The Jazzcat

 

Percy Heath, the superb bassist who for more than 40 years provided the sublime underpinnings for the Modern Jazz Quartet, died Thursday of bone cancer at a hospital in Southampton, N.Y. He was 81.

Mr. Heath was the last surviving member of the quartet he helped found that became known simply as the MJQ. Mr. Heath joined with pianist John Lewis, drummer Connie Kay and vibraphonist Milt Jackson, to create a restrained bop style that was considered the epitome of sophistication.

He and his brothers, saxophonist Jimmy Heath and drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath, made up one of the great families in jazz.

Percy Heath was born April 30, 1923, in Wilmington, N.C.

He was drafted into the Army in 1944, and learned to fly P-4s and P-47s as a member of the Tuskegee Airmen. His class graduated in early 1945. He saw no combat. After the war, he decided to go into music, so he took part of his military separation money and bought a stand-up bass.

Mr. Heath and his brother Jimmy moved to New York in the late 1940s. By 1950, they had found steady work with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.

The MJQ had its genesis in the Gillespie big band. As Lewis told critic Leonard Feather some years ago, he and three other band members — drummer Kenny Clarke, bassist Ray Brown and Jackson — decided to form a group to try to create a sound that was not based on the standard themes of the day.

The group originally was called the Milt Jackson Quartet. Mr. Heath joined the group when Brown left to play in his wife Ella Fitzgerald's band.

The Modern Jazz Quartet officially was born in 1952. After a well-received European tour, it returned home and slowly caught on with American fans. Kay joined the group in 1955 when Clarke moved to Europe.

The group was a popular fixture on the American jazz scene until it broke up in 1974. The split lasted until 1983, when they reunited for a highly lucrative series of concerts in Japan.

In addition to his brothers, Mr. Heath is survived by his wife, June, and his sons, Percy III, Jason and Stuart.

By Jon Thurber

Los Angeles Times

Jimmy Smith, the Hammond B-3 icon who creatively

revolutionized the instrument in Jazz, died of apparent natural causes on

Tuesday, February 8, at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona. Funeral arrangements are pending.

“Jimmy was one of the greatest and most innovative

musicians of our time.  I love the man and I love the music.  He was my idol, my

mentor and my friend,” fellow Hammond B-3 artist and friend, Joey Defrancesco

said yesterday.

Born in Norristown, Pennsylvania on December 8, 1925, Jimmy Smith

ruled the Hammond B-3 organ in the 1950s & 1960s. He turned the instrument

into almost an ensemble itself, fusing R&B, blues, and gospel influences

with bebop references into a jubilant, attractive sound that many others

immediately absorbed before following in his footsteps. Smith initially learned

piano both from his parents and on his own. After service in the Navy, in 1948

he studied bass at the Hamilton School of Music and piano at Ornstein¹s School

of Music in Philadelphia. He began playing the

Hammond organ in 1951, and soon earned a great

reputation that followed him to New York,

where he debuted at the Café Bohemia. A date at Birdland and then a 1957 Newport

Jazz Festival appearance launched Smith¹s career. He toured extensively

throughout the 1960s & ‘70s.

Smith’s Blue Note sessions from 1956 to 1963 were

extremely influential and are highly recommended. They included collaborations

with Kenny Burrell, Lee Morgan, Lou Donaldson, Tina Brooks, Jackie McLean, Ike

Quebec, and Stanley Turrentine, among others. Smith also recorded for Verve from

1963 to 1972, many of them featuring big bands and using fine arrangements from

Oliver Nelson. These included the excellent Walk on the Wild

Side.

Jimmy Smith persevered in times when the Hammond organ seemed like it was

down and out, and reigned as the master of the craft. The authentic sound of the

Hammond still lives on in his

protégé and good buddy Joey DeFrancesco. The pair recently recorded a studio

album together, Legacy, to be

released on Concord Records February 15. A national tour was in place for the

B-3 soul mates to commence at Yoshi’s February 16-20, along with a special

Iridium engagement in New York,

March 23-27.

Jo

Foster

Director,

Publicity

Concord

Records

100 North

Crescent Drive, Suite

275

Beverly

Hills, CA 90210

T:

310-385-4218

 www.concordrecords.com

Great pianist and educator James Williams has past away. He resided on the East Coast in New York

and was known to so many who loved, admired and adored him. I was

introduced to him by my good friend Vanessa Rubin. We were all hanging

out at the International Convention for Jazz Educators. Well, Vanessa

and I were hanging out. James had a booth which had his music for sale

as well as promotion for himself as an educator.

In the five

minutes, as we stood there talking with James, I personally saw at

least 3 of his students come up, joke, laugh and play around with him

for a few moments. He greeted them with love and mutual respect. I did

not know him well but, seeing how others flocked to him told me how

much respect everyone had for him.

53 is much too young to go

and when talented and dedicated musicians leave our earth, massive

pieces of knowledge, wisdom and musical enlightenment leave as well.

Thank God that we are left with the spirit and the memories and the

music.
Here is a link to an article that was written today in the New York AP news.

Condolences, peace and love
LeRoy Downs
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MUSIC LEGEND AND PIONEER, RAY CHARLES,

SUCCUMBS AT AGE 73

Historic Figure: Entertainment Giant Won 13 Grammy® Awards, Numerous Others Across the Globe

(Los Angeles, Calif., June 10, 2004)—Music legend Ray Charles, 73,

a 13-time Grammy® Award winner, known the world over as “The Genius of

Soul,” died at 11:35 AM (PDT) today at the age of 73, announced his

publicist, Jerry Digney, of Solters & Digney.

He was surrounded by family, friends and longtime business associates at his home in Beverly Hills.

“Although he was very successful and owned a home in Beverly Hills,

his first home was always his treasured studio, recently named a city

landmark,” said a saddened Joe Adams, the entertainer's manager for the

past 45 years.

Charles' last public appearance was alongside Clint Eastwood on

April 30, when the city of Los Angeles designated the singer's studios

an historic landmark.

Last summer, it was initially reported that Charles—born in

Albany, GA, on Sept. 30, 1930, as Ray Charles Robinson—was suffering

from “acute hip discomfort.”

As doctors began to treat the entertainer in Los Angeles and perform

a successful hip replacement procedure, other ailments were diagnosed,

and Charles ultimately succumbed from complications due to liver

disease.

Prior to his death, Charles finalized a duets album, “Genius Loves

Company,” for the Concord label, his first new album since 2001 and

okayed plans for the building of the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center

at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

Norah Jones, BB King, Willie Nelson, Michael McDonald, Bonnie Raitt,

Gladys Knight, Johnny Mathis and James Taylor are just a few of the

notable artists involved with the project, which is scheduled for

release Aug. 31.

“The duets project has been a tremendous experience,” he said, at the outset of recording.

“I am working with some of the best artists in the business, as well as some of my dearest friends.”

Charles was recently awarded the prestigious “President's Merit

Award” from the Grammy® organization by its president, Neil Portnow,

just prior to the 2004 Grammy® Awards, and was named a City of Los

Angeles “Cultural Treasure” by Mayor James Hahn during “African

American Heritage Month” in a February ceremony that he attended.

He also received the NAACP Image Awards' “Hall of Fame Award” on March 6.

An accomplished pianist and songwriter, Charles was considered the

creator of the soul music genre, a unique R&B forerunner to rock n'

roll and other musical offspring.

During a career that spanned some 58 years, Charles starred on over

250 albums, many of them top sellers in a variety of musical genres.

Blessed with one of the 20th century's most advanced musical minds, Charles became an American cultural icon decades ago.

Among his memorable hits are “What'd I Say,” “I Got A Woman,”

“Georgia,” “Born To Lose,” “Hit the Road Jack” and “I Can't Stop Loving

You.”

He also gave the Ray Charles touch to such popular fare as the Beatles' “Eleanor Rugby” and “Yesterday.”

Among the singer's most moving and enduring musical recordings is his oft-played rendition of “America The Beautiful.”

Charles appeared in movies, such as “The Blues Brothers,” and on

television, and starred in commercials for Pepsi and California

Raisins, among numerous others.

After going blind from glaucoma at the age of seven, Charles was

sent to the St. Augustine, Fla., School for the deaf and blind, where

he developed his enormous musical gift.

The young pianist eventually made his way to Seattle, Wash.,

performing as a solo act, first modeling himself after Nat “King” Cole.

While in Seattle, he met a young Quincy Jones and they became lifelong friends.

In the late 1940s, he began establishing a name for himself in clubs

around the northwest, evolving his own music and singing style, which

later included the famous back up singers, “The Raelettes.”

While in Seattle, he dropped the “Robinson” from his name to avoid confusion with the legendary boxer.

A recording career began in earnest in 1949 and Charles soon started a musical experiment, which included mixing genres.

The experiments manifested themselves in 1955 with the successful release of “I Got a Woman.”

It's reported that in devising the song, Charles reworded the gospel

tune, “Jesus is all the World to Me,” adding deep church inflections to

the secular rhythms of the nightclubs.

“I Got A Woman” is popularly credited as the first true “soul” record.

The renowned entertainer, who had not missed a tour in 53

consecutive years of concert travels, had cancelled his remaining 2003

tour, beginning last August.

“It breaks my heart to withdraw from these shows,” he said at the time.

“All my life, I've been touring and performing. It's what I do. But

the doctors insist I stay put and mend for a while, so I'll heed their

advice.”

While remaining in Los Angeles, Charles continued a light work load

at his studios and offices, overseeing production of new releases for

his own record label, Crossover Records, mixing a long-planned gospel

CD and beginning work on the duets album.

A feature film based on his life story, “Unchain My Heart, The Ray

Charles Story,” starring Jamie Foxx as the entertainer, completed

principal filming early last summer.

Charles' last public performance of his career was on July 20, 2003, in Alexandria, VA.

“Ray Charles was a true original, a musical genius and a friend and

brother to me,” said Adams, the entertainer's longtime manager and

business partner.

“He pioneered a new style and opened the door for many young

performers to follow. Some of his biggest fans were the young music

stars of today, who loved and admired his talent and independent

spirit.”

In addition to multiple Grammy® Awards, including one for Lifetime

Achievement, Charles is also one of the original inductees into the

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a recipient of the Presidential Medal

for the Arts, France's Legion of Honor and the Kennedy Center Honors.

He has also been inducted into numerous other music Halls of Fame,

including those for Jazz and Rhythm and Blues, a testament to his

enormous influence.

“You can't run away from yourself,” Charles once said.

“I was raised in the church and was around blues and would hear all

these musicians on the jukeboxes and then I would go to revival

meetings on Sunday morning. So I would get both sides of music. A lot

of people at the time thought it was sacrilegious but all I was doing

was singing the way I felt.”

Last May, he headlined the White House Correspondents Dinner in

Wash., DC, at which President and Mrs. Bush, Colin Powell and

Condoleeza Rice, were in attendance, and he also starred with Vince

Gill, George Jones and Glen Campbell in a Nashville television special

saluting country music's top 100 hits.

Charles' performance of “Behind Closed Doors” on the TV special garnered the evening's biggest standing ovation.

In 2002, Charles celebrated the 40th anniversary of his first

country hit, “I Can't Stop Loving You,” which became a number one chart

topper and expanded the scope of the entertainer's career to the

industry's astonishment.

Last year, the press-shy Charles sat for interviews in Los Angeles

with film star Clint Eastwood, who conversed with the music pioneer

about the blues for a documentary, “Piano Blues,” seen on PBS, and also

reunited with his longtime friend and early record industry patron,

Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records, for a television profile on

the record label legend.

Early last summer, he performed his 10,000th career concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles.

In May, 2003, he also received his fifth doctorate from Dillard University in New Orleans.

In 2002, Charles and Adams endowed both Morehouse College and Albany

State Univ., in Charles' birthplace of Albany, GA, with substantial

contributions, exceeding $1 million each.

Sixteen years ago, Charles established the Ray Charles Robinson Foundation for the hearing impaired.

Since its creation, the foundation, with Charles' encouragement and

generous, on-going funding, has blazed a trail of discovery in auditory

physiology and hearing implantation.

Each such implant procedure costs upwards of $40,000, which the Foundation pays to have done.

Of some 145-celebrity charities, the Ray Charles Foundation is rated

by non-profit experts as one of the top five most efficient with zero

administrative overhead.

Recently, a series of slot machines were designed in Charles' name

for the visually handicapped and the legendary performer was also named

a “living legend” by the Library of Congress in 2002.

He also starred in a concert in May, 2002, at the Colosseum in Rome, the first musical performance there in 2,000 years.

Charles once told an interviewer from USA Today, “Music to me is just like breathing. I have to have it. It's part of me.”

Despite recent health challenges, Charles was planning to again

start touring in mid-June and the sudden setback in his recovery was a

great shock to all.

Eleven children, 20 grandchildren and five great grandchildren

survive Charles, who will be remembered late next week at a memorial

service at the FAME Church in central Los Angeles with interment at

Inglewood Cemetery in Inglewood, Calif.

 

Steve Lacy, 69, Who Popularized the Soprano Saxophone, Dies

By BEN RATLIFF

Published: June 5, 2004     

Steve

Lacy, an American soprano saxophonist who spent more than half of his

50-year career living in Europe and helped legitimize his instrument in

postwar jazz, died yesterday in Boston. He was 69.

The cause was cancer, according to an announcement from the New England Conservatory of Music, where Mr. Lacy had been teaching since 2002.

 

 

After performing in New York, his hometown, Mr. Lacy moved to Italy and France,

and became the most Europeanized of all expatriate American jazz

musicians. He married one of his musical collaborators, the Swiss-born

singer Irene Aebi, who survives him. He insisted on a literary

dimension to his work, incorporating texts by novelists, poets and

philosophers — as well as visual-art and dance components, when time

and money allowed.

For someone long considered an avant-garde artist, Mr. Lacy always

insisted that nobody could get more avant-garde than Louis Armstrong;

his best work was anti-highfalutin and doggedly practical. His most

representative melodies, like “The Bath” and “The Gleam,” use gentle

repetition and gentle wit; he developed his saxophone tone to be as

attenuated as a Hemingway sentence, and his improvised lines as

succinct. At the end of his life, hounded by tax problems in France, he returned to the United States, moving in 2002 to teach at the New England Conservatory and live in Brookline, Mass.

Mr. Lacy formed musical partnerships and made records at an

astonishing rate. He led working bands of up to eight musicians for

nearly 30 years; he also performed and recorded often as a solo

saxophonist and in duos with partners as different as the American

pianist Mal Waldron and the Japanese percussionist Masahiko Togashi.

One of his discographies lists 236 items up to the year 1997, including

more than 20 solo saxophone albums.

Mr. Lacy was born Steven Lackritz and grew up on the Upper West Side of New York City.

Clarinet was his first instrument; then, inspired by hearing Sidney

Bechet's version, recorded in 1941, of a Duke Ellington song, “The

Mooche,” he decided to pursue Bechet's instrument, the soprano

saxophone. At the time — it would still be a few years before John

Coltrane would make it popular with his recording of “My Favorite

Things” — he had little competition.

At the age of 21, he was performing the standard Dixieland repertory on both instruments at Stuyvesant Casino and the Central Plaza in New York;

he shared stages with musicians like Henry Red Allen, Pee Wee Russell,

Buck Clayton and Hot Lips Page, and his teacher, Cecil Scott. And he

was also playing at the Newport Jazz Festival with the pianist Cecil

Taylor, who was terrifying audiences by doing away with traditional

structure and tonality. Mr. Lacy worked with Mr. Taylor for six years

and with other bandleaders as well, including Gil Evans; he always

described this mix as the best possible training for a jazz musician.

One of them was Thelonious Monk, who became a guiding aesthetic

master to Mr. Lacy for the rest of his life. Through playing with Monk

in a quintet and big band, and studying his music assiduously, Mr. Lacy

was able to absorb the elder musician's wit, economy, insistence on

simple rhythmic patterns and range of melody. He once described Monk's

music as perfect for the soprano saxophone: “Not too high, not too low,

not easy, not at all overplayed and most of all, full of interesting

technical problems.”

In 1966, with no work at home, Mr. Lacy began his long trip away from America. He took a group to Argentina and ended up stranded there for nine months because of political unrest. Later he headed to Rome

with Ms. Aebi, where they worked with Musica Elettronica Viva, a

quartet that blended modern-classical tendencies with improvisation and

included two other American expatriates, Frederic Rzewski and Alvin

Curran. After a brief stay in Rome, Mr. Lacy and Ms. Aebi moved to Paris

in 1970, in the beginning of the era that he often called “post-free”:

all experimentation came grounded in scale and melody. And with his

long-lasting sextet, which he started shortly after he arrived in Paris,

he found an original compositional style: lilting and singsongy with a

bitter twist, often compared to nursery rhymes, though Thelonious

Monk's sense of melody was probably a greater influence.

Mr. Lacy preferred to collaborate with artists from other fields.

Most of the time that meant setting words to music, and in his group

Ms. Aebi sang poetic texts by Herman Melville, Robert Creeley, Gregory

Corso and Lao Tzu, among many others; in other works he collaborated

with dancers, painters and stage designers. “To me,” he said in a 1990

interview, “music is always about something or somebody, or from

somebody or something. It's never in the blue, never abstract.”

Mr. Lacy was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992; he published a

book of writings and saxophone exercises, “Findings,” in 1994. The

French government's ministry of culture appointed him Chevalier of the

Order of Arts and Letters in 1989 and Commander in 2002. In addition to

his wife, his survivors include a sister, Blossom Cramer, and a

brother, Martin J. Lackritz.

Drummer Elvin Jones Dies Elvin

Ray Jones, the renowned jazz drummer and member of John Coltrane’s

quartet who also played alongside Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and

Miles Davis has died. Jones entered the Detroit jazz scene in the late

1940s after touring as a stagehand with the Army Special Services show

Operation Happiness.

After a brief gig at the Detroit club Grand

River Street, he went to work at another club, backing up such jazz

greats as Parker, Davis and Wardell Grey. Elvin Jones came to New York

in 1955 for an unsuccessful audition for the Benny Goodman band but

stayed in the city, joining Charlie Mingus' band and making a record

called “J is Jazz.” In 1960, he became a member of John Coltrane's

quartet.

Jones, with his rhythmic, innovative style, became one

of jazz's most famous drummers under Coltrane. He can be heard on many

of Coltrane's recordings…including “A love Supreme” and “Coltrane Live

at the Village Vanguard.”

After leaving the Coltrane quartet,

Jones briefly played with Duke Ellington and formed the Elvin Jones'

Jazz Machine. He put out several solo albums and continued to tour,

including last month in Oakland, Calif.

Besides his wife, Keiko…Elvin leaves a son and a daughter.

Jones, 76, died yesterday of heart failure in a hospital in Inglewood, New Jersey, said his wife of 38 years.

“He’s happy. No more suffering,” said Keiko. ”He’s been fighting for so long.”

Jones,

called by Life magazine “the world’s greatest rhythmic drummer”, was

born in Pontiac, Michigan, one of 10 children. He had two musician

brothers: Hank, a jazz pianist, and Thad, a trumpet and flugelhorn

player.

 

The Master of Jazz Radio in LA has left to join the ranks of our

other fallen jazz angels. Chuck Niles, Carlitos Niles, Chucky baby, the

one voice in Los Angeles synonomous with the words jazz and radio is no

longer with us to share stories and spin great jazz music.

Chuck was one of the greatest characters. Every time I saw him he

was always in the best of spirits. Full of jokes. I did not get to see

him too often because his schedule was the exact opposite of mine at

the radio station but, it seems like every moment I did spend with him

there was humor involved.

I never knew about the station KBCA which turned into the KKGO that

we all knew and loved. I had just started getting deep into jazz music

and I, as well as many of you, learned about the greatest in jazz music

from the only cat with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame!

I listened to KKGO until the moment it went off the air at midnignt

and turned into a classical station. I found Chuck on 540am radio but,

it was so hard to get a decent signal. I heard him again on KLON and

really started enjoying the music the way he presented it. He is one of

the cats that made me think about getting into jazz radio. An Icon for

the music!

Talk about a guy on the scene, Chuck had more stories and all of

them seemed funny. He may have been telling stories but, this was

actual history, and he was there. Back in the day and up to this very

day March 14, 2003, the greatest supporter of the music and one of the

biggest fans of jazz music. What a legacy. A beautiful life of love,

laughter, respect, appreciation, stories and jazz music. We will all

miss him very much and we are certainly honored to have had his love

and passion for the music here in Los Angeles. He did so much for the

musicians and the music. The soul and spirit of one of the most

historic cats in jazz radio will live on forever.

Much love Chuck, may your days in jazz heaven be spent with the

legends who have made this music what it is, and what it will always

be. We love you and will miss your spirit immensly!

Peace and Love

LeRoy