114th birthday of Fats Waller

(Born 21 May 1904, Harlem, New York, US)

INNOVATIVE pianist, comedian, prolific composer/co-composer including such standards as “Jitterbug waltz”, “Honeysuckle rose”, “Ain’t misbehavin’”, “I can’t give you anything but love, baby”, and “Squeeze me”

(Fats Waller, “Ain’t misbehavin’” [personnel: Waller, piano, vocal; recording: Victor Machine Co’s Studio 1, Camden, NJ, US, 21 August 1929; details of rest of personnel at the date not available])

(Charles Mingus Sextet – with multiinstrmentalist Eric Dolphy, Cornell University 1964, plays Waller’s “Jitterbug waltz” composition  [personnel: Mingus, bass; Johnny Coles, trumpet; Dolphy, flute; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded: live, Cornell University, 18 March 1964])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

86th birthday of Clifford Jordan

(Born 2 September 1931, Chicago, US)

PERCIPIENT tenor saxophonist and composer who, for 30 years, beginning in the mid-1950s, builds up an impressive range of collaborative work with leading rhythm and brass instrument-bandleaders of the age including Roach, Mingus, Chambers, Davis, Waldron, Walton, Weston, Hill, Gillespie, Morgan, Farmer, Reece, as well as work with multiinstrumentalist Dolphy and fellow tenorist Gilmore 
(ps: the gritty cascading texture of Jordan’s tenor solo in Charles Mingus’s “Meditations” [below], this freedom anthem, beginning 21.07 minutes into the recording, opens up yet another vista of creativity in this seminar at Cornell when it appears that all had been exhausted by the brilliant readings of Dolphy [flute/bass clarinet], Byard [piano], Coles [trumpet] and Mingus [bass] himself premiered 21 minutes earlier...)

(Charles Mingus Sextet – with Eric Dolphy, Cornell University 1964, “Meditations” [personnel: Mingus, bass; Johnny Coles, trumpet; Dolphy, flute, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Byard, piano; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded: live, Cornell University, 18 March 1964]) 

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

113th birthday of Fats Waller

(Born 21 May 1904, Harlem, New York, US)

Innovative pianist, comedian, prolific composer/co-composer including such standards as “Jitterbug waltz”, “Honeysuckle rose”, “Ain’t misbehavin’”, “I can’t give you anything but love, baby”, and “Squeeze me”

(Fats Waller, “Ain’t misbehavin’” [personnel: Waller, piano, vocal; recording: Victor Machine Co’s Studio 1, Camden, NJ, US, 21 August 1929; details of rest of personnel at the date not available])

(Charles Mingus Sextet – with multiinstrmentalist Eric Dolphy, Cornell University 1964, plays Waller’s “Jitterbug waltz” composition  [personnel: Mingus, bass; Johnny Coles, trumpet; Dolphy, flute; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded: live, Cornell University, 18 March 1964])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

141st birthday of Carter G Woodson

(Born 19 December 1875, New Canton, Va, United States)

Historian, journalist, versatile educator and inaugurator of the “African World History Month”, now a very important fixture in the annual calendar in several regions of the African World, outside Africa, and who, whilst researching the nature of the education of African Americans in the 1930s, concludes on the following consequences on someone, anyone, being controlled and defined by an agency outside their own centre of being, an observation as salient as ever, 80 years on (Woodson, 2010: 48):

If you can control a [person’s] thinking, you don’t have to worry about [their] action. If you can determine what a [person] thinks you do not have to worry about what [they] will do. If you can make a [person] believe that [they are] inferior, you don’t have to compel [them] to seek an inferior status [for they] will do so without being told and if you can make a [person] believe that [they are] justly an outcast, you don’t have to order [them] to the back door. [They] will go to the back door on [their] own and if there is no back door, the very nature of the [person] will demand that you build one [for them]. (added emphasis)

(Charles Mingus Sextet – with Eric Dolphy, Cornell University 1964, “Meditations” [personnel: Mingus, bass; Johnny Coles, trumpet; Dolphy, flute, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded: live, Cornell University, 18 March 1964]) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe