Archives: musicians_main
Rivers, Oscar, Jr.
Oscar Rivers, Jr. is the quintessential representative of the Charleston-Orangeburg, South Carolina jazz connection. In the 1950’s, the Burke High School saxophone prodigy went to South Carolina State College where he built a reputation that still stands.
Rivers is a master bebop player, somewhere around Charlie Parker and Sonny Stitt, with whom he played in Chicago in the 1970’s. When Rivers returned to Charleston he gigged in many bands on keyboards before he and his late wife, Fabian Rivers, formed Rivers and Company. Rivers has taught for decades in Charleston County public schools. He founded, leads and accompanies the Morris Brown AME Church Gospel Choir. His trademark on the alto is “April in Paris.” He performed with the Charleston Jazz Initiative Legends Band in 2010 and is featured on its first CD recording.
Photo Courtesy of Alice Keeney
Kenny, George
George Kenny, a native Charlestonian, received his first musical experiences as a trumpet player at Burke High School in Charleston. He later trained as a saxophonist after enlisting in the United States Air Force (Korea), and then attended South Carolina State College (now South Carolina State University) earning a bachelor of science degree in music education.
Kenny was a band director for Charleston County schools for thirty-two years before retiring in 1991. He taught at Laing High School, C. A. Brown High School, Burke High School, Courtney Middle School, and the Jenkins Orphanage. While at C.A. Brown High School, the school’s musical production of Hello Dolly (1970) was the first to sell every seat at Charleston’s Gaillard Auditorium for three performances.
Kenny has performed as bass violinist for the Ebony Fashion Fair for several years and with such musical greats as Lou Rawls, Teddy Pendergrass, and Dizzy Gillespie. He has also performed for the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, MOJA Arts Festival, and with most of the jazz musicians in the Charleston area. Currently, Mr. Kenny plays with the Davis Archer Band at major hotels and island resorts, and is the director of the Melody Chimes Ensemble at Calvary Episcopal Church in Charleston. He has been featured in two motion picture films — The Notebook and Consenting Adults.
CJI’s Jack McCray lists him in his 2007 book, Charleston Jazz. He performed with CJI’s Legends Band in 2010 and is featured on its first CD recording. Kenny prefers to be called a “Good Sideman” as his ensemble career has spanned over 50 years.
Hamilton, Lonnie III
Former educator, politician and professional musician, Lonnie Hamilton III is an alto saxophonist and clarinetist in Charleston. He toured with the Jenkins Orphanage Bands during the mid-1940s, and played with his own band, Lonnie Hamilton and the Diplomats, the signature jazz band in Charleston for decades. Hamilton’s Diplomats was the house band for a very popular jazz nightclub Hamilton owned on Charleston’s North Market Street (it later moved to the 2nd floor of Henry’s Restaurant) in the 1970s through the early 1990s. Hamilton performed in 2010 with the Charleston Jazz Initiative Legends Band and is also featured on its first CD recording. He is the former Chairman of Charleston County Council of which the county office building — Lonnie Hamilton, III Public Services Building is named. Hamilton is the embodiment of Charleston’s rich jazz legacy.
Photo Courtesy of Jack Alterman
Caldwell, Ann
As a solo artist, ensemble vocalist, and music producer, Ann Caldwell is Charleston’s “first lady of jazz.” Performing locally for decades, Caldwell is a jazz and blues singer, and is greatly influenced by the past. She has performed a series of centennial concerts devoted to the music of Duke Ellington and formed the Magnolia Singers to perform the spirituals of times past.
Caldwell has appeared in Porgy and Bess, Clay Rice’s musical production Lowcountry Legends, and has studied with the late June Bonner who performed with the Metropolitan Opera. She is a master of accents, accurately recreating the tonalities of speech which are important to both jazz and blues.
Caldwell has a long list of performances as a jazz and blues singer. She is a vocalist with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra Pops Concert, as well as a featured artist for the Lowcountry Aid to Africa annual galas in Charleston. Other performances have included the Indigo Jazz Concert, Japanese National Anthem, Charleston Symphony Orchestra Gospel Choir, Charleston Jazz Orchestra of the Jazz Artists of Charleston, and wrote and performed a short story to a sold-out crowd at South of Broadway Theatre Company in North Charleston.
Caldwell performs regularly in Charleston with the Magnolia Singers at Praise House, The Jazz Factory, and with a combination of great jazz musicians at several of the finest restaurants in Charleston — Mercato and McCrady’s. She performed with the Charleston Jazz Initiative Legends Band in 2010 and is a featured vocalist on their first CD recording.
Photo Courtesy of Tony Bell
Singleton, Charlton
A native of Awendaw, SC, Charlton Singleton started playing the piano at the age of 3. While his older sister and brother took 30 minute lessons, Charlton would watch and then eventually “pick out” what he heard and observed in their lessons. His parents would eventually ask the teacher to include him in the weekly lessons.
Charlton would then go on between the age of 3 and 16 to study and/or take lessons on the piano, organ, trumpet, violin, and cello. In the summer of the 1988, he was the principal trumpeter with the United States Collegiate Wind Band. This ensemble was comprised of some of the best high school musicians in the United States. The United States Collegiate Wind Band toured over 9 different countries in Europe playing in some of the best concert halls in the world.
In 1994, Charlton received a Bachelor of Arts in Music from South Carolina State University. It was at SCSU that he would learn such important lessons in performance, songwriting, arranging, and teaching. He would return to the Lowcountry and join 6 other musicians to form the band SKWZBXX (pronounced – “squeeze box”). The band would play from 1995 to 1999, release three CDs to great Regional success, and tour the East Coast and Southeastern region of the United States. It was also during this time that he would meet, befriend, and share the stage with such performers and members of bands including the O’Jays, Jerry Butler, Fred Wesley, and Hootie and the Blowfish, to name a few.
In 2000, he became a public school music teacher and band director. He has worked at the elementary, middle, and high school levels as well as an adjunct jazz trumpet instructor at the College of Charleston. With such a vast background, he is in demand as a lecturer, performer, clinician, and arranger for many school bands, professional artists, and their recording projects.
Currently, as a performer, Mr. Singleton leads three groups under his name: The Charlton Singleton Trio, The Charlton Singleton Quintet, both of which perform traditional jazz music, the Charlton Singleton Band (contemporary jazz/r&b/funk) and he is the Artistic Director/Bandleader of the Charleston Jazz Orchestra (CJO) under the auspices of the Jazz Artists of Charleston. Mr. Singleton is also the Organist/Choir Director for Our Lady of Mercy and St. Patrick Catholic Churches in Charleston. Singleton was the bandleader/trumpeter for CJI’s Legends Band in 2010 and its first CD recording.
Young, Webster English (1932-2003)
Born in Columbia, SC (Lexington County); cornetist/trumpeter; later resided in Washington, DC; played and recorded with many of the giants of jazz from the 1940s and 1950s including Lester Young, Mal Waldron, John Coltrane (1957), Jackie McLean, Ray Draper, and others; he played in the Air Force Band with Hampton Hawes in DC (1956); he has several albums under his name including Plays the Miles Davis Songbook (volumes 1-3) and For Lady(Prestige, 1957); “Millie’s Pad” is one of his compositions; he taught jazz improvisation and was the 1984 musical director of Lettumplay, Washington, D.C.’s jazz preservation organization and youth jazz ensemble; Young died in 2003 in Portland, OR at the age of 71 following a battle with brain cancer.
Williams, Sandy (1906-1991)
Born in Summerville, SC; trombonist; moved to Washington, D.C. as a child and played his first gig with the Miller Brothers in D.C. and with small bands led by Sidney Bechet, where Williams is said to have done some of his finest work; his first recording with Bechet was in 1940, and in 1945 he played with Bechet’s band at a Town Hall concert celebrating the Blue Note record label; he also played in the pit band in D.C. at the Lincoln Theater; he later joined Claude Hopkins (1927-1930), Horace and Fletcher Henderson (1929-33), and then Chick Webb until 1940 after Webb’s death and under the leadership of Ella Fitzgerald; in 1943, he played with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and with Coleman Hawkins, Lucky Millinder, Benny Carter, Cootie Williams, “Hot Lips” Page, Don Redman, and Roy Eldridge, periodically; Williams toured with Rex Stewart in Europe (1947-48) and later played with Dixieland groups; a fine trombonist of the Jimmy Harrison school who never got the chance to break through and become the prominent figure he could have been partly because of persistent health problems during the 1950s and subsequent dental problems during the 1960s; Williams died in 1991 in New York City.
Williams, John C., Jr.
John Williams was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina where he currently resides. A baritone saxophonist, he is a graduate of South Carolina State University.
Williams played and recorded with Sarah Vaughan, the Manhattan Transfer, Diane Schuur, Lena Horne, Joe Williams, Tito Puente, and is currently a musician with the Count Basie Orchestra, hired by Basie himself — a position he has held for more than two decades (1980s-present). Some of Williams’ first recordings with the Basie Orchestra can be found in a collection titled, The Golden Years (Pablo, 1972-1983). Playing on these recordings with Williams are South Carolinians, Freddie Green (Charleston), Pete Minger (Orangeburg), Dizzy Gillespie (Cheraw), and Norman Keenan (Union). Williams performed in 2010 with the Charleston Jazz Initiative Legends Band and is also featured on its first CD recording.
White, Amos Mordechai (b. 1889)
Graduate of Avery – was in 9th grade with Edmund Thornton Jenkins; entered the Jenkins Orphanage in 1900 and played trumpet with Jenkins Orphanage Bands regularly until 1913; toured with bands in France in World War I; lived and played in New Orleans during the 1920s; worked with The Alabamians, toured with Mamie Smith, recorded with Tiny Parham and Frank “Big Boy” Goudie; played gigs and led marching bands through the 1960s in California.
Ulmer, “Blood” James (b. 1942)
Born in St. Matthews, SC; guitarist; Ulmer began his career playing in funk bands, first in Pittsburgh (1959-64) and later around Columbus, OH (1964-67); he gigged at Minton’s Playhouse and played with Art Blakey, recorded with Rashied Ali’s Quintet (1973), and worked with Ornette Coleman, Ulmer’s main influence; he recorded in the 1970s and 1980s, and recorded three sessions for Columbia (1981) which gained him wide exposure; he collaborated with the Music Revelation Ensemble (tenor saxophonist, David Murray, bassist, Amin Ali, and drummer, Ronald Shannon Jackson) and they produced several albums over two decades; his work with Phalanx (tenor saxophonist, George Adams, bassist, Sirone, and drummer, Rashied Ali) catapulted him into free jazz expressionism that made him successful; in recent years (1980s-1990s), his work has evolved from free jazz to more structured music though his work in the 1990s with Music Revelation Ensemble still hints at his earlier style; his recordings are numerous includingMemphis Blood: The Sun Sessions, No Escape From the Blues (2003), Birthright (2005), and ten solo originals and two covers of classic repertoire.
