be found sitting outside his house with a guitar and a bottle of Jack Daniels, and he liked to have both with him at all times. 

When he appeared in England in 2007, notices were posted at one venue asking the audience not to buy him a drink. By his next visit in 2009, he was on the wagon and looking, some of his audience thought, rather frail, but he performed with scarcely diminished intensity. Since 2008, Ford worked with the Seattle-based band, GravelRoad. The project began as a single event, with Ford needing assistance to play the Deep Blues Festival in Minnesota in July 2008. GravelRoad, longtime fans of Ford and performers already scheduled for the festival, agreed to provide support for a ten-show United States tour for Ford through July. 

Ford had a pacemaker inserted at the end of that tour, but appeared on stage again with GravelRoad in 2008, 2009 and 2010. He suffered a stroke in early 2010, but despite difficulty with right-hand mobility, managed to complete a successful tour with GravelRoad. This tour concluded with an appearance at Pickathon Festival. Ford and GravelRoad opened the third day of the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival, in New York over Labor Day weekend, 2010, curated by American independent film-maker Jim Jarmusch. GravelRoad backed Ford on his 2010 and 2011 albums, The Ladies Man and Taledragger, both released by Alive Naturalsound Records. 

Ford suffered a second stroke in the summer of 2012 that limited his public appearances. However, he was able to perform at that year's King Biscuit Blues Festival in October. On July 16, 2013, Fat Possum announced that Ford died at home in Greenville of respiratory failure, after a prolonged illness. The Mount Zion Memorial Fund, organised the placing of a headstone for Ford at Green Lawn Memorial Gardens Cemetery, near Greenville, Mississippi. The ceremony was on May 31, 2014. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & Tony Russell @ The Guardian)

 

Zeb Turner born 23 June 1915

Zeb Turner (June 23, 1915 – January 10, 1978) was an American country music songwriter and guitarist, and pioneer of rockabilly. Though he never enjoyed mainstream success, Turner did have a long career.

Born William Edward Grishaw in Lynchburg, Virginia, Turner was a prodigiously accomplished self-taught musician. His scarred appearance dated from the late 1920s when his sister threw gasoline onto a fire at the family home, and the resulting explosion burned more than 75 per cent of his body. Eddie and his brother James took to playing acoustic guitars and by 1938 at the age of 15, Zeb, inspired by hearing the electric guitar took up the instrument and eventually became heavily influenced by the jazz style of George Barnes. 

Zeb & Zeke Turner

Eddie renamed himself Zeb, after the old mountain ballad Zeb Turney's Gal and first recorded for OKeh with the Hi-Neighbor Boys in 1938; the songs, which included Zeke Tierney's Stomp, revealed that he was already a formidably adroit musician. He soon left the group to join forces with his brother James who took the stage name of Zeke Turner. In 1943 or early '44, Zeb worked at the Renfro Valley Barndance before coming to Nashville with Wally Fowler's Georgia Clodhoppers. The Turner brothers played guitar on many sessions shortly after WWII turning up on records by Red Foley and Hank Williams.  While in Nashville, Zeb worked with Ernest Tubb and wrote I Got Texas In My Soul and You Hit The Nail Right On The Head with him. Around the same time, Turner and Fred Rose wrote It's A Sin, a #1 country hit for Eddy Arnold. 

                              

By this time Zeke had settled into a cosy routine as a studio musician and member of the Pleasant Valley Boys, but in addition to lending his country boogie guitar work to others, Zeb Turner often recorded in his own right on small, regional labels such as Nashville's Bullet Records and, later in 1948, Cincinnati's King Records. 

His version of Billy Briggs' "Chew Tobacco Rag" was a No. 8 jukebox country and western hit in 1951, while his own "Tennessee Boogie" had reached No. 11 on the same chart in 1949. Turner's King 78s and 45s are part of the foundation on which rockabilly and rock 'n' roll are built and even though his name is not remembered as well as those of the chief architects of those genres, his role in their creation is unmistakable. 

In June 1950, he quit Nashville and moved to the D.C. area to play nightclubs and work as a dee-jay and performer on WBAL (Baltimore, Md.) and WEAM (Washington, D.C.) in 1952. By 1953, he and his family were living in a rough neighbourhood, and he abandoned them that year. In February 1955, there was a poignant little announcement in 'Billboard' in which Zeb's two teenage sons said they were anxious to learn of their dad's whereabouts. 

Zeb ended up in Montreal, Canada in the 1960’s, styling himself “Mister Hootenanny.” He created a folk trio and broadcast for a number of years over radio station CFCF. He died from brain cancer in Montreal on January 10, 1978, un-interviewed and unheralded for his achievement in integrating jazz and blues influences into country music. His brother Zeke on the other hand opted out of the music business and became a truck driver. He died April 14, 2003. 

(Edited from Bear Family. AllMusic, Jasmine, Wikipedia & liner notes by Bryan Chalker)

Chuck Jackson born 22 June 1937

Charles Benjamin Jackson (July 22, 1937 – February 16, 2023) was an American R&B singer who was one of the first artists to record material by Burt Bacharach and Hal David successfully. He has performed with moderate success since 1961. His hits include "I Don't Want to Cry", "Any Day Now", "I Keep Forgettin'", and "All Over the World". 

Jackson was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He never knew his father, and he was brought up by his grandmother in Latta, South Carolina, after his mother, Lucille, moved to Pittsburgh for work. Steeped in gospel music from an early age, he made his first radio broadcast at six years old and was a choir leader by the age of 11. Segregation led him to drop out of a scholarship to South Carolina State College and to move north to Cleveland, where he joined the Raspberry Gospel Singers. 

Leaving the group after a year, he served in the US Navy before moving in 1957 to Pittsburgh, where he sang The Lord’s Prayer to Joe Aberbach, a local music promoter. Aberbach had little use for gospel music, but secured Jackson a place in the Del-Vikings, a mixed-race vocal group whose national hits included Come Go With Me (1957) and whose baritone singer was leaving. 

While on tour with the group a few months later, Jackson met the singer Jackie Wilson, already an established star, who encouraged him to follow his own example and strike out as a solo artist. Jackson toured as Wilson’s support act, performing for the first time at the Apollo theatre in Harlem, and made his first recordings for small labels such as Clock and Beltone before being signed in 1961 by the producer and songwriter Luther Dixon to Florence Greenberg’s Scepter/Wand company, alongside the Shirelles, Dixon’s female proteges. 

Behind the jaunty rhythm and rapturous strings of I Don’t Want to Cry (1961), Jackson’s first release on the Wand label, a kind of dignified melancholy was already evident. He and Dixon had written the song together, its lyric based on the singer’s memories of an unfaithful girlfriend. It reached No 5 on Billboard’s R&B chart, followed later in the year by the more explicitly doleful I Wake Up Crying, written by Bacharach and Hal David, which made No 13 on the same chart. 

                              

A few months later Bacharach teamed with Hilliard, his other regular collaborator at the time, to write Any Day Now, in which a piping organ introduced Jackson’s sombre reading of a lyric containing strikingly poetic images: “Any day now, when your restless eyes meet someone new / Oh, to my sad surprise / Then the blue shadows will fall all over town / Any day now, love will let me down.” In the background of Bacharach’s dramatic arrangement, built on an ominous rhythm tapped out on a broken ashtray and a muffled tom-tom, could be heard the voices of the sisters Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick and their aunt, Cissy Houston. 

It gave Jackson his biggest hit, nibbling the edges of the pop Top 20 while making No 2 on the R&B chart, and attracted many cover versions. Bacharach always included the song in his own concerts, but it never sounded as good as in its original incarnation, when Jackson evoked those blue shadows falling all over town. His next single, I Keep Forgettin’, was almost as big a success. Teacho Wiltshire’s arrangement made strikingly prominent use of percussion, a selection of boobams, tom-toms and a glockenspiel creating staccato rhythms held together by the singer’s powerful urgency. 

A succession of uptown soul ballads, including Getting Ready for the Heartbreak, Tell Him I’m Not Home and I Need You, pleased his admirers, as did his duets with Brown, but made less impression on the charts. In 1968 he signed with Motown through his friendship with Smokey Robinson, but three albums and a series of singles made little impact. He went on to record for Dakar, ABC, Channel and EMI America, and made an album of duets with Houston in 1992 for the Shanachie label. In 1997 he released a Grammy-nominated duet, If I Let Myself Go, with Dionne Warwick, to whom he remained close. He continued to perform until the end of the 2010s before taking a well-deserved retirement. 

On 4 October 2015, Chuck Jackson was inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame. His song "Hand it Over" was featured on the 2019 video game, Far Cry New Dawn. In 2021, his song "Any Day Now" was used in a Volkswagen commercial. Compilations of rare, overlooked and unreleased recordings from his early years found a loyal audience of hardcore soul fans, particularly in the UK. 

Jackson died in Atlanta on February 16, 2023, at the age of 85. In his remarkable career that spanned over 60 years, Jackson charted over 20 songs on the R&B and Billboard charts. He had over 24 album releases throughout his decades-spanning career; he released his debut album back in 1961, and he released his last in 1998. 

(Edited from Guardian obit by Richard Williams, Music Times  & Wikipedia)

 

Kim Tolliver born 21 June 1937

Kim Tolliver (June 21, 1937 – June 6, 2007) was one of the most powerful female southern soul singers, and also one of the most overlooked. She recorded 45s for Rojac, Sureshot, Gar, Castro and Pathfinder plus 2 albums - Passing Clouds for Fantasy and the wonderful Chess album Come And Get Me I'm Ready as well as her best moment on vinyl “Where Were You”  a 12 incher for Rojac. Most of her work was produced or written by her husband Freddie Briggs. 

Kim Tolliver was born in Lebanon, Tennessee, but her formative years took place in Cleveland, Ohio's Hough area. She built a reputation wowing local bar patrons with dramatic interpretations of blues and soul songs. By 1954 she was a member of The Metrotones, but only for a short time. .She gigged for years before recording her first single. The slow torching "In Return for Your Love" came out on Don Robey's Sureshot label in 1967 and quickly disappeared. Her next four recordings were products of Jack Taylor's Rojac Records, located in New York City. 

These Southern-fried soul offerings are considered gems, perhaps the best of her career, by those who have heard them. They include the gospel-laden "I'll Try to Do Better"; "Tuesday Child" and its B-side, "Cop My Stuff"; "Let Them Talk"; and "Driving Me Into the Arms of a Stranger." She gigged a lot during this period, as far away as Australia, and once did 102 days in Auckland, New Zealand, with obscure soul singer Lou Ragland. 

Her next singles appeared on Gar Records -- "I Caught You" is an up-tempo, humorous mimic of Joe Tex's style. The second Gar single, "Got Myself Together," has a sweet Southern hook. The Gar and some Rojac singles were written and/or produced by Fred Briggs, who became her third husband. Her first husband, blues singer Rex Robinson, died in an automobile accident while coming home from a gig in Lorain, Ohio. Second hubby Leroy Grafrenreed owned and operated a barbershop in Cleveland. 

                             

Briggs had produced and written for, among others, the Dells, Margie Joseph, the Goodies, and Johnny Taylor, and had recorded himself as Coldwater Stone. Under Briggs' tutelage, Tolliver enjoyed a prolific period. She cut "How Long Can I Keep Holding on, Parts 1 & 2" on Superheavy Records as Big Ella. She cut her first album, Passing Clouds, on Fantasy Records as Kimberly Briggs in 1972, and waxed her second LP, Come and Get Me, on Chess Records a year later as Kim Tolliver. 

This album made her a name in deep soul. Though both albums were  commercially unsuccessful, her second reached great critical acclaim for its complex melodies, solid arrangements, and premium grade soul songwriting from Tolliver, and her then husband Fred Briggs. The album drew heavily from the classic Memphis sound, with big brass, and high-energy balladeering, all made cohesive by Tolliver's commanding vocal presence. Neither label promoted the pleasing LPs and both were deleted before most knew they existed. 

In 1975, she cut "I Don't Know What Foot to Dance On" on Castro Records as Kim Tolliver; the disco dancer, written by Briggs and Andrew Hamilton, was popular in England's Northern soul clubs. In 1968, Pathfinder Records released the dramatic "Standing Room Only," which suffered the same dismal fate as previous releases. Though her recordings bombed, she kept active in local clubs like the Chaz Bo, the Spaghetti Inn, the Music Box, and Gleasons. She had a following in Buffalo, where she played the Revilot Club. 

She reunited with Jack Taylor on his newly formed Tay-Ster Records for her final two 12" releases: a reworking of "Let Them Talk" and "Where Were You." Tolliver sang hard like Eddie Levert and Linda Jones, and could work a crowd into a frenzy. 

Disgruntled by her lack of success coupled with her separation from Briggs, Tolliver put music down for real estate, and with the help of her companion, and sons, Daryl and Andrew, made a comfortable living. The '90s found the once-vibrant singer suffering from Alzheimer's. She sadly passed away from complications of the disease June 6, 2007, in Cleveland, Ohio,   without ever receiving the recognition she so truly deserved. 

(Edited from All Music, Forced Exposure & Uncle Marv also thanks to soul quinquin eklablog for using top photo)