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Pete Fountain
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
As I prepared to leave Ystad, I learned that clarinetist Pete Fountain died on Saturday in New Orleans. By way of his recordings and television exposure, he became an unofficial and effective cultural spokesman for his beloved hometown and was happy to return there following his years in the 1950s with Lawrence Welk’s TV show. Despite the renown it brought Fountain, the Welk relationship was not a musical marriage made in heaven. He was happier in his Bourbon Street club ...
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Claude Williamson 1926-2016
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Claude Williamson, a piano mainstay of jazz in California for seven decades, died on July 16 in Los Angeles. He had been in decline since he fell in his home in 2015 and broke a hip. After Williamson moved from Boston to L.A. in 1947, he played with Charlie Barnet’s band for two years and was the featured soloist on the widely popular recording “Claude Reigns.” Barnet named the piece after him. Williamson’s harmonic sophistication and responsive timing made him ...
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Claude Williamson (1926-2016)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Claude Williamson, a West Coast jazz pianist who was deeply influenced by the bebop piano of Bud Powell and was perhaps the last surviving member of the Lighthouse All Stars, often unleashing centipede-like speed on the keyboard along with sinewy improvisational lines, died July 16. He was 89. His son, Marc, said last night that his father never fully recovered from a bad fall in February 2015 and had been in hospice care for about a year. Like many jazz ...
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Passings: Friedman, Jones, Thompson
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
The generations move on. It’s a sad part of an observer’s task to acknowledge the deaths of musicians who made important contributions. Pianist Don Friedman died of pancreatic cancer at home in New York City on June 30. He was 81. Friedman was treasured by fellow musicians for the subtlety and strength of his support as an accompanist and for the daring ingenuity of his harmonies. He was equally at home with traditionalist Bobby Hackett; modern mainstreamers Clark Terry, Chet ...
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Don Friedman (1935-2016)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Don Friedman, a jazz pianist with enormous sensitivity and avant-garde curiosity who shared an introspective style similar to Bill Evans but tended to be more experimental and jagged with shades of Bud Powell in the trio and solo formats, died June 30. He was 81. Don grew up in San Francisco and studied formally starting at age 4. He moved to Los Angeles with his family when he was 15, fully expecting to become a classical pianist. But the following ...
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Jeremy Steig, 1942-2016
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Flutist Jeremy Steig died on April 13 at his home in Japan. He was 73. His death wasconfirmed days after the fact. “He didn’t like to read about musicians’ deaths in newspaper obituaries,” his wife Asako told The New York Times. “He wanted me to delay the announcement of his death, so that it wouldn’t really be ‘news’ to be written up.” Unlike most jazz flutists, Steig (pictured circa 1965) did not make his instrument secondary to the saxophone; he ...
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Joe Temperley, 1929-2016
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Joe Temperley is dead at 86. In recent years, he was a mainstay of the Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra. In the 1970s following the death of Harry Carney, his glorious baritone saxophone sound anchored the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Temperley was born on September 20, 1929 in Crowdenbeath, Scotland and moved to New York in 1965. Also a master of the bass clarinet, he worked with the big bands of Woody Herman, Thad Jones-Mel Lewis, Clark Terry, Duke Pearson, Charles ...
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Jon Raney on Doug Raney
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Doug Raney (1956-2016), a son of guitar legend Jimmy Raney and a brilliant lyrical guitarist in his own right who lived in Denmark for much of his career, died of heart failure in Copenhagen on May 1, according to his brother Jon. He was 59. Many jazz fans in the States are unfamiliar with Raney, since he toured here infrequently and gave few interviews. Those who do know his music have been exposed to it largely through his albums, many ...
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