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Svend Asmussen, RIP
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Svend Asmussen, the Danish violinist who thrived in eight decades of stardom, died yesterday—three weeks short of his 101st birthday. He was one of the handful of violinists who in the 1930s proved the instrument capable of swing and emotional expression at the highest jazz level. He may well have been the only man still alive in the new century who had played with Fats Waller, Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, Stuff Smith, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. Asmussen and his ...
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Chuck Stewart And Ed Berger, RIP
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Two non-musicians prominent in the US jazz community have died in the past week. One was a photographer whose images are among the most prominent in jazz history. Chuck Stewart’s intimate work appeared on dozens of album covers and in magazines. He was 89. Among his most familiar photographs were those of John Coltrane. Stewart took the one below at a recording session for Coltrane’s album A Love Supreme. In a New York Times interview, Fellow photographer Carol Friedman said ...
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Charles "Bobo" Shaw 1947-2017
Source:
St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman
Charles Wesley “Bobo" Shaw, a St. Louis drummer who helped found the Black Artists Group, co-led the Human Arts Ensemble, and played with many prominent jazz and creative musicians of the past half-century, has died at a nursing care facility in St. Louis. He was 69 years old. St. Louis trumpeter, arts administrator and impresario George Sams, who was friends with Shaw for nearly 60 years, said the drummer had been hospitalized with multiple ailments in early December, first at ...
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Buddy Greco (1926-2017)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Buddy Greco, a solid swinging jazz pianist, a supper-club pop vocalist and probably the last surviving member of Benny Goodman's “Undercurrent Blues" bebop band of 1948-49, died January 10. He was 90. Born in Philadelphia, Greco had his work cut out for him. His father was one of the country's leading opera critics and his mother was an accomplished accordionist. Greco made his professional debut at 5 on Philadelphia's WPEN, where he spent the next 10 years as an actor, ...
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Nat Hentoff (1925-2017)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Nat Hentoff, the dean of jazz essayists who in the 1950s applied modern feature-writing techniques to musicians who up until that point had been treated as little more than hip novelties by many trade journalists and print hacks, died of natural causes on Jan. 7. He was 91. As an intellectual, Nat was many things, including a critic, a civil libertarian, a writer keenly tuned into the Supreme Court and an unbridled champion of free speech and the U.S. Constitution. ...
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Nat Hentoff Is Gone
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Last night we lost Nat Hentoff, a defender of civil liberties and—notably, for this readership—a lifelong champion of jazz. He was 91. His son Nick reported that members of the family were nearby and a Billie Holiday record was playing when Hentoff died in his Greenwich Village apartment in New York. Influential as a jazz critic for DownBeat, the Village Voice and other publications, he was even better known for his books and columns explaining and defending First Amendment freedoms. ...
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Hod O'Brien (1936-2016)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Hod O'Brien, a ruggedly handsome and soft-spoken bebop pianist who came to jazz in the late 1950s, left jazz for 10 years in the 1960s and early 1970s, only to return to the music, becoming one of the most highly regarded and tasteful pianists of his generation, died on Nov. 20. He was 80. Born in Chicago in 1936, Walter “Hod" O'Brien was deeply influenced by boogie-woogie at age 8. Lessons followed from a teacher at his grade school. Fortunately ...
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Hod O'Brien, 1936-2016
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Friends of Hod O’Brien report that the pianist died yesterday at 80 following a long battle against cancer. He continued an active playing life even as he underwent treatment for the disease. Born in Chicago, O’Brien attended Oberlin Conservatory and the Manhattan School of Music. He became active in New York jazz circles in the 1950s. Early in his career, he worked with Oscar Pettiford and the J.R. Monterose-Elvin Jones group. As house pianist at a club on Staten Island, ...
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