Obituary News

Vanguard Records Founder Passes

Source: All About Jazz
July 20, 2002

Seymour Solomon, co-founder of Vanguard Records, a label that dominated American folk music with stars such as Joan Baez, died Thursday. He was 80. Solomon founded Vanguard in 1950 with his brother, Maynard. The label recorded famed artists like Odetta, Baez and Buffy Sainte-Marie. It also signed such jazz and blues legends as Mississippi John Hurt and Buddy Guy and maintained a strong classical list.

From its earliest days, the Solomons took risks, signing performers like the Weavers and Paul ...

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Jerry Fuller: Canadian Drummer Played with Ellington, Peterson

Source: All About Jazz
July 20, 2002

When drummer Jerry Fuller didn't show up for a gig at the Rex in Toronto on Saturday, July 13, a check of his home found that he had died, apparently in his sleep. I have many fond memories of him beginning in 1962 when I was 27 and began hearing a pair of visitors from the Canadian West – new arrivals on a healthy Montreal jazz scene, Jerry and P. J. Perry (the other exciting newcomer) ...

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Ray Brown: A Giant of the Jazz Bass Dies at 75

Source: All About Jazz
July 3, 2002

By Kenny Mathieson

Ray Brown was one of the greatest bass players in all of jazz history. His magisterial sonority on the double bass, innate lyricism and infallible harmonic judgement all came yoked to arguably his greatest asset of all, a meticulous rhythmic sense which drew on both swing and bop conceptions, and made him one of the most in-demand players in jazz. From Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie onwards, Brown played with the greatest creative ...

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Rosemary Clooney: Highly Regarded Pop-Jazz Singer Dies at 74

Source: All About Jazz
July 3, 2002

Born May 23, 1928, Rosemary Clooney was a popular singer who overcame great personal problems to re-emerge as fine interpreter of the repertoire of writers like Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, George and Ira Gershwin, Johnny Burke, Jimmy Van Heusen, and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Although she always refused to be categorised as a jazz singer, much of her later work involved collaborations with jazz musicians, including a number of records on the Concord Jazz ...

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Thelonious Monk's Widow, Nellie Dead at Eighty...

Source: All About Jazz
June 26, 2002

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Jazz Pianist and Composer Weldon Irvine Dead from Gunshot Wound to Head Via Suicide

Source: All About Jazz
April 26, 2002

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David "Bubba" Brooks: May 29, 1922 - April 11, 2002

Source: All About Jazz
April 18, 2002

David Kenneth Brooks known a “Bubba" in the jazz community was a swing musician from the old school passed over Thursday, April 11, 2002 at Harlem Hospital. His tenor saxophone sound, derived from Coleman Hawkins to Chu Berry to Hershel Evans to Lester Young and Paul Gonsalves always expressed a personal feeling for the blues. Jazz patron Al Vollmer said, “He digested all the greats and it still came out as Bubba Brooks." Mr. Brooks was born in the “silk ...

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John Cephas, Guitarist with the Duo Cephas and Wiggins, Dies

Source: Michael Ricci
March 7, 2009

John Cephas, a guitarist and singer who kept the Piedmont blues style alive as part of the duo Cephas and Wiggins, died on Wednesday at his home in Woodford, Va. He was 78.

Less celebrated than the raw Delta blues of Mississippi or its electrified offshoot in Chicago, the jaunty and melodic Piedmont sound developed in the coastal plains of Virginia and the Carolinas. Characterized by a lilting rhythm and complex fingerpicking guitar, it has echoes of ragtime and perhaps ...

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