Joe Mudele

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joe Mudele (also Joe Muddel , born September 30, 1920 in London - † March 7, 2014 ) was a British jazz bassist who was one of the pioneers of bebop in England.

Live and act

Mudele grew up as a half-orphan - his father died in 1931 as a result of a war injury - in Downham in south-east London. After leaving school at the age of 14, he worked as a singer in a cinema and soon played in local bands. After completing military service in the RAF during World War II, he took lessons with James Merritt, double bass player with the Philharmonia Orchestra; In 1946 he began working as a professional musician, initially as a member of the Tito Burns Sextet, which appeared on the radio and where he met Ronnie Scott and John Dankworth . With these he belonged to the group of musicians who held the first bebop sessions as Club Eleven at the end of the 1940s . To hear Charlie Parker , he attended the Festival International 1949 de Jazz and had the opportunity to play two numbers with Parker and his drummer Max Roach .

In the early 1950s Mudele was a member of the Johnny Dankworth Seven , which had emerged from Club Eleven , but which he soon left for family reasons (he was now married and had one child) to go to a nightclub in London's West End, the Coconut Grove , to work. In the years that followed, Mudele toured with guest musicians such as Hoagy Carmichael (with whom he recorded for the BBC in 1948 ), Sophie Tucker , Judy Garland and Billy Eckstine . In 1951 he founded his own band, in which the Jamaican saxophonist Joe Harriott made his first appearance in Great Britain. In 1952 he was voted leading bass player in the Melody Maker readers' poll . In the following years he was mainly employed as a studio musician for radio and television. a. with Mantovani , Cilla Black , Yehudi Menuhin / Stéphane Grappelli as well as with the Big Ben Banjo Band and in the radio music program Sing Something Simple . He also played regularly as a jazz musician in the Bexley Jazz Club .

Recordings were made in the 1940s and 1950s with Alan Dean, Ralph Sharon , Larry Adler , Humphrey Lyttelton , Tommy Whittle , the Melody Maker All Stars in 1952 and 1955, and with George Chisholm and Sid Phillips . In the 1960s he recorded with Johnnie Spence and Alan Branscombe . Last recordings under his own name ( For All We Know , 2010) were made with Robin Aspland (piano) and Geoff Gascoyne (drums). In the field of jazz he was involved in 52 recording sessions between 1948 and 2010. Outside of jazz, he has also worked on recordings with Johnny Mercer , Barry Gray , John Williams and the Cliff Adams Singers.

Web links

Individual references / comments

  1. ↑ a b c Obituary in the Telegraph
  2. ↑ The Melody Maker All Stars consisted of Kenny Baker (tp), Keith Christie (tb), Johnny Dankworth, Joe Harriott (as), Vic Ash (as, cl), Ronnie Chamberlain (as, ss), Harry Klein (as , bar), Tommy Whittle (ts), Victor Feldman (vib), Tito Burns (accor), Bill McGuffie (p), Bert Weedon (git), Joe Mudele (b), Eric Delaney (dr)
  3. ↑ Tom Lord : The Jazz Discography (online, accessed March 19, 2014)
personal data
SURNAME Mudele, Joe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Muddle, Joe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British jazz and studio musician
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 2014