BURN BRIGADE 1979

Three of the greatest baritone saxophonists of the post-1970 period teamed up for this jam-session date.
Recommended to fans of the bebop baritone sax.

BURN BRIGADE

Recorded 1979 for BeeHive Records

Nick BRIGNOLA & Ronnie CUBER & Cecil PAYNE bs, Walter DAVIS Jr p, Walter BOOKER Jr b, Jimmy COBB dr,

Ronnie Cuber (1941) is a baritone sax player strong enough to bring out the lyricism of the weighty instrument. While he plays traditional jazz in the style of Pepper Adams and Nick Brignola, Cuber also has led Latin sessions and appeared on dozens of pop recordings as an in-demand sideman. Cuber was born on Christmas, 1941, in New York. When he was 18, he appeared in Marshall Brown's Newport Youth Band at the Newport Jazz Festival. Three years later he was in Slide Hampton's groups and spent the 1960s working with Maynard Ferguson, George Benson, Lionel Hampton, Woody Herman and Lonnie Smith.During the next decade, Cuber performed on a slew of recordings and embraced distant ends of the woodwind family by playing flute and baritone sax on Eddie Palmieri's 1973 record, Sun Of Latin Music. While working with Lee Konitz in the late '70s, Cuber featured the clarinet and soprano sax alongside the baritone in his arsenal. He recorded his own Cuber Libre in 1976 and released a succession of traditional jazz records in the '80s and '90s, such as Live At The Blue Note and The Scene Is Clean (Milestone). In the 1980's he was a member of the Saturday Night Live Band for 5 years. The slew of pop musicians who have recruited easy-going Cuber for sessions include Chaka Kahn, Paul Simon. In 1998, Cuber played on and arranged The Three Baritone Saxophone tribute disc, Plays Mulligan on Dreyfus Records, and has arranged and recorded on 6 Mingus Big Band cd's for Dreyfus Records

Cecil Payne (1922) is a jazz baritone saxophonist born in Brooklyn, NY. Payne can also play the alto saxophone and flute. Payne recieved his first saxophone at age 13, asking his father for one after hearing Honeysuckle Rose by Count Basie, performed by Lester Young. Payne took lessons from a local alto sax player, Pete Brown. At age 19 Payne was in a high school band led by classmate Max Roach, occasionally joined by Charlie Parker doing gigs at Georgie Jay's Taproom on 78th & Broadway. Sometimes Payne would accompany Roach to Monroe's Uptown House in Harlem.
Following three years of service in the U.S. Army, Payne was introduced to Roy Eldridge by Clark Monroe, owner of Monroe's Uptown House. Eldridge was looking for someone to play alto sax for him during a 2 week gig at The Spotlite, another club owned by Monroe. But when Payne showed up for rehearsal, Eldridge had already hired someone for alto and was now looking for someone to do baritone. Payne had a baritone saxophone at home he had played during high school, and Eldridge told him to bring it the following day. Through Eldridge, Payne met the legendary bebop sensation Dizzy Gillespie, playing with him at the Savoy Ballroom. Payne spent the next two years with Gillespie playing baritone, with solos on Ow! and Stay On It.
Payne has also played with other jazz greats, such as Illinois Jacquet, Machito, Woody Herman, Randy Weston, Duke Jordan, Wynton Kelly, Kenny Dorham, Harold Mabern and Count Basie, in addition to some solo work as bandleader.

To be continued...