Big Band in the Sky

Frank Morgan Memorial Celebration The Jazz Bakery Los Angeles (Culver City), CA January 5, 2008 2:00-5:30 P.M.

A memorial celebration is always a bittersweet affair. There is an inescapable sadness over the passing of a friend, but there is also joy in remembering the spirit of the departed who will ...

Specs Powell, 85, percussionist, pianist, vibraphonist. New York, NY, June 5, 1922--San Marcos (San Diego), CA, September 15, 2007.

Gordon “Specs Powell, who beat a distinguished path from a drum stool, started by doubling on piano in his own Swing era combo, and later became one of the first black musicians hired by a ...

George Melly, 80, jazz and blues singer, author, raconteur. Liverpool, England, August 17, 1926--London, England, July 5, 2007. The Oscar Wilde of jazz? George Melly, an eccentric Englishman of many careers whose singing style invoked his idol, the blues singer Bessie Smith, died in London after a stretch of emphysema and dementia. He was ...

Max Roach, 83, drummer, bandleader, composer, educator. Newland, NC, January 10, 1924--New York, NY, August 15, 2007.

Max Roach, widely deemed the most innovative percussionist in contemporary jazz and a composer who leaped the boundaries of four-four time and standard instrument combinations, died August 15 in a New York hospice. He was 83 and ...

Pat Pace was the musical pride of Akron, Ohio, a classical and jazz pianist, accordionist, composer and teacher who made only two commercial recordings, decades ago, both released on obscure labels (one of them maybe his own). For the last 20 or so years, Pace had given up gigging and was living the quiet life, teaching ...

Romano Mussolini has joined the big band above. My scout, Jerry Gordon, forwarded a Reuters obit from Steve Barbone--a name that may ring a bell. “I am a jazz clarinetist based in Philadelphia, doing around 250 gigs a year," Barbone replied to my e-mail. “In 1999, I played at the Pee Wee Russell Memorial Stomp as ...

New Orleans struck up the band one Sunday this fall for the first jazz funeral in the music's birthplace since Hurricane Katrina opened the levees and laid waste to the Crescent City. “The brass band ... toted donated instruments, reported Shaila Dewan in The New York Times. “The procession leaders wore salvaged bits of their traditional ...

What was it like to record with Fats Waller? Fat's guitarist, Al Casey, called it “a light- hearted business. In the studio, “the record people would give him all those pop tunes the other artists refused. Fats would look through the music. 'OK,' he'd say. 'We'll try this one.' Then we'd make the record. Just like ...

Around 1980, Hanne and I were at an art gallery in Copenhagen to hear “The Great Dane with the never-ending name." We stood four feet from Niels-Henningrsted Pedersen (Kenny Drew may have been on keyboard) as he took a long solo. My jaw dropped. “That's impossible," I whispered. “That's not a guitar. You can't play it ...

This obituary column has run for nearly two years in Jersey Jazz, journal of the New Jersey Jazz Society. Thanks to Michael Ricci's invitation, and with my JJ editor Paul White's blessings, I am pleased to share it with AAJ readers. Concerning my sources: I subscribe to The New York Times news alert service, which e-mails ...

I saw Warren Vaché (Sr.) at recent Jersey JazzFests, but I don't think we met. Sorry about that. If I didn't live in Denmark, I would have joined the well-wishers at Shanghai Jazz, Nov. 28. What a productive life! The obituary below is formal, in the style of this space. It may offer little new, but ...