Obituary News

Tyrone Hill Has Left the Planet

Source: All About Jazz
March 20, 2007

Tyrone Hill, trombone player for the Sun Ra Arkestra under the direction of Marshall Allen, left the planet on March 11, 2007 at age 58. He first started playing the trombone during his Gillespie Junior High School days in North Philadelphia.

Tyrone joined the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1979 and remained a fixture of the brass section for his 28 years in the Arkestra. He brought a pulsating rich and full sound to Sun Ra's music that was appreciated by ...

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Jazz Singer Ronnie Wells Dies at Age 64

Source: All About Jazz
March 9, 2007

The Washington Post Jazz Singer Ronnie Wells-Elliston, 64 Friday, March 9, 2007; Page B07 Ronnie Wells-Elliston, 64, a versatile jazz balladeer and educator in the Washington area for more than three decades who co-founded the East Coast Jazz Festival in Montgomery County in 1992, died March 7 at Holy Cross Hospital. She had lung cancer. Mrs. Wells-Elliston formed the East Coast Jazz Festival with her husband, pianist Ron Elliston, in response to area schools' reducing or ...

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Bassist Eldee Young Passes Away

Source: All About Jazz
March 2, 2007

Bassist Eldee Young, best known for his ten year stint in the '50s and '60s with the (pianist) Ramsey Lewis Trio, died of a heart attack on February 12, 2007, in Bangkok.

Last May I found myself in Saigon, and was both surprised and delighted to learn that the Eldee Young trio was playing in town. The gig was in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel, a far cry perhaps from Carnegie Hall, and the Montreux or Newport Jazz Festivals, ...

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Queva Jayne Lutz, Owner of 55 Bar, Dies

Source: Jim Eigo, Jazz Promo Services
February 27, 2007

Queva Jayne Lutz died on Thursday, February 22nd at her home in New York City, surrounded by her family and close friends. Queva was unique in the way she led her life. She enjoyed it immensely, as did those with whom she shared it. Whether at her home of 30 years, her famous Randalls Island picnics of 25 years, in the businesses she built or in the many opportunities that presented themselves throughout life, Queva lived to open doors for ...

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British Jazz Guitarist Frank Evans Dies

Source: All About Jazz
February 16, 2007

Jazz guitarist, Frank Evans, passed away on February 6th 2007 at the age of 76. A former member of Tubby Hayes Quartet, Frank performed and recorded most often as a solo guitarist. Since the mid-sixties, Frank generally shunned the London scene, preferring to operate from his home in Bristol. He took up the guitar at the age of eleven and learned his craft, without formal tuition, through a lengthy apprenticeship in jazz clubs, ballrooms and restaurants ...

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Whitney Balliett; Jazz Reporter Known for Poetic Prose

Source: All About Jazz
February 2, 2007

Whitney Balliett, 80, a jazz reporter who spent more than four decades writing thousands of graceful and definitive stories for the New Yorker magazine and helped create one of the finest jazz programs on television, died Feb. 1 at his home in Manhattan, N.Y. He had liver cancer. Jazz critic and poet Philip Larkin described Mr. Balliett as “a writer who brings jazz journalism to the verge of poetry." Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers ...

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Whitney Balliett, 80, Dean of Jazz Writers

Source: All About Jazz
February 2, 2007

Whitney Balliett, who died yesterday at 80, was the longtime jazz reviewer for the New Yorker. A reporter, historian, and expert interviewer, Balliett's greatest gift was as an astute listener with the rare ability to capture the sound of the music in words. He wrote with a cadence and rhythm that mirrored the music itself, and was as witty and fun to read as he was serious and scholarly. He wrote that Blossom Dearie had a voice so small that ...

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Esmond Edwards: 1927-2007

Source: All About Jazz
January 30, 2007

Esmond Edwards died on Jan. 20, 2007, in Santa Barbara, CA. Born in Nassau, Bahamas, on Oct. 29, 1927, Edwards immigrated to Harlem and pursued photography with New York, dancers, and the jazz scene as his subjects. He com-bined his musical ear with his passion for the graphic arts in the form of album cover art. Edwards' work has been in New York's Lincoln Center Jazz Archives, in galleries abroad, the “New York Times Magazine" and “Photography."

From a clerk ...

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