Sunday, May 29, 2016

Stacy Rowles: Flugelhorn Player, Trumpeter, Vocalist

                                         Worthy-pedia


Stacy Rowles (September 11, 1955 - October 27, 2009) was a Los Angeles-based vocalist, trumpeter and flugelhorn player, making a name for herself in the 1970s and onward. She was a member of the U.S.-based ensembles Maiden Voyage and Jazz Birds (with friend and colleague Betty O'Hara), The DIVA Big Band, and The Swinging Ladies, as well as the European group Witchcraft. She toured around the world and was better known in Europe than in America. 

Stacy collaborated with many musicians in the jazz world, including her father, pianist Jimmy Rowles. She also did innocative work with the live jazz/dance performing group The Jazz Tap Ensemble, directed by bassist Eric Von Essen. Stacy did many interviews over the years, and was a guest on the radio program "Piano Jazz," hosted by Marian McPartland. In the early ’90s, Rowles and her father played weekly at Linda’s, a Los Angeles jazz club.

 In the The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz (1999), Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler called Stacy Rowles "a respected and creative artist" who played "with the kind of warmth and precision long associated with her father."


"Dad and I just have this thing about music that is incredible," Rowles told The Los Angeles Times in 1992, before she and her father performed in Huntington Beach. "And it only happens when we play together. It's like an unexplainable understanding of where we're going and what we're going to do. And it's just there. It's like a language, but it's not spoken -- like a communication. There were several times when I was a teenager when he would bring people home to show me off. He'd bring Snooky Young and all these trumpet players home in the middle of the night and wake me up and say: 'Come down and play.' And so I'd have to drag myself out of bed, come down and play some march or something which -- being in junior high school or high school at the time -- was all I knew," she said.

In a 2003 review, Don Heckman wrote in The Times that Rowles' flugelhorn playing, "even more than her trumpet work, combined a warm often sensuous sound with brisk swinging, melodically based improvisations."

Stacy studied piano from the age of six, but didn't have the same rapport with the instrument as her father had. She eventually tried an old trumpet, which once belonged to West Coast swing trumpeter Pete Candoli. that had been lyting around in the Rowles house, This quickly became her chosen instrument.

 The vibraphonist and teacher Charlie Shoemake, with whom she studied, said of Rowles, “Stacy was a natural talent. She listened to the right people, and her ear took her to the right places.” As a music student at Orange Coast College, Stacy was voted best soloist.


 By the time she was in her teens, Stacy was already performing on major jazz stages. In 1973, she appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival; in 1975, she played in an all-female band organized by Clark Terry for the Wichita Jazz Festival. In 1979, she and Ann Patterson were two of the founding members of the Maiden Voyage Big Band. In the 1980s, she played with the trombonist Betty O'Hara in Jazz Birds Quintet, which had formed from the big band. In 1984. Rowles recorded her debut album for Concord Records. 


She was part of a musical circle centered on guitarist and composer Nels Cline and Rowles played on the Enja album Angelica (1987) with Tim Berne. In performance and on record, she has performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Tommy Flanagan, Frank Mantooth and the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra. They also toured with her father, with the Swinging Ladies  (with Lindy Huppertsberg, Lisa Pollard, Shannon Hirata, Megan Foley, and Jill McCarron).  Jazz Tap Ensemble, and the DIVA Big Band.


Discography 


Tell It Like It Is (with Jimmy Rowles, Donald Bailey, Chuck Berghofer, Herman Riley), Concord Records, 1984. 

Angelica with Niels Cline and Tim Berne.  Enja, 1987.  Re-release as CD, 2014.

Looking Back, with Jimmy Rowles. 1988. Re-released on Delos lable, 1992.


Jimmy Rowles (With Harry "Sweets" Edison*, Ray Brown, Don Bailey & Stacy Rowles), Sometimes I'm Happy, Sometimes I'm Blue. Orange Blue, 1988.

 Ben Sluijs Quartet, Stacy Rowles, Till Next Time, 1991.

Me and The Moon, with Jimmy Rowles. 1993. Re-release, American Jazz Symposium label, 2004.

 The Music of Eric Von Essen, Vol III (with Alex Cline, Nels Cline, Jeff Gauthier), Cryptogramophone, 2002. 

Witchcraft: Live (with Carolyn Breuer, Anke Helfrich, Lindy Huppertsberg, Carola Grey), 2004.  


Frank Mantooth : Ladies Sing for Lovers, track 9. Re-released 2014.




References


Leonard Feather, Ira Gitler. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. Oxford University Press. 1999. 

Stacy's profile on AllMusic. 

Obituary in The Los Angeles Times, November 8, 2009. 

Obituary in The New York Times, November 6, 2009.


External Links


Stacy's guest appearance on the late Marian McPartland's radio program "Piano Jazz."

Rowles playing "I Fall in Love So Easily" on flugelhorn in 1995. 

Rowles' father, Jimmy, on piano with the great Joe Pass on "'Tis Autumn." 

Jazz Tap Ensemble demo reel.  

Stacy singing "'S'Wonderful" in a lovely tribute video. 

Musical slideshow video featuring Stacy Rowles.  





Friday, May 20, 2016

Betty O'Hara, player of every horn

                                       Worthy-pedia


Betty O'Hara (May 24, 1925 - April 18, 2000) was a West Coast multi-instrumentalist active from the era of the Second World War until the mid-1990s, when she was in her late sixties. In addition to playing cornet, trumpet, bass trumpet, flugelhorn, slide trombone, valve trombone, euphonium (single- and double-bell models), O'Hara was also a vocalist, composer, and arranger.







Immediately after leaving high school, she joined The Victory Sweethearts, an "all-girl" band put together by bandleader Freddie Shaffer for USO tours. After the war, O'Hara moved from touring with Shaffer to work with Big Band leader Al Gentile in Hartford, Connecticut. Eight years later, she left the big band to join the Hartford Symphony, where she was first or second trumpet from 1955 to 1960. It was during her years in Hartford in the 1940s and 1950s that O'Hara met and played with trumpeter Dick Cary, with whom she would record decades later. Cary moved to California in 1959, and a year later, O'Hara also made the move.

Move to California

In 1960, Betty married fellow musician Barrett O'Hara, a well-regarded bass trombone player, and moved to California. The West Coast location allowed her to work in music production for the television industry, and also to form new musical connections, any of which were lasting and which led to recording opportunities and club dates.

1980s & 1990s
O'Hara's versatility, as both singer and player of so many instruments (Los Angeles Times jazz critic Leonard Feather said of her, "If it has valves, Betty O'Hara will play it"), plus the ability to compose and arrange, meant she was in demand as a side player for recording sessions and live performances. She appeared on more than fifteen recordings from 1968 onward, including some compact discs released after her death. Beginning in the 1980s, revived appreciation of women instrumentalists who played in World War II era "all-girl" bands led to new opportunities for O'Hara, especially performing live with other female musicians.

O'Hara helped found what would become the 17-piece orchestra "Maiden Voyage," which once performed Betty's composition "Not Bad for a Girl" for Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show." Later, O'Hara, along with flugelhorn player Stacy Rowles (a "Maiden Voyage" alum and daughter of pianist Jimmy Rowles), founded and played with the women's ensemble "Jazz Birds."

While enjoying increased visibility with "Maiden Voyage" and "The Jazzbirds," O'Hara also began to make her mark in writing and performing for the television industry. Income from her work as a studio musician helped to fill in gaps between paid gigs and allowed her to do pro bono projects, including judging applicants for the Classic Jazz Festival young-artist scholarships.

In the 1990s, O'Hara joined Bill Vogel's Sunset Society Swing Orchestra, which played weekends at Casey's Tavern in Reseda, California. The orchestra performed what O'Hara called "obscure tunes out of the '20s." During other weekend gigs, O'Hara played music of both the 1920s and 1930s with pianist Bob Ringwald (father of actor and singer Molly Ringwald, who led regular appearances of the group The Great Pacific Jazz Band at LGT Vegas in Mission Hills.

The Los Angeles Classic Jazz Festival often featured O'Hara as a guest artist. She also served as a judge for the yearly panels which awarded Festival scholarships to young musicians. In addition to the Classic Jazz Festival performances, O'Hara also played at the Monterey Jazz Festival.
In the early 1990s, O'Hara joined a group of celebrated musicians to play with saxophone and clarinet player Rick Fay. Fay had a long career with the Walt Disney company before he made his first recording, "Endangered Species," in 1993. On that recording, O'Hara played cornet, flugelhorn, euphonium, and bass trumpet, as well as providing vocals. Her 68th birthday was just weeks away during the "Endangered Species" recording sessions on May 2nd and 3rd, 1993.

Television

O'Hara was a busy studio musician, recording theme and background music for a number of television programs. Her work is heard in the themes for the popular 1980s television shows "Hill Street Blues" and "Magnum, P.I."

Family

O'Hara was married to Barrett O'Hara, also a musician, and had three children. Her son Jon O'Hara is a Los Angeles-based music journalist, bassist, and percussionist.

Discography

Betty O'Hara, A Woman's Intuition. Sea Breeze, 1999. CD.
Betty O'Hara, Horns Aplenty. Delmark, 1985. CD.
Bud Freeman, California Session. Jazzology, 1999. CD.
Various, Blue Angel Jazz Club Pasadena 1968, Vol. 2. LP.
Dick Cary's Tuesday Night Friends, Catching Up. Klavier Records, 1999. CD.
Dick Cary & His Tuesday Night Friends, Playing Dick Cary Originals. Arbors Records, 2008. CD.
Lenny Carlson, In The Mud re-released version. ITI Records, 2012. CD.
John Allred, In the Beginning (as guest on the track "Stompin' at the Savoy"). Arbors Records, 2006. CD.

Sources

"IWBC Pioneer: Betty O’Hara," International Women's Brass Conference. http://www.myiwbc.org
Los Angeles Times obituary. May 10, 2000.
Tucker, Sherrie. Swing Shift: All-Girl Bands of the 1940s, Duke University Press, 2000, p. 341.
"50 Years and Still Playing : Betty O'Hara, who plays a variety of brass instruments, says she never thought she'd be a professional musician so long," by Zan Stewart. Los Angeles Times, May 14, 1993.
Feature on "Maiden Voyage" in Los Angeles Times, August 8, 1990. http://articles.latimes.com/1990-08-26/entertainment/ca-477_1_jane-ira-bloom
"Lady Be Good" site filled with interviews with female musicians. http://kaydray.com/LadyBeGood/interviews.html

Links