Obituary News

Remembering Ira Schulman

Source: All About Jazz
July 25, 2008

Musician, teacher and Duke Ellington Society member Ira Schulman passed away in Los Angeles on July 20, 2008. Ira was born in Chicago on December 1, 1926. He received a clarinet for his Bar Mitzvah in 1939 and began his long career as a musician playing mostly jazz but also classical and any music which interested him. Ira's curiosity led him to learn to play the rest of the single reed family and, later, the flute. He initially played the ...

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Johnny Griffin Dies a 80

Source: All About Jazz
July 25, 2008

Johnny Griffin, Jazzman Who Played With Coltrane, Monk, Dies By Mark Schoifet July 25 (Bloomberg) -- Johnny Griffin, the jazz musician who was once billed as the “world's fastest saxophonist" and played alongside Thelonious Monk, Lionel Hampton and John Coltrane, has died. He was 80. Griffin died today at his home in the village of Mauprevior, in southwest France, said his agent, Helene Manfredi. The cause wasn't disclosed. He had been scheduled to perform tonight. Nicknamed the “Little Giant," Griffin ...

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Joseph E. Fields, Conductor, Composer and Pianist, is Dead at 53

Source: Michael Ricci
July 22, 2008

Joseph E. Fields, a pianist, conductor and composer who was a former music director and principal conductor of Dance Theater of Harlem.

Fields after a short illness died on July 4 in Scranton, Pa. He was 53 and had homes in Scranton and New York City. After working with Dance Theater of Harlem from 1998 to 2004, Mr. Fields became the orchestra director and administrator of the music school at Marywood University in Scranton in 2005. He was also an ...

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Gerald Wiggins Public Memorial Set

Source: All About Jazz
July 20, 2008

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Jo Stafford

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
July 19, 2008

Jo Stafford, a perfect singer, died on Wednesday. She was ninety years old. There will be obituaries this morning in newspapers all over the world. Web sites have them already. Many people who read them will be hearing of her for the first time because in the 1960s, at the top of her game, she walked away from the music business. Tributes to Jo and memories of her showed up today across the internet. My artsjournal colleague Terry Teachout has ...

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Jo Stafford, 90; Singer, Recording Artist Entertained GIs During World War II

Source: Michael Ricci
July 18, 2008

Jo Stafford, a singer who was a favorite of GIs during World War II and whose recordings made the pop music charts dozens of times in the 1950s, died Sunday of congestive heart failure at her home in Century City. She was 90. According to her son, Tim Weston, she had been in ill health since October and had been hospitalized several times since 2002. Stafford had a long career but enjoyed most of her success from the late 1930s ...

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Hayward 'Chuck' Carbo R&B Singer Dies

Source: Michael Ricci
July 18, 2008

Hayward “Chuck" Carbo Singer for Spiders R&B Quintet

Carbo was 82, a singer who fronted the 1950s quintet the Spiders, a group that made the world aware of New Orleans rhythm and blues, died July 11 in New Orleans after a long illness. (pictured with the Spiders far right)

Chuck Carbo and his brother Leonard “Chick" Carbo started singing in their father's New Orleans church choir. They sang with the gospel group the Zion City Harmonizers ...

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Jo Stafford, 90; Pop Singer Won a Grammy for Comedy

Source: All About Jazz
July 18, 2008

Jo Stafford, 90, an exceptionally versatile singer who worked with Frank Sinatra, Tommy Dorsey and the Pied Pipers and shared a Grammy Award with her conductor-husband for their parody of a tone-deaf lounge act, died July 16 at her home in Century City, Calif. She had congestive heart failure. Singer Judy Collins once said Ms. Stafford's poignant interpretation of folk ballads was pivotal to her own career in folk music. Although she made several acclaimed folk recordings, Ms. Stafford was ...

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