Luckey Roberts born 7 August 1887

Charles Luckyth Roberts (August 7, 1887 – February 5, 1968), better known as Luckey Roberts, was an accomplished pianist and composer. Along with James P. Johnson, he is considered one of the founders of the Harlem stride piano "school."

Born in Philadelphia and a lifelong Quaker and teetotaller, Roberts began to play the rent parties in Harlem around 1908 and was often the man to beat in cutting contests; the astounding virtuosity of his 1908 rag "Nothin'" demonstrates that there couldn't have been many players in San Juan Hill expecting to win against Roberts.

He began to publish his rags in 1909, starting with "The African 400 (An Educated Rag)," recorded that year by Arthur Pryor; Roberts' most famous rag, "Pork and Beans," appeared in 1913. Luckey Roberts made his first recordings for Columbia in 1916, including his well-known blues-styled rag "Railroad Man," but the records were never released. Roberts toured France and the UK with James Reese Europe during World War I and then returned to New York..

In the 1920s, Roberts teamed up with lyricist Alex C. Rogers and co-wrote three Broadway musicals, Go-Go (1923), Sharlee (1923) and My Magnolia (1926), the later which starred Adelaide Hall, a major black revue star. He can also be heard leading the orchestra on records by comic Charles Hunter and backing up the radio comedy team of Moran and Mack, "The Two Black Crows"; Roberts also performed on their network radio show as accompanist. On such records, Roberts sometimes employed a theme he developed for vaudeville shows around 1923 called "Complainin'"; altogether Roberts contributed numbers to some 23 musicals in the 1910s and '20s. Roberts also recorded piano rolls during this period, mostly for Ampico.

                               

In the early '30s, Luckey Roberts relocated to Washington, D.C., opened a restaurant, and led a society band there. It was a successful and relatively upscale operation, and during this time, he took up classical composition and by 1941 produced a piano 
concerto that was heard in New York's Town Hall. That same year, "Moonlight Cocktail," a popular song developed out of his 1916 "Ripples of the Nile" with lyrics by Kim Gannon, became a hit for Glenn Miller.

In 1946, Roberts recorded a series of solos for Solo Art that became his first issued solo recordings. He continued to record sporadically through 1959. Roberts' best recordings were made for Lester Koenig's Good Time Jazz label in 1958 on Luckey and the Lion, an album split with another veteran of San Juan Hill, Willie "The Lion" Smith.

Unlike his contemporaries Eubie Blake and James P. Johnson, Luckey Roberts never made a full transition to playing jazz and did not consider himself a jazz pianist; he considered himself one the last ragtime pianists, a composer of popular songs and of serious music. His final session was for Everest Records in 1959, consisting of an set of commercial, honky tonk-styled piano solos with clarinetist Garvin Bushell.

Roberts was a player of unbelievable dexterity even into his late years; "Luckey and the Lion" was recorded when Roberts was 70 and had survived three auto accidents, one of which had shattered his enormous hands -- you would never know it from the way that he was capable of playing. Roberts' reach on the keyboard was unusually large (he could reach a fourteenth), as he had a wide finger spread.

An astute businessman, Roberts became a millionaire twice through real estate dealings. He died in New York City, 5 February 1968 (aged 80).

(Edited from AllMusic & Wikipedia)

Dorothy Ashby born 6 August 1932

Dorothy Jeanne Thompson (August 6, 1932 – April 13, 1986), better known as Dorothy Ashby, was an American jazz harpist and composer.

Dorothy Thompson was born in Detroit. Her father, Wiley Thompson, was a jazz guitarist, who would often bring home fellow musicians to jam. Young Dorothy would be a part of some of these sessions, sitting in on piano. She attended Detroit’s famed Cass Technical High School, where her classmates included jazz 
luminaries Kenny Burrell and Donald Byrd. Her early instruments were the sax and the bass before turning to the harp. She studied piano and music education at Wayne State University.

In 1952, Dorothy set out to make a living on the competitive Detroit jazz scene. She easily could have found work as a pianist, but she made the gutsy decision to concentrate on her beloved harp. The cats in Detroit weren’t too keen on making the harp and its perceived ethereal, effete sound part of a jazz combo. To overcome this resistance, Dorothy organized free shows and played at dances and weddings with her harp-led

combo, which included her husband, John Ashby, on drums. Eventually she won doubters over and the gigs and recordings began to come with some regularity.

Being a jazz harpist presented many challenges for Ashby. The improvisations and musical structures of jazz were more difficult to execute on a harp than on other instruments, and even achieving the kind of mastery that Ashby attained did little to undercut the prejudices of the professional music business. Talking about the national scene, Ashby said that "Often the harpists who got write-ups and the media coverage were very pretty, and that seemed to be about all that they were interested in." Even in her hometown of Detroit, where talent counted most, the notion of harp as a jazz instrument was initially met with scepticism.

Her first full jazz LP, The Jazz Harpist, was recorded for Savoy in 1957, with Frank Wess on flute, Eddie Jones and Wendell Marshall on bass and Ed Thigpen on drums. The album was a mix of standards, such as “Thou Swell” and “Stella by Starlight”, and Ms. Ashby’s originals. It was critically well received, but the record buying public ignored it. Her next album Hip Harp, (1958) on Prestige, was one her best, with Wess, Dave Brubeck’s bassist Gene Wright and Art Taylor on drums. In all Dorothy led ten sessions between 1957 and 1970 Atlantic, Cadet and many other labels. She also hosted a jazz radio show in Detroit during the 1960s called "The Lab."

                              

She was fearless in her musical choices as she played not just bop, but soul, Brazilian, African, Middle Eastern and like her contemporary (and other great jazz harpist) Alice Coltrane, free 

jazz. Ashby pioneered the use of the Japanese koto in jazz on her 1970 album The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby, which was somewhat maligned in its time, but has become appreciated as an iconoclastic marriage of soul, world music and free jazz.

Music was not Dorothy Ashby’s only love. In the ‘60’s Dorothy and her husband formed a theatrical group in Detroit that produced plays with theme’s relevant to the Motor City’s black community. The group went by several names, the most common being “The Ashby Players”. Many of these productions were musical, with John writing the scripts and Dorothy the music and lyrics, as well as playing harp, piano and leading the musicians. In the late ‘60’s the Ashbys moved to 
California and continued their theatrical endeavours. Among the actors in their early California troupe was Ernie Hudson, of Ghostbusters fame.

Dorothy also sought work as a harpist in the Los Angeles area recording studios in the early ‘70’s, which was no small feat considering that there were quite a few harpists out there already. However, she had made the acquaintance of singer Bill Withers, who used her on his classic +Justments album. Bill introduced Dorothy to Stevie Wonder, 

who happened to be working on the sessions that would become Songs in the Key of Life. He had written a tune that was meant to be a duet between himself and a harpist. Stevie had Alice Coltrane in mind, but she was unavailable at the time of the recording session. So instead, he called Dorothy Ashby. Those who don’t know another thing about Ms. Ashby’s music know her unforgettable performance on “If it’s Magic”.

That performance opened studio doors for Dorothy. Jazz was struggling in the late ‘70’s but Dorothy was very busy, recording with artist such as Earth, Wind and Fire (All ‘n All), The Emotions, Rick James and The Gap Band. Though she would not record 
another album as a leader, she continued to work steadily until her death from cancer on April 13, 1986, in Santa Monica, California. She was 53.

Ashby's Cadet albums have come to be viewed as among the best early examples of acid jazz, and now fetch eye-watering prices among collectors. Breaks and rhythm tracks from the superb Richard Evans arrangements have become favourites for sampling and remix artists.

(Edited mainly from thejazzarts.org)

Herb Ellis born 4 August 1921

Mitchell Herbert Ellis (August 4, 1921 – March 28, 2010), known professionally as Herb Ellis, was an American jazz guitarist whose polished, blues-inflected playing earned him critical acclaim as an outstanding soloist and worldwide recognition as a member of the pianist Oscar Peterson’s trio.

Born in Farmersville, Texas, and raised in the suburbs of Dallas, Ellis first heard the electric guitar performed by George Barnes on a radio program. This experience is said to have inspired him to take up the guitar. He became proficient on the instrument by the time he entered North Texas State University. Ellis majored in music, but because they did not yet have a guitar program at that time, he studied the string bass. Unfortunately, due to lack of funds, his college days were short-lived. In 1941, Ellis dropped out of college and toured for six months with a band from the University of Kansas.

In 1943, he joined Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra and it was with Gray's band that he got his first recognition in the jazz magazines. After Gray's band, Ellis joined the Jimmy Dorsey band where he played some of his first recorded solos. Ellis remained with Dorsey through 1947, travelling and recording extensively, and playing in dance halls and movie palaces.

Then came a turnabout that would change Ellis's career forever. As pianist Lou Carter told journalist Robert Dupuis in a 1996 interview, "The Dorsey band had a six-week hole in the schedule. The three of us had played together some with the big band. John Frigo, who had already left the band, knew the owner of the Peter Stuyvesant Hotel in Buffalo. We went in there and stayed six months. And that's how the group the Soft Winds were born". Together with Frigo and Lou Carter, Ellis wrote the classic jazz standard "Detour Ahead".

               Here's "Detour Ahead" from above 1959 album.

                              

The Soft Winds group was fashioned after the Nat King Cole Trio. Oscar Peterson saw the group in concert in Buffalo, N.Y. “He liked it. So he and I went out later that night and jammed at some place in Buffalo,” Ellis told The Times in 1993. “I didn’t see him again 

until 1953 when Barney Kessel left his group. That’s when he called me for the job.” The combination of pianist Peterson, bassist Ray Brown and Ellis created “one of the most celebrated trios in jazz history,” according to “The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz” (1999) by Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler.

Ellis became prominent after performing with the Oscar Peterson Trio from 1953 to 1958 along with pianist Peterson and bassist Ray Brown. He was a somewhat controversial member of the trio, because he was the only white person in the group in a time when racism was still very much widespread.

In addition to their great live and recorded work as the Oscar Peterson Trio, this unit usually with the addition of a drummer, served as the virtual "house rhythm section" for Norman Granz's Verve Records, supporting the likes of tenormen Ben Webster and Stan Getz, as well as trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, and Sweets Edison and

 Stan Getz,  Joe Pass, Melvin Rhyne and many more. Ellis was part of the rhythm section but did not solo on every track. With drummer Buddy Rich, they were also the backing band for popular "comeback" albums by the duet of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.

The trio were one of the mainstays of Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts as they swept the jazz world, almost constantly touring the United States and Europe. Ellis left the Peterson Trio in November 1958, to be replaced not by a guitarist, but by drummer Ed Thigpen. The years of 1957 through 1960 found Ellis touring with Ella Fitzgerald.

 When jazz fell out of fashion in the 1960s, Mr. Ellis became a busy studio musician in Los Angeles, earning his living mainly on television variety shows.

One of his most memorable ventures was creating the "Great Guitars Show"in 1973, with fellow jazz guitarists Barney Kessel and Charlie Byrd, which at every show was a musical display of guitar dexterity. In his honour the Gibson Guitar Company issued a Herb Ellis ES-165 signature tribute guitar, which after four decades is still in production.

In 1994 he joined the Arkansas Jazz Hall of Fame. “There have been changes in jazz and new styles come along. I play straight ahead, what you might call mainstream, jazz,” Ellis told the Columbus Dispatch of Ohio in 1996. “That’s what I played when I started and that’s what I still play. I wish everyone else good luck and God bless, but I’ve found mine and I’m going to stick with it.”

On November 15, 1997 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of North Texas College of Music.

Ellis died of Alzheimer's disease at his Los Angeles home on the morning of March 28, 2010, at the age of 88.

(Edited from Wikipedia & LA Times)

Herb Ellis performs "Georgia (On My Mind)," along with Tal Farlow and Charlie Byrd. From the Vestapol DVD "Great Guitars of Jazz." 

Carol Deene born 3 August 1944

Carol Deene (born3 August 1944)  is an English former pop singer.

She was born Carole Carver in Thurnscoe, near Doncaster in Yorkshire, on 3 August 1944. She left school at 15 to work in a draper’s shop, then in a hairdresser’s, but held out hopes of becoming a singer. By 1961, she had realised the path to pop by-passed her hometown, so she went to live with her aunt in north
 London. She took singing lessons with vocal coach Freddie Winrose, who became her manager. He got her an audition with the BBC, from which she landed an appearance on Joan Regan’s television show. (She was renamed Carol Deene after BBC producer Deene Moray, who had phoned to check her name. The e in Carole was dropped simply because there would have been too many e’s if she had kept it.)

After being spotted on the show by Wally Ridley from the HMV label, she was offered a recording contract. “Sad Movies (Make Me Cry)”, a version of a US million seller by Sue Thompson,

was issued as her debut single in September 1961. It was the first of three covers she would issue of Sue Thompson hits. It narrowly missed the UK top 40 but sold respectably.

She bounced back in January the following year with “Norman” (her second Sue Thompson cover). It was voted a miss on TV’s Juke box jury the week she appeared as a guest on the show. Her very public embarrassment served only to boost interest in the song, and Carol took the tune to number 24 in the charts shortly afterwards. “Johnny Get Angry “– a cover of a song by US singer Joanie Sommers – followed it into the top 40 in July 1962.

                              

“Some People” became her second top 30 hit just a few weeks later. The song had been issued in competition with a version by Valerie Mountain and the Eagles, though Carol’s was the more successful. On the flip was “Kissin’”, a song she had performed in the Acker 
Bilk film Band of thieves. This was the first of a couple of film appearances she made – the other being a cameo role alongside Tommy Steele in “It’s All Happening” (where she performed The Boy On The Beach). She also co-hosted Show train on children’s ITV and would go on to host her own programme on Radio Luxembourg.

“James (Hold The Ladder Steady)” became her final Sue Thompson cover. Issued in late 1962, it sold well but failed to make a dent on the charts. The advent of the beat boom harmed Carol’s career, and a further batch of chirpy singles over the couple of years all flopped.

Carol with Billie Davis & Billy Fury

Feeling she needed a change of direction, Carol switched management in March 1965 and moved to the Columbia label. It was at this point that things got more interesting – both musically and personally. Following a makeover, the new-look Carol issued her first single for Columbia, the mature “He Just Don’t Know”, in October that year and plans were made for an album. She also got engaged and went on to make her debut appearance in a weekly slot on magician David Nixon’s comedy bandbox TV show.

However, in January 1966, Carol was badly injured in a car crash on her way back from a concert in Cardiff. She broke her leg and her jaw in the accident and suffered severe facial injuries, which put paid to any chance of promoting the record and of continuing her role in the TV show (Anita Harris took her place). Perhaps surprisingly, a second single for the new label, “Dancing In Your Ryes”, was released that April, but Carole was unfit to promote it and the disc died upon release. In all, she was out of action until October that year, and her career lost momentum.

One final single for Columbia, the wonderfully mournful “Love Not Have I”, was issued in January 1967 before she was dropped by the label. She went on to cut the Les Reed and Barry Mason-penned “When He Wants A Woman” for CBS later that year, and switched to the independent Conquest label for the release of “One More Chance” in 1969. None of the singles managed to recapture the quality of some of her earlier discs and “ A Windmill In Old Amsterdam”, issued by Pye in 1970, hit a new musical low.

She quit the music industry in the 1970s, before making a return to record “Angel In Your Arrms”, which she issued on her own Koala label in 1979. The release garnered some interest but couldn’t return the singer to the charts.

 In January 1997, Diamond Records released a compilation album of Deene's work, entitled Johnny Get Angry. The latest information I can find is that she currently lives in Spain, where she manages a radio station with her husband.

(Edited from readysteadygirls)

Andrew Gold born 2 August 1951

Andrew Maurice Gold (August 2, 1951 – June 3, 2011) influenced much of the sound of Los Angeles-dominated pop rock in the 1970’s. Best known for his solo hits Never Let Her Slip Away and Lonely Boy, he was an accomplished all-round musician, composer and arranger. His skills in the recording studio helped to propel Linda Ronstadt to stardom, and he worked with a long list of top-flight artists from the Eagles and Jackson Browne to John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Cher and Celine Dion.

A musical career seemed almost inevitable from the moment he was born, in Burbank, California. His parents were Marni Nixon, the singer who dubbed the musical performances of Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, Deborah Kerr in The King And I and Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and the composer Ernest Gold, who scored the movie Exodus. Andrew recalled living in Laurel Canyon as a teenager: "My father had this little studio with a piano and all his awards. When he was working on a movie he'd go up there and compose. I'd wake up to this piano music over and over. I was always going to be a musician, and my parents encouraged me."

He first met Ronstadt as a high school student in the 1960s, when he saw her perform with her band the Stone Poneys. When the group split up in 1967, Gold teamed up with their guitarist Kenny Edwards and singer-songwriters Wendy Waldman and Karla Bonoff to form Bryndle (the "y" in the name was in homage to The Byrds). The group secured a recording deal and made an album, though it was not released.

Bryndle split up, and Edwards and Gold joined Ronstadt's new band. Gold was a crucial contributor to her 1974 breakthrough album, Heart Like a Wheel. In 1975 Linda Ronstadt had her only US No 1 with a revival of "You're No Good", previously a hit for Betty Everett and the Swinging Blue Jeans. The record was produced by Peter Asher but it was a tour de force for Gold, who played electric piano and drums as well as the guitar solo. Gold sang a duet with Ronstadt on a revival of the Everly Brothers' "When Will I Be Loved", while Ronstadt encouraged him to branch out on a solo career.

Gold released  his first album, Andrew Gold, in 1975, and following it up with What's Wrong With This Picture? (1976). Lonely Boy gave him his first big hit, in 1977, (with Ronstadt on backing vocals) cracking the US top 10 and reaching No 11 in Britain. Gold revealed that the song was partly inspired by Ry Cooder's version of How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live. The following year brought a streak of further hits with How Can This Be Love, Thank You for Being a Friend and Never Let Her Slip Away, the last of these gaining far more recognition in the UK than in the US (it also featured Freddie Mercury on backing vocals).

                              

Gold now began to exhibit his skills across a broader canvas. He played all the instruments on Art Garfunkel's I Only Have Eyes for You and made numerous instrumental contributions to Garfunkel's 1975 album Breakaway. He played the drums and  

guitar on Eric Carmen's album Boats Against the Current (1977), which included the hit She Did It. He co-wrote the chart-topping single I Saw the Light (1992) for Wynonna Judd, and produced the top 20 hit Personally for Bonoff. He worked with all the ex-Beatles except George Harrison, and with Don Henley, Brian Wilson, James Taylor and many more.

Having collaborated on three songs with 10cc, Gold was invited to join the group, but was prevented from doing so by other commitments. However, when 10cc split in 1983, Gold teamed up with Graham Gouldman in Wax, which scored several big hits including Right Between the Eyes and Bridge to Your Heart,  
before splitting up in 1989. In the 90s, he reassembled Bryndle 
with its original members, and the group finally managed to release its debut album.

In 1996, Gold left Bryndle to essay several whimsical solo projects, such as the Halloween album Halloween Howls (1996) and a set of 60s pastiche tracks called Greetings from Planet Love, released under the pseudonym of the Fraternal Order of the All (1997).

In 2000, Gold compiled a Wax rarities album, House of Wax on Wax, as well as recording and releasing a new solo album The Spence Manor Suite; this last was followed in 2002 by another solo collection, Intermission. In the early 2000s, he formed a Byrds tribute band, Byrds of a Feather, which performed in the Los Angeles area. He appeared in a 2006 concert with the classic rock group America, and singer-songwriter Stephen Bishop.

He also pursued a fruitful sideline in music for commercials and movie and TV soundtracks. His song Thank You for Being a Friend was used as the theme for the television series The Golden Girls, in a version by Cynthia Fee; and also cropped up in episodes of The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live.

Gold was diagnosed with kidney cancer and responded well to treatment, but on June 3, 2011, he died in his sleep from what is suspected to have been heart failure at age 59 in Los Angeles.

(Edited mainly from article by Adam Sweering @ The Guardian & Wikipedia)

Walter Scharf born 1 August 1910

Walter Scharf (August 1, 1910 – February 24, 2003) was an American film composer.

Born in Manhattan, he was the son of Yiddish theatre comic Bessie Zwerling. While in his 20s, he was one of the orchestrators for George Gershwin's Broadway musical Girl Crazy, became singer Helen Morgan's accompanist, and later worked as pianist and arranger for singer Rudy Vallee.

He began working in Hollywood in 1933, arranging for Al Jolson

at Warner Bros., Alice Faye at 20th Century-Fox and Bing Crosby at Paramount. He orchestrated the original version of Irving Berlin's White Christmas for the film Holiday Inn (1942), and from 1942 to 1946 he served as head of music for Republic Pictures.From 1948 to 1954, Scharf was arranger-conductor for the Phil Harris-Alice Faye radio show.

A ten-time Oscar nominee, Scharf worked on more than 100 films, receiving nominations for his musical direction on such

pictures as Danny Kaye's Hans Christian Andersen (1952), Barbra Streisand's Funny Girl (1968) and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971).

In the early 1960s, he was approached by Harold Lloyd to provide new scores for his silent film compilations. Lloyd regarded Scharf's ability to mix comedy themes with big, dramatic orchestral touches as ideal for his brand of 'thrill' comedy. Scharf implemented a similar style for the Jerry Lewis Jekyll and Hyde-inspired comedy The Nutty Professor in (1963), working on more than a dozen Lewis comedies overall.

                               

In the late 50’s Scharf recorded a number of orchestral albums for the Jubilee label. He also worked on three Elvis Presley pictures including Loving You (1957) and King Creole (1958), and with lyricist Don Black, he wrote the hit Michael Jackson single from 
the film Ben (1972), which won him a Golden Globe; and scored the popular Walking Tall (1973) and its two sequels. In 1973, he and Don Black wrote the music and lyrics for the London musical Maybe That's Your Problem (book by Lionel Chetwynd).

Scharf composed music for dozens of television dramas including Ben Casey, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible, and the 1979 miniseries From Here to Eternity and Blind Ambition, although he became best known for his music for the National Geographic Society and The Undersea World of

Jacques Cousteau documentaries, which he scored between 1965 and 1975. He received two Emmys for the Cousteau series, in 1970 and 1974, and composed an original symphonic work, The Legend of the Living Sea, for a Cousteau museum exhibit aboard the RMS Queen Mary in 1971.

Scharf's initial work for the concert hall was The Palestine Suite, written in 1945 and performed at the Hollywood Bowl under Leopold Stokowski. After retiring from films and TV in the 1980s, he returned to concert writing, notably with The Tree Still Stands: A Symphonic Portrait of the Stages of a Hebraic Man, commissioned by the Stephen S. Wise Temple and first performed in 1989 and the 1993 Israeli Suite. He also wrote an unproduced opera based on Norman Corwin's The Plot to Overthrow Christmas.

In all, Scharf is estimated to have worked on some 250-odd film and TV productions and received the Golden Score Award from the American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers in 1997. His plan to write an opera on the life of Maurice Ravel, the classical composer he most admired, was unfulfilled at his death.

He died of heart failure at his home in the Brentwood neighbourhood of Los Angeles February 24, 2003 at the age of 92.  (Edited mainly from Wikipedia)