Home » Jazz News

Obituary News

Timely announcements covering new album releases, tours, concert series, special events, job postings, crowdfunding campaigns and more. You can find more news by searching our website, viewing our news stream, seeing what's trending or reading our blog posts. Subscribe to our news RSS feed and/or embed AAJ news content on your website or blog. Learn about our news service here. Submit news here.

Obituary

Chick Corea (1941-2021)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
February 13, 2021

Chick Corea, one of the most spirited and heralded jazz keyboardists and composers of the rock era who launched a mystical form of psychedelic jazz fusion in the early 1970s that influenced a generation of young musicians, died on February 9. He was 79. Chick was enormously prolific. Not a day went by that he didn't spend hours at the piano writing and recording in his studio. When he wasn't in the studio, he was performing tirelessly on the road, ...

Continue Reading...

Obituary

Phil Spector (1939-2021)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
January 23, 2021

Phil Spector, a record producer, songwriter and co-founder of Philles Records whose “wall of sound" studio formula launched a new, influential approach to pop-rock orchestration in the early 1960s, died at the California Health Care Facility in Stockton on January 16 at age 81. He was 11 years into a 19-year prison sentence for killing actress-model Lana Clarkson in 2003 with a gun in his home just hours after meeting her at a club. Known for his eccentricity, cruelty, egomania ...

Continue Reading...

Obituary

Junior Mance (1928-2021)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
January 20, 2021

Junior Mance, a pianist and early proponent of church-infused soul-jazz who played and recorded with nearly all of jazz's post-war greats before beginning a leadership career in 1959, died on January 16. He was 92. Junior's playing channeled both urban gospel and rural spirituals and hymns, resulting in a style that exuded introspective soul. Junior's brand of sensitive bop and jazz was honed under the tutelage of spectacular soloists and blues singers. Even as a trio leader in the '60s ...

Continue Reading...

Obituary

Sammy Nestico (1924-2021)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
January 19, 2021

Sammy Nestico, whose swing-happy compositions and arrangements for Count Basie's orchestra in the 1960s and '70s gave the band fresh relevance and enabled Nestico to fulfill a lifelong ambition, died January 17. He was 96. Nestico started young, in the early 1940s, in the orchestra of Pittsburgh's ABC affiliate radio station before joining Charlie Barnet's band mid-decade. By honoring the wish of his worried mother, Nestico returned to the local radio station and enrolled in college, missing out on the ...

Continue Reading...

Obituary

Cándido Camero (1921-2020)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
November 13, 2020

Cándido Camero, a conga and bongo player who moved to New York from Cuba in 1946 and wound up recording on hundreds of jazz, Latin and disco albums, died November 7. He was 99. Cándido's arrival coincided with a wave of Cuban and Puerto Rican immigration. Quotas were eased to take the stress off sagging economies in the Caribbean and prevent the onset of Communism. With the arrival of musicians, Latin music and instruments entered the pop mainstream. Taking hold ...

Continue Reading...

Obituary

Annie Ross: 1930-2020

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
July 23, 2020

Annie Ross, a pioneering vocalese singer and songwriter, and the last surviving member of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross—arguably the best-known and most successful vocal group in jazz—died on July 21. She was 89. Writing lyrics to jazz standards and modern jazz solos and singing them was a mark of subterranean hipness in the late 1940s and early '50s. Her first two vocalese sides in 1952, for which she wrote the lyrics, were Twisted, based on a Wardell Gray solo, and ...

Continue Reading...

Obituary

Thanks, Freddy, for the jazz connection

Source: Ken Franckling's Jazz Notes
July 1, 2020

The fine pianist and singer Freddy Cole died Saturday, June 27, at age 88 at his home in Atlanta. He had been struggling with cardiovascular issues for a while. His manager, Suzi Reynolds, called him Mr. Magic. “He wove a web of sonic beauty with every note and kept listeners silently breathless with his casual, elegant storytelling...," she reflected Sunday via email. While working for many years in the immense shadow of his far-famous elder brother, Nat King Cole, Freddy ...

Continue Reading...

Obituary

Johnny Mandel (1925-2020)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
July 1, 2020

Johnny Mandel, a elegant arranger, composer, conductor and bass trumpeter who began his career writing for big bands in the 1940s, crossed over to jazz in the '50s and wound up scoring movies in the late 1950s and beyond, including main titles that became standards, died June 29. He was 94. Like other player-arrangers of the era, including Neal Hefti, Quincy Jones and Henry Mancini, Johnny settled in Los Angeles and tailored his passion for jazz to the commercial demands ...

Continue Reading...