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John Doheny

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Saxophonist John Doheny was born in Seattle Washington in 1953 but has spent much of his adult life in Canada, primarily in Vancouver and Toronto. After early experiences accompanying strippers in bars and cabarets he became a professional R&B sideman in the late 1970s, touring and recording with artists both prominent and obscure. In 1991 he returned to Vancouver and began a program of intense musical study, both in academe (Vancouver Community College, the University of British Columbia) and in the more informal area of performance. He asserts that "all human intercourse is either an opportunity to learn or to teach. Everything that I know about jazz performance (to the extent that I know anything at all) I owe to those players, teachers and students who have suffered to share the bandstand and the teaching studio with me." Since 2003, Mr. Doheny has been a permanent resident of New Orleans, Louisiana, but makes every effort to spend summers in Canada because "it's too damn hot down here then."

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Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Quick Hit.

Into our second week of classes here at Tulane and of course very busy. No dates confirmed yet for the fall Jazz @ the Rat series but I'll post them here as soon as I get them. The two confirmed artists are Bill Summers and Idris Muhammad, so I guess we're on a percussion tip.

Summers of course is best known for his work with Herbie Hancock, most notably the groundbreaking 1973 album "Headhunters," but his career is much broader than that, encompassing film and television work ( The Color Purple, Roots) as well as nine solo releases. In New Orleans he led the band "Summer's Heat" (guitarist and singer duo Bill Solley and Kim Prevost are alumnae) and currently works in Irvin Mayfield's Afro-Cuban Nuevo-Orleans project "Los Hombres Calientes."

Idris Muhammad I'm even more excited about than Bill. Muhammad is kind of a legend around New Orleans where he started life in 1939 as Leo Morris. The Morris family has been well known around town for producing top shelf drummers so apparently when young Leo arrived in his school band program they didn't even ask him his instrument-preferrence, just handed him the sticks. One of his earliest recording sessions (at age 15) was Fat's Domino's "Blueberry Hill."

As a leader he's released twelve discs, beginning with 1970's "Black Rhythm Revolution" on Prestige Records. As a sideman he's recorded with Johnny Griffin, Lou Donaldson, Pharoah Sanders, Freddie Hubbard, Grant Green and John Scofield. Since 1994 he's held down the drum chair in Ahmad Jamal's trio. To say that I'm excited by the prospect of playing with the man is the understatement of the century.

In other news we've confirmed recording dates (Sept. 14 and 21) at Word of Mouth studios
http://masterdigital.com/studios/data/wordofmouth.htm Bassist Jim Markway, pianist Jesse Mcbride, drummer Geoff Clapp, guitarist John Dobry and myself, along with new guy reedman Allen Dejan, will be recording Professors of Pleasure vol. 2. Now all we have to do is figure out what we're going to play, learn the music, and record it. But, as anyone who's done this knows, that's the easy part.

posted by John Doheny at 8:06 AM

Comments on "Quick Hit."

 

Blogger Jack said ... (9:37 AM) : 

Oh man, Headhunters was one of the first vinyls I ever owned. I've listened to that thing til it's about worn out. That'll be a great show. Incidentally, anyone know of a good audio preservation company that could rip the music from that vinyl and preserve it for me?

 

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