Gene Roland

Gene Roland (* 15. September 1921 in Dallas , Texas; † 11. August 1982 in New York City , New York) was an American jazz - composer , arranger and musician .

Live and act

Roland was a multi-instrumentalist (piano, trumpet, trombone, valve trombone, mellophone, soprano saxophone), but will primarily be remembered as an arranger and composer in Stan Kenton's bands .

Roland studied music at North Texas State Teacher's College from 1940 to 1942 with Jimmy Giuffre and worked for Kenton for the first time in 1944, playing the trumpet and making arrangements. He worked briefly for Lionel Hampton and Lucky Millinder before returning to Kenton in 1945, this time as a trombonist and composer / arranger (he was responsible for arranging Kenton's successful title "Tampico"). He also played the piano and wrote compositions in 1946 for the Woody Herman Band from 1946, in which Stan Getz , Zoot Sims , Jimmy Giuffre and Herbie Steward also played and enjoyed success as Woody Herman's Four Brothers Second Herd .

In the late 1940s, Gene Roland worked as a trombonist for Georgie Auld , trumpeter for Count Basie , Charlie Barnet and Lucky Millinder, and wrote pieces for the big bands of Claude Thornhill and Artie Shaw . After he had worked briefly with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in the form of a rehearsal band, he wrote arrangements again for Kenton in 1951 and from 1956 to 1958 for Woody Herman, for whose band he made a total of 65 arrangements. Around 1956 he was involved in the Paul Quinichette sessions for the "Dawn" label, and in 1957 he participated in the album A Swinging Introduction to Jimmy Knepper ; the album provided the rare opportunity to hear Roland singing ("Gee, Baby, Ain't I Good to You").

In the early 1960s Roland was the driving force in Kenton's "Mellophonium Band" and also played the soprano saxophone in the orchestra. In the 1960s and 1970s Roland was mainly active as a composer, worked in 1967 with the Radiohus Orchestra in Copenhagen and continued to write for Stan Kenton; he also had his own formations in which he played trumpet, piano and tenor saxophone.

In addition to his recording activities for Kenton, he recorded half of the album for the "Dawn" label in 1957 and 1959. In 1963 he arranged pieces for an octet that appeared on the Brunswick Records label.

literature

• John Jörgensen & Erik Wiedemann : Jazz Lexicon . Munich, mosaic, 1967

Web links

• Gene Roland A Composer / Arranger For All The Right Reasons and Seasons ( Memento from September 11, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
• A history of jazz music
• Stan Kenton: Progressive Concepts in Jazz
• Stan Kenton's Mellophonium Band