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Ornette Coleman (1930-2015)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Ornette Coleman, whose highly expressive approach to jazz jolted listeners and deeply influenced jazz, rock and funk musicians in the 1960s and beyond, died Thursday morning in Manhattan. He was 85. At about 10 a.m. yesterday, one of my Wall Street Journal editors emailed asking if I could turn around an appreciation for Speakeasy, the paper's online arts section. With two interviews for other stories looming at noon and 2 p.m., I had just a little over an hour to ...
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Ornette Coleman, 1930-2015
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Ornette Coleman, whose forthrightness and conviction helped change the course of jazz, died today in New York. He was 85. To many, the alto saxophonist, composer and bandleader seemed to have come from nowhere, or outer space, when his first albums appeared in the late 1950s. In fact, his style—inevitably called ”iconoclastic” by his early critics, often with a sneer—grew out of Charlie Parker and Texas rhythm and blues. His music fell on some musicians’ closed ears, but to others ...
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Ornette Coleman, Who Widened Jazz and Changed Its Course, Dies at 85
Source:
Michael Ricci
Ornette Coleman, the alto saxophonist and composer who was one of the most powerful and contentious innovators in the history of jazz, died on Thursday morning in Manhattan. He was 85. The cause was cardiac arrest, a representative of the family said. Mr. Coleman widened the options in jazz and helped change its course. Partly through his example in the late 1950s and early ’60s, jazz became less beholden to the rules of harmony and rhythm, and gained more distance ...
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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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