#andy simpkins

[jazzplusplus]

1979 - Monty Alexander at the Shiba Postal Savings Hall in Tokyo

Monty Alexander (p), Andy Simpkins (b), Frank Gant (dr)

[blewnotes]

Jazziversaries April 29th Set 2

Andy Simpkins (bass) 1932-1999 :: was an American jazz bassist, he first became known as a member of the group The Three Sounds, with which he performed from 1956 to 1968.

After that, until 1974, he was a member of pianist George Shearing’s group, and from 1979 to 1989 toured with singer Sarah Vaughan. Throughout and after that time, during which he settled in Los Angeles, Simpkins became respected as a top-quality bassist and widely known as a solid and reliable studio musician.

He performed with singers Carmen McRae and Anita O’Day, instrumentalists Gerald Wiggins, Monty Alexander, Buddy DeFranco, Don Menza, and Stéphane Grappelli, and many others. He recorded three albums as a leader.

Ray Barretto  (congas) 1929 -2006 :: was a Grammy Award-winning Latin/Latin jazz musician of Puerto Rican ancestry. In 1946, when Barretto was 17 years old, he joined the Army. While stationed in Germany, Barretto met Belgian vibist Fats Sadi, who was working there. However, it was when he heard Dizzy Gillespie’s “Manteca” with Cuban composer/percussionist Chano Pozo that he realized his true calling in life.

In 1949, when Barretto returned home from military service, he started to visit clubs and participated in jam sessions, where he perfected his conga playing. On one occasion Charlie Parker heard Barretto play and invited him to play in his band. Later, he was asked to play for José Curbelo and Tito Puente, for whom he played for four years.

Barretto developed a unique style of playing the conga and soon he was sought by other jazz band leaders. Latin percussionists started to appear in jazz groups with frequency as a consequence of Barretto’s musical influence.

In 1960, Barretto was a house musician for the Prestige, Blue Note, and Riverside labels.He also recorded on Columbia Records with Jazz flautist Herbie Mann. New York had become the center of Latin music in the United States and a musical genre called “pachanga” was the Latin music craze of the time.

In 1961, Barretto recorded his first hit, “El Watusi,” the first Latin song to enter the Billboard charts (April, 1963.) He was quite successful with the song and the genre, to the point of being typecast (something that he disliked).

After recording a number of albums for the United Artists label, Barretto joined the Fania record label in 1967, and his first recording for the new label was the 1968 album Acid, an experiment joining rhythm and blues with Latin music. The album contained the song “A Deeper Shade Of Soul”, which was sampled for the 1991 Billboard Hot 100 #21 hit “Deeper Shade of Soul” by Dutch band Urban Dance Squad.

In 1973, Barretto recorded “Indestructible” Fania Records, album in which he played “La Familia”, a song written by José Curbelo in 1953 and recorded by the sonero Carlos Argentino with the iconic Cuban band Sonora Matancera; in this album the singer is Tito Allen. After a number of successful albums, and just as his Afro-Cuban band had attained a remarkable following, most of its members left it to form Típica 73, a multinational “salsa” conglomerate. This left Barretto depressed and disappointed with salsa; he then redirected his efforts to jazz, while remaining as musical director of the Fania All Stars.

Barretto played the conga in recording sessions for the Rolling Stones and the Bee Gees. In 1975, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for the song “Barretto”. From 1976 to 1978, Barretto recorded three records for Atlantic Records, and was nominated for a Grammy for Barretto Live…Tomorrow. In 1979, he recorded La Cuna for CTI records and produced a salsa record for Fania, titled Ricanstruction, which was named 1980 “Best Album” by Latin N.Y. Magazine, with Barretto crowned as Conga Player of the Year.

In 1990, Barretto finally won a Grammy for the album Ritmo en el Corazón (“Rhythm in the Heart”), which featured the vocals of Celia Cruz. Also in the 1990s, a Latin agent, Chino Rodríguez, approached Barretto with a concept he also pitched to Larry Harlow. The idea was “The Latin Legends of Fania”, and Barretto, Harlow, Yomo Toro, Pete “el Conde” Rodrguez, Junior González, Ismael Miranda, and Adalberto Santiago came together and formed “The Latin Legends of Fania”, booked by Chino Rodríguez of Latin Music Booking.com.

In 1999, Barretto was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame.

Toots Thielemans  (Harmonica) 1922 (born Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans,) Jazziversary greetings to Toots Thielmans a Belgian jazz musician known for his guitar and harmonica playing as well as his whistling. Thielemans is credited as one of the greatest harmonica players of the 20th century.

He has worked as a bandleader (scoring an international hit in the 1960s with his song “Bluesette”), as a sideman (notably on many projects with composer/arranger Quincy Jones), and has appeared on dozens of film soundtracks. In 2009 he became NEA Jazz Master, the highest honour for a jazz musician in the United States.

He may be best known to some as the performer whistling the melody in commercials for Old Spice cologne.

Thielemans started his career as a guitar player. In 1949 he joined a jam session in Paris with Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach and others. In 1949 and 1950 he participated in European tours with Benny Goodman, making his first record in Paris with fellow band member, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims. In 1951 he became a band member of the singer-songwriter and compatriot Bobbejaan Schoepen (at the time still as a guitarist).

He moved to the US in 1952 where he was a member of Charlie Parker’s All-Stars and worked with Miles Davis and Dinah Washington.  From 1952 to 1959 he was a member of the George Shearing Quintet, primarily playing guitar but also being featured on harmonica both in performances and on recordings.

He has also played and recorded with Ella Fitzgerald, Jaco Pastorius, Stephane Grappelli, J.J. Johnson, Michael Franks, Peggy Lee,((John Williams)), Quincy Jones, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, The Happenings, Astrud Gilberto, Shirley Horn, Elis Regina, Joe Pass, and others.

A jazz standard by Toots Thielemans is “Bluesette”, where he used whistling and guitar in unison. First recorded by him in 1962, with lyrics added by Norman Gimbel, the song became a major worldwide hit.

His harmonica playing can also be heard in film scores such as Midnight Cowboy, Cinderella Liberty, Jean de Florette.

[blewnotes]

Jazziversaries April 29th

Big Jay McNeely  (sax, tenor) 1927  :: Happy birthday to Big Jay Mcneely an American rhythm and blues saxophonist.

Inspired by Illinois Jacquet and Lester Young, he teamed with his older brother Robert McNeely, who played baritone saxophone, and made his first recordings with drummer Johnny Otis, who ran the Barrelhouse Club that stood only a few blocks from McNeely's home. Shortly after he performed on Otis's "Barrel House Stomp." Ralph Bass, A&R man for Savoy Records, promptly signed him to a recording contract. Bass's boss, Herman Lubinsky, suggested the stage name Big Jay McNeely because Cecil McNeely did not sound commercial. McNeely's first hit was "The Deacon's Hop," an instrumental which topped the Billboard R&B chart in early 1949. The single was his most successful of his three chart entries.

Thanks to his flamboyant playing, called "honking," McNeely remained popular through the 1950s and into the early 1960s, recording for the Exclusive, Aladdin, Imperial, Federal, Vee-Jay, and Swingin' labels. But despite a hit R&B ballad, "There Is Something on Your Mind," (1959) featuring Little Sonny Warner on vocals, and a 1963 album for Warner Bros. Records, McNeely's music career began to cool off. He quit the music industry in 1971 to become a postman. However, thanks to an R&B revival in the early 1980s, McNeely left the post office and returned to touring and recording full time, usually overseas. His original tenor sax is enshrined in the Experience Music Project in Seattle, and he was inducted into The Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.

In 1989, Big Jay McNeely was performing at the Quasimodo Club in West Berlin the night the Berlin Wall came down, "and Cold War legend has it that Big Jay McNeely blew down the Berlin Wall in 1989 with his earth-shaking sonic sax torrents outside the Quasimodo Club in West Germany"

Dave Valentin (flute) 1952 :: Many happy returns to Dave Valentin. Dave is a jazz flautist.

He learned latin percussion first when he was a teenager, and then switched to flute. Valentin's teacher, Hubert Laws, suggested that he not double on saxophone because of his attractive sound on the flute. He studied at the Bronx Community College. He is of Puerto Rican descent.

In 1977, he made his recording debut with Ricardo Marrero's group and he appeared also on a Noel Pointer album. Discovered by Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen, Valentin was the first artist signed to GRP and he has been a popular attraction ever since. Valentin has recorded over 15 albums, combining the influence of pop, R&B, and Brazilian music with Latin and smooth jazz to create a slick and accessible form of crossover jazz. In 2000, he appeared in the documentary film, Calle 54, performing with Tito Puente. He toured with El Negro and MioSotis. Since the mid-2000s, Valentin has been signed to Highnote Records releasing World On A String (2005) and Come Fly With Me (2006). He has done several collaborations with pianist Bill O'Connell and was a nominee for the Latin Grammy Awards of 2006.

George Adams  (sax, tenor) 1940 -1992 :: was an American jazz musician who played tenor saxophone, flute and bass clarinet. He is best known for his work with Charles Mingus, Gil Evans, Roy Haynes and in the quartet he co-led with pianist Don Pullen, featuring bassist Cameron Brown and drummer Dannie Richmond. He was also known for his idiosyncratic singing.

George Adams's musical style was rooted in the blues and in primarily that of African-American popular music. As a saxophonist his greatest influences seem to have been Rahsaan Roland Kirk, with whom he played in Mingus's band on occasion, as well as the adventurous edginess of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. He played with tremendous intensity and passion, as well as lyricism and subtlety. At times he bent over backwards when playing, almost ending up on his back. His singing varied from wild wailing blues to ballads.

Adams and Don Pullen shared a musical vision and their quartet straddled the range from R&B to the avant-garde. (The quartet was sometimes known as the "George Adams–Don Pullen Quartet", and sometimes as the "Don Pullen–George Adams Quartet"). After Adams' death, Pullen dedicated to his memory the 1993 CD Ode To Life, recorded by his African-Brazilian Connection, and in particular the ballad "Ah George, We Hardly Knew Ya".

One of his last recordings was America on the Blue Note label. This album consists of classic American songs like "Tennessee Waltz", "You Are My Sunshine" and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" as well as a few original songs that articulate Adams's positive view of his country and the gifts it had given him. It also includes "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "America the Beautiful".

Otis Rush  (guitar, electric) 1934 :: Birthday wishes to bluesman Otis Rush. His distinctive guitar style features a slow burning sound and long bent notes. With similar qualities to Magic Sam and Buddy Guy, his sound became known as West Side Chicago blues and became an influence on many musicians including Michael Bloomfield and Eric Clapton.

Rush is left-handed and, unlike many other left-handed guitarists, plays a left-handed instrument strung upside-down with the low E string at the bottom. He played often with the little finger of his pick hand curled under the low E for positioning. It is widely believed that this contributes to his distinctive sound. He has a wide-ranging, powerful tenor voice.

After moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1948, Rush made a name for himself playing in clubs on both the South Side and West Side blues scenes. From 1956 to 1958, he recorded for the Cobra Records and released eight singles, some featuring Ike Turner or Jody Williams on guitar. His first single "I Can't Quit You Baby" in 1956 reached No. 6 on Billboard's R&B chart. During his tenure with Cobra, he recorded some of his well known songs such as "Double Trouble" and "All Your Love (I Miss Loving)."

After Cobra Records went bankrupt in 1959, Rush landed a recording contract with Chess in 1960. He recorded eight tracks for the label, four of which were released on two singles that year. Six tracks including the two singles later came out on "Door To Door" album in 1969, a compilation also featuring Chess recordings by Albert King.

He also went into the studio for Duke Records in 1962, but only one single "Homework/I Have to Laugh" was issued from the label. It also received a release in Great Britain on Vocalion VP9260 in 1963. In 1965, he recorded for Vanguard which can be heard on the label's compilation album, Chicago/The Blues/Today! Vol.2.

In the 1960s, Rush began playing in other cities in the U.S. and also to Europe, most notably the American Folk Blues Festival.

In 1969, the album Mourning in the Morning was released on Cotillion Records. Recorded at the FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, the album was produced by Michael Bloomfield and Nick Gravenites (then of Electric Flag). The sound that incorporated soul and rock was a brand new direction for Rush.

In 1971, Rush recorded the album Right Place, Wrong Time in San Francisco, California for Capitol Records, but Capitol decided not to release it. The album was finally released in 1976 when Rush purchased the master from Capitol and had it released by P-Vine Records in Japan. Bullfrog Records released it in the U.S. soon after. The album generally has since gained a reputation as one of the best works by Rush.

Ray Barretto  (congas) 1929 -2006 :: was a Grammy Award-winning Latin/Latin jazz musician of Puerto Rican ancestry. In 1946, when Barretto was 17 years old, he joined the Army. While stationed in Germany, Barretto met Belgian vibist Fats Sadi, who was working there. However, it was when he heard Dizzy Gillespie's "Manteca" with Cuban composer/percussionist Chano Pozo that he realized his true calling in life.

In 1949, when Barretto returned home from military service, he started to visit clubs and participated in jam sessions, where he perfected his conga playing. On one occasion Charlie Parker heard Barretto play and invited him to play in his band. Later, he was asked to play for José Curbelo and Tito Puente, for whom he played for four years. Barretto developed a unique style of playing the conga and soon he was sought by other jazz band leaders. Latin percussionists started to appear in jazz groups with frequency as a consequence of Barretto's musical influence.

n 1960, Barretto was a house musician for the Prestige, Blue Note, and Riverside labels.He also recorded on Columbia Records with Jazz flautist Herbie Mann. New York had become the center of Latin music in the United States and a musical genre called "pachanga" was the Latin music craze of the time.

In 1961, Barretto recorded his first hit, "El Watusi," the first Latin song to enter the Billboard charts (April, 1963.) He was quite successful with the song and the genre, to the point of being typecast (something that he disliked).

After recording a number of albums for the United Artists label, Barretto joined the Fania record label in 1967, and his first recording for the new label was the 1968 album Acid, an experiment joining rhythm and blues with Latin music. The album contained the song "A Deeper Shade Of Soul", which was sampled for the 1991 Billboard Hot 100 #21 hit "Deeper Shade of Soul" by Dutch band Urban Dance Squad.

In 1973, Barretto recorded "Indestructible" Fania Records, album in which he played "La Familia", a song written by José Curbelo in 1953 and recorded by the sonero Carlos Argentino with the iconic Cuban band Sonora Matancera; in this album the singer is Tito Allen. After a number of successful albums, and just as his Afro-Cuban band had attained a remarkable following, most of its members left it to form Típica 73, a multinational "salsa" conglomerate. This left Barretto depressed and disappointed with salsa; he then redirected his efforts to jazz, while remaining as musical director of the Fania All Stars.

Barretto played the conga in recording sessions for the Rolling Stones and the Bee Gees. In 1975, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for the song "Barretto". From 1976 to 1978, Barretto recorded three records for Atlantic Records, and was nominated for a Grammy for Barretto Live...Tomorrow. In 1979, he recorded La Cuna for CTI records and produced a salsa record for Fania, titled Ricanstruction, which was named 1980 "Best Album" by Latin N.Y. Magazine, with Barretto crowned as Conga Player of the Year.

In 1990, Barretto finally won a Grammy for the album Ritmo en el Corazón ("Rhythm in the Heart"), which featured the vocals of Celia Cruz. Also in the 1990s, a Latin agent, Chino Rodríguez, approached Barretto with a concept he also pitched to Larry Harlow. The idea was "The Latin Legends of Fania", and Barretto, Harlow, Yomo Toro, Pete "el Conde" Rodrguez, Junior González, Ismael Miranda, and Adalberto Santiago came together and formed "The Latin Legends of Fania", booked by Chino Rodríguez of Latin Music Booking.com. In 1999, Barretto was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame.

Toots Thielemans  (Harmonica) 1922 (born Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans,) Birthday greetings to Toots Thielmans a Belgian jazz musician known for his guitar and harmonica playing as well as his whistling. Thielemans is credited as one of the greatest harmonica players of the 20th century.

He has worked as a bandleader (scoring an international hit in the 1960s with his song "Bluesette"), as a sideman (notably on many projects with composer/arranger Quincy Jones), and has appeared on dozens of film soundtracks. In 2009 he became NEA Jazz Master, the highest honour for a jazz musician in the United States.

He may be best known to some as the performer whistling the melody in commercials for Old Spice cologne.

Thielemans started his career as a guitar player. In 1949 he joined a jam session in Paris with Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach and others. In 1949 and 1950 he participated in European tours with Benny Goodman, making his first record in Paris with fellow band member, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims. In 1951 he became a band member of the singer-songwriter and compatriot Bobbejaan Schoepen (at the time still as a guitarist).

He moved to the US in 1952 where he was a member of Charlie Parker's All-Stars and worked with Miles Davis and Dinah Washington.[citation needed] From 1952 to 1959 he was a member of the George Shearing Quintet, primarily playing guitar but also being featured on harmonica both in performances and on recordings. He has also played and recorded with Ella Fitzgerald, Jaco Pastorius, Stephane Grappelli, J.J. Johnson, Michael Franks, Peggy Lee,((John Williams)), Quincy Jones, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, The Happenings, Astrud Gilberto, Shirley Horn, Elis Regina, Joe Pass, and others.

A jazz standard by Toots Thielemans is "Bluesette", where he used whistling and guitar in unison. First recorded by him in 1962, with lyrics added by Norman Gimbel, the song became a major worldwide hit.

His harmonica playing can also be heard in film scores such as Midnight Cowboy, Cinderella Liberty, Jean de Florette,

 Andy Simpkins  1932-1999 :: was an American jazz bassist, he first became known as a member of the group The Three Sounds, with which he performed from 1956 to 1968. After that, until 1974, he was a member of pianist George Shearing's group, and from 1979 to 1989 toured with singer Sarah Vaughan. Throughout and after that time, during which he settled in Los Angeles, Simpkins became respected as a top-quality bassist and widely known as a solid and reliable studio musician. He performed with singers Carmen McRae and Anita O'Day, instrumentalists Gerald Wiggins, Monty Alexander, Buddy DeFranco, Don Menza, and Stéphane Grappelli, and many others. He recorded three albums as a leader.

Another packed day of awesome musicians! April really was the month for music.

If today is your birthday may it be as wonderful as you wish it to be and, may the coming year bring you all that you need to allow you to be what you want to be!

As ever thanks go to AAJ & JBC for the guidance,

Respect to the YouTube Massive for the uploads

Hugs, cuddles and shoulder bumps to the Inspiration Crew, thanks for following along!

And thanks to YOU for passin' thru'

Walk tall,

Speak low,

Go placidly,

Geo