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Paul Bacon (1923-2015)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Paul Bacon, one of the most highly regarded and imaginative book and jazz-album cover designers of the 1950s and beyond who is probably best known for his covers of Catch 22, One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest and Portnoy's Complaint as well as art-directed jackets for early Blue Note releases and then Riverside LPs, died on June 8 in Beacon, N.Y. He was 91. [Photo of Paul Bacon in 2002 by Hank O'Neal] In the early 1950s, Paul was at ...
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Famed Detroit jazz trumpeter Marcus Belgrave dies at 78
Source:
Michael Ricci
By Associated Press Marcus Belgrave, a jazz trumpeter who graced stages and studios with Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Cocker and Motown artists galore, died Sunday. He was 78. Belgrave died at an Ann Arbor care facility and the cause of death was heart failure, said Hazelette Crosby-Robinson, a cousin of Belgrave's wife Joan. Belgrave remained active on the Detroit and international jazz scenes up until his death. Born into a family of musicians in Chester, Pennsylvania, he ...
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John T. "Bunky" deVecchis, 78, photographed jazz musicians
Source:
Michael Ricci
Bunky deVecchis would go into a dimly lit nightclub with a camera without a flash and capture jazz musicians in full cry in whatever light was available. He didn't like flash photography, and his subjects were appreciative. Nothing like working to nurse notes out of your instrument with a flash going off in your face. Ambient light worked just fine for Bunky, and many of his images of jazz musicians, most of them caught performing at Philadelphia venues, have been ...
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Ron Crotty, Bassist, 1929-2015
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Following yesterday’s post about recently deceased musicians, a Rifftides reader who identifies himself only as Derrick sent a message: I just heard that Ron Crotty, the original bassist of The Dave Brubeck Quartet, died just a few days ago, too, but I have not seen anything written about it. Which leads me to ask, has Ron passed? Or is it another case of the internet burying someone who is still with us? The sad report that Derrick heard was accurate. ...
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Bruce Lundvall, Longtime Blue Note President, Dies At 79
Source:
Michael Ricci
It's with great sadness that we announce the passing of beloved music man & longtime President of Blue Note Records, Bruce Lundvall. He was 79 years old. The cause was complications from a prolonged battle with Parkinson’s disease. Born in Englewood, New Jersey in 1935, Bruce was a lifelong jazz lover whose passion for the music was ignited by Clifford Brown, Charlie Parker & the other beboppers he heard as an underage teenager at clubs along West 52nd Street in ...
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Bruce Lundvall, Blue Note Records Veteran, Beloved Jazz Executive, Dead at 79
Source:
Michael Ricci
Among his Grammy-winning signings: Norah Jones, Herbie Hancock and Bobby McFerrin. Bruce Lundvall, the former CEO of Blue Note Records and a key figure in jazz music, has died. He was 79 years old. Lundvall had been living in a senior assisted living center in New Jersey for complications related to his battle with Parkinson's, according to biographer Dan Ouellette, who wrote the book Bruce Lundvall: Playing by Ear, and tells Billboard that during a brief hospitalization, Lundvall underwent surgery ...
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B.B. King (1925-2015)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
It was bitter cold in 2011 as I waited for B.B. King's two tour buses to arrive at the Independence Events Center just outside of Kansas City. It was early January and one of those florescent late afternoons where everything seems to be in black and white and the sun takes a slide at 3:30. When the coaches arrived, one snuggled up next to the building's stage ramp while the other hooked left into the parking lot. A few minutes ...
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Marty Napoleon (1921-2015)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Marty Napoleon, a stride pianist who was as at home playing New Orleans and Chicago jazz as he was swing and who played with numerous bands and ensembles from the 1940s on, most notably Louis Armstrong and the All Stars, died on April 27. He was 93. [Photo above of Marty Napoleon and his late wife, Marie “Bebe" Napoleon. They were married for 67 years] “Bebe" (nee Marie Giordano) Napoleon for 67 years. Like Armstrong, Marty always had a smile ...
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