caption: Bobby Hutcherson at JazzBaltica Festival with Joe Locke. 2007.
Robert “Bobby” Hutcherson (January 27, 1941 – August 15, 2016; age 75) was an American jazz vibraphone and marimba player. “Little B’s Poem”, from the album Components, is one of his best-known compositions. Hutcherson influenced younger vibraphonists including Steve Nelson, Joe Locke, and Stefon Harris.
Early life and career
Bobby Hutcherson was born to Eli, a master mason, and Esther, a hairdresser. Hutcherson was exposed to jazz by his brother Teddy, who listened to Art Blakey records in the family home with his friend Dexter Gordon. His older sister Peggy was a singer in Gerald Wilson’s orchestra. Hutcherson went on to record on a number of Gerald Wilson’s Pacific Jazz recordings as well as play in his orchestra. Hutcherson’s sister personally introduced Hutcherson to Eric Dolphy (her boyfriend at the time) and Billy Mitchell. Hutcherson was inspired to take up the vibraphone when he heard Milt Jackson play “Bemsha Swing” on the Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants album at the age of 12. Still in his teens, Hutcherson began his professional career in the late fifties working with tenor saxophonist Curtis Amy and trumpeter Carmell Jones, as well as with Dolphy and tenor saxophonist Charles Lloyd at Pandora’s Box on the Sunset Strip.
He made his recording debut on August 3, 1960, cutting two songs for a 7-inch single with the Les McCann trio for Pacific Jazz (released in 1961), followed by the LP Groovin’ Blue with the Curtis Amy-Frank Butler sextet on December 10 (also released by Pacific Jazz in 1961). In January 1962, Hutcherson joined the Billy Mitchell–Al Grey group for dates at The Jazz Workshop in San Francisco and Birdland in New York City (opposite Art Blakey). After touring with the Mitchell–Grey group for a year, Hutcherson settled in New York City (on 165th street in The Bronx) where he worked part-time as a taxi driver, before fully entering the jazz scene via his childhood friend, bassist Herbie Lewis.
Blue Note Records
Lewis was working with The Jazztet and hosted jam sessions at his apartment. After hearing Hutcherson play at one of Lewis’ events, Jazztet and Jackie McLean band member Grachan Moncur III felt that Hutcherson would be a good fit for McLean’s group, which led to Hutcherson’s first recording for Blue Note Records on April 30, 1963, McLean’s One Step Beyond. This was quickly followed by sessions for Blue Note with Moncur, Dolphy, Gordon, Andrew Hill, Tony Williams and Grant Green in 1963 and 1964, later followed by sessions with Joe Henderson, John Patton, Duke Pearson and Lee Morgan. In spite of the numerous post-bop, avant-garde, and free jazz recordings made during this period, Hutcherson’s first session for Blue Note as leader, The Kicker (recorded in 1963 but not released until 1999), demonstrated his background in hard bop and the blues, as did Idle Moments with Grant Green.
Hutcherson won the “Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition” award in the 1964 Down Beat readers’ poll, and Blue Note released Hutcherson’s Dialogue in 1965. The 1966 record Stick-Up!, featuring Joe Henderson, Herbie Lewis, and Billy Higgins, was the first of many recorded sessions Hutcherson made with McCoy Tyner throughout their careers. Stick-Up! was also the only album out of ten Hutcherson recorded as leader for Blue Note between 1965 and 1969 which did not feature drummer Joe Chambers or any of Chambers’ compositions. Spanning the years 1963 to 1977, Hutcherson had one of the longest recording careers with Blue Note, second only to Horace Silver’s.
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Hutcherson has a son, Barry, from his first marriage to Beth Buford. Hutcherson wrote the waltz “Little B’s Poem” for Barry in 1962. Due to the success of “Ummh” from the album San Francisco, one of Hutcherson’s few entries in the jazz fusion style, he was able to buy an acre of land on which he built a house in Montara, California, in 1972. That same year, he married Rosemary Zuniga, a ticket taker at the Both/And club in San Francisco. The couple had a son, Teddy, who is a production manager for SFJAZZ. Hutcherson attended an African Methodist Episcopal Church as a youth and converted to Catholicism later in life.
Suffering from emphysema since 2007, Hutcherson died from the condition in Montara, California, on August 15, 2016.
Read the whole article at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Hutcherson
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caption: Max Roach at the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival at Columbia University in 2000. Credit Ozier Muhammed/The New York Times
Max Roach, a Founder of Modern Jazz, Dies at 83
Max Roach, a founder of modern jazz who rewrote the rules of drumming in the 1940’s and spent the rest of his career breaking musical barriers and defying listeners’ expectations, died early today [August 13, 2016] in Manhattan. He was 83.
His death was announced today by a spokesman for Blue Note records, on which he frequently appeared. No cause was given. Mr. Roach had been known to be ill for several years.
As a young man, Mr. Roach, a percussion virtuoso capable of playing at the most brutal tempos with subtlety as well as power, was among a small circle of adventurous musicians who brought about wholesale changes in jazz. He remained adventurous to the end.
Over the years he challenged both his audiences and himself by working not just with standard jazz instrumentation, and not just in traditional jazz venues, but in a wide variety of contexts, some of them well beyond the confines of jazz as that word is generally understood.
He led a “double quartet” consisting of his working group of trumpet, saxophone, bass and drums plus a string quartet. He led an ensemble consisting entirely of percussionists. He dueted with uncompromising avant-gardists like the pianist Cecil Taylor and the saxophonist Anthony Braxton. He performed unaccompanied. He wrote music for plays by Sam Shepard and dance pieces by Alvin Ailey. He collaborated with video artists, gospel choirs and hip-hop performers.
Mr. Roach explained his philosophy to The New York Times in 1990: “You can’t write the same book twice. Though I’ve been in historic musical situations, I can’t go back and do that again. And though I run into artistic crises, they keep my life interesting.”
He found himself in historic situations from the beginning of his career. He was still in his teens when he played drums with the alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, a pioneer of modern jazz, at a Harlem after-hours club in 1942. Within a few years, Mr. Roach was himself recognized as a pioneer in the development of the sophisticated new form of jazz that came to be known as bebop.
He was not the first drummer to play bebop — Kenny Clarke, 10 years his senior, is generally credited with that distinction — but he quickly established himself as both the most imaginative percussionist in modern jazz and the most influential.
In Mr. Roach’s hands, the drum kit became much more than a means of keeping time. He saw himself as a full-fledged member of the front line, not simply as a supporting player.
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Read the full story here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/arts/music/16cnd-roach.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
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Connie Crothers – Jazz Pianist
Connie Crothers (May 2, 1941 – August 13, 2016; age 75) was a jazz pianist. She majored in music at the University of California, Berkeley before becoming a student of Lennie Tristano.
Crothers began studying classical (or “European”) piano at age 9 and went on to major in composition at the University of California at Berkeley. At Berkeley, her teachers emphasized “procedure and structure” and “compositional rigor” over emotional expression, which did not sit well with Crothers.
After Lennie Tristano died in November 1978 she became President of the Jazz Foundation formed in tribute to him. She is also known for works done with Max Roach in the 1980s, such as the album Swish. As a leader she headed a quartet with Richard Tabnik and Roger Mancuso.
Crothers died of cancer on August 13, 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Crothers
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The Queen of Beale Street – Ruby Wilson – Dies
Ruby Wilson (February 29, 1948 – August 12, 2016; age 68) was an American blues and gospel singer and actress. She was known as “The Queen of Beale Street” as she sang in clubs on Beale Street, Memphis, Tennessee, for over 40 years. She also had a successful touring and recording career, and appeared in a number of films.
Wilson was born in Fort Worth, Texas, United States, the youngest in a family of six children. Her mother was a maid, her father was self-employed, and Wilson grew up picking and chopping cotton – work she later described as hot and unpleasant.
Wilson’s upbringing was filled with music, from two quite different sources – her mother, a deeply religious woman, only allowed her children to listen to gospel music, as she believed that all other music was “the devil’s music”. Wilson’s mother was the choir director at their family church and, when she was 7 years old, Wilson began singing in her mother’s choir. On the other hand, Wilson’s father loved blues and Wilson listened with him to blues musicians, which had a strong influence on her future career.
Wilson met B.B. King for the first time when she was 14; King offered to be her godfather, and the two became close. When she was 15 years old, singer Shirley Caesar heard Wilson singing at church and invited her to tour with her as a backing singer. The following year, Wilson moved to Chicago, where she became a church choir director and sang gospel. She later returned to Texas and started singing jazz.
Career
Wilson moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1972, and started working as a kindergarten teacher in the Memphis City School system. She also began performing regularly in clubs on Beale Street, including The Peabody, Club Handy and Club Royale, with musicians such as Ray Charles, Isaac Hayes, and The Four Tops. When B.B. King opened his B.B. King’s Blues Club, she was given a weekly residency there, and when he later opened a restaurant, Itta Bena, she also became a regular performer there.
As Wilson’s career developed, she toured the United States and internationally, and performed at blues and jazz festivals in Europe, Asia and New Zealand. She performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and for President Clinton and Vice-President Gore, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Rainier III of Monaco and his son Prince Albert. Wilson also performed on cruise ships and river cruises, and at parties and corporate events. Some of the bands which she performed with were the Hot Cotton Jazz Band, Buck Bubbles Express, The Unknown Band, The King Beez, B. B. King All Stars, Ms. Ruby’s Band and the Detroit People’s Band.
In the 1980s, Wilson spent some years living in Los Angeles and performed with Joan Rivers and Sharon Gless.
In 1976 she was offered her first record contract, with Malaco Records. Her first album, Ruby Wilson, was released by Malaco in 1981, and she released a further nine albums in her career. Two, Cake Walking Babies (1988) and Outstanding In Their Field (1989) were recorded with the Hot Cotton Jazz Band.
Recognition and honors
In 1992, after 20 years of singing in Beale Street clubs, local TV station WMC-TV gave her the title “Queen Ambassador of Beale Street”; two years later this was amended to “The Queen of Beale Street”.
In 2006, Wilson received the Memphis Sound Award for Best Entertainer; in 2010, she was inducted into the Black Business Directory’s African-American Hall of Fame.
In 2012, Wilson was offered space to exhibit items from her career, and later that year the Ruby Wilson Museum was opened. It displays memorabilia including awards, outfits and photographs. In 2013, Wilson received a W.C. Handy Heritage Awards Lifetime Achievement Award.
The Beale Street Walk of Fame includes a brass note recognizing Wilson’s contribution to the street’s music.
Personal life
Wilson was married four times. Her first husband was a gospel entertainer from Chicago. Her fourth husband was B.B. King’s road manager.
Later years and death
Wilson suffered a stroke in 2009, and was unable to speak for four months. She received speech therapy and physical therapy and eventually recovered enough to return to acting and singing. She suffered a heart attack in 2016, and after several days in a coma died on August 12, aged 68.
She was survived by four children, twelve grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.