In one of those odd coincidences that we manufacture all the time (because it’s not a coincidence until somebody says “gee, that’s an odd coincidence”), October 10 in 1914, 1915, and 1917 is the birthday of three famous jazz/R&B musicians: Ivory Joe Hunter, Harry Edison, and Thelonious Monk, in that order.
Ivory Joe Hunter — “Ivory Joe” was his real given name; it wasn’t a nickname — learned music from his parents, both musicians. He made his first record when he was 19. By 1940 he had his own radio show in Texas, and a few years later, after issuing a few more records, he founded his own record label — Pacific Records.
By 1951 Ivory Joe was pretty well known nationally, and appeared on the TV show You Asked For It. He had two number one hits in the mid 50s, and another when Pat Boone recorded Hunter’s song Since I Met You Baby. In 1957 he met Elvis Presley, who invited him to Graceland and recorded several songs Ivory Joe had written — out of the more than 7,000 he wrote in total. He appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1969 — and so did Thelonious Monk.
Monk was a couple of years younger than Ivory Joe, but started just as early in music. His family lived next door to Alberta Simmons, who had been a professional musician, and she taught Monk to play piano starting when he was just six. By 17, he began getting jobs playing jazz. By his late twenties he was the “house pianist” at Minton’s Playhouse, a nightclub in Manhattan, where he met and played with practically all the people emerging as influential jazz musicians — but not Harry Edison.
Edison also learned music very early — in this case from his uncle in Louisville, who taught him to play the trumpet. The family moved to Columbus Ohio when he was 12, and Edison started playing with local bands as a teenager. He stayed in the world of “big band” jazz, and moved up steadily until he joined one of the top bands, the Count Basie Orchestra, when he was 22. He stayed with the band for thirteen years, and in about 1951 moved to California to become a studio musician. He played on dozens of recordings up through the 1970s. By then he’d also become an arranger, composer, and musical director for television shows and movies.
Ivory Joe Hunter and Thelonious Monk were primarily soloists; it’s easy to find their recordings (although spelling “Thelonious” can be an issue), but Harry Edison didn’t issue many records featuring his name on the cover. There were a couple, when he headed up the Harry Edison Orchestra in the 1950s, but for the most part he was part of an orchestra or ensemble — even though he’s usually the one featured in the instrumental section.
Between the 1930s and about the 1970s jazz was pretty experimental, and some pieces like Take Five by Dave Brubeck used unusual time signatures (5/4 in that case). But you’d be hard-pressed to find a composition written for a 10/10 signature, even though today would be a good day for it because the date is 10/10. In the Republic of China today is known as Double-Ten Day. It’s their national day, because that’s the day in 1911 that the Wuchang Uprising began — it led to the end of Imperial China when the Qing Dynasty fell and China became a republic. Nowadays the Republic of China is located on Taiwan, and mainland China is the Peoples Republic of China, but Double Ten Day is still celebrated in both places.
In another one of those odd coincidences that we manufacture all the time, Double Ten Day is also Party Foundation Day in North Korea (commemorating the formation of the Communist Party in 1945) and Capital Liberation Day in Vietnam, commemorating the liberation of Hanoi from the French in 1954. The tenth day of the tenth month is also Independence Day in Cuba, because it’s the day Cuba declared independence from Spain in 1868. The declaration started a conflict called…wait for it…the Ten Years War.
