Home » Jazz News
Obituary News
Timely announcements covering new album releases, tours, concert series, special events, job postings, crowdfunding campaigns and more. You can find more news by searching our website, viewing our news stream, seeing what's trending or reading our blog posts. Subscribe to our news RSS feed and/or embed AAJ news content on your website or blog. Learn about our news service here. Submit news here.
Grosse Pointe resident Bess Bonnier, 83, died Thursday, Oct. 6, 2011.
Source:
JazzStage Productions
Bess Bonnier began playing piano at an early age, taking her first professional job with a big band at 13. She joined the Detroit Federation of Musicians in 1946. Her career spanned more than six decades and included regular appearances with Jack Brokensha at his club in Detroit's New Center area, and at countless other clubs and hotels, concert and festival venues, private parties, events and local resorts. Highlights of her stage career include a performance in 1981 at the ...
Continue Reading
Two Losses to Detroit Jazz: Bess Bonnier and Brad Felt
Source:
JazzStage Productions
One of the great and unusual combinations of jazz voices hereabouts was the big-horn/little- horn thing that Steve Wood|| and {{Brad Felt had going at least since the '80s, with Steve on sax (especially the relatively small soprano) and Brad on tuba or euphonium, romping through tunes like “Second Balcony Jump," a Jerry Valentine composition from the Billy Eckstine band. (Steve and Brad liked to give credit where it was due like that.) Steve sent out an e-mail Thursday afternoon ...
Continue Reading
Russell Garcia, Renowned Composer / Arranger / Conductor, Dies in New Zealand at 95
Source:
Carolyn McClair Public Relations
April 12, 1916—November 20, 2011 NEW YORK, NY: Russell Garcia, the composer, conductor and arranger renowned for his stellar collaborations with Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton, Anita O'Day, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Judy Garland, Frances Faye, Mel Tormé, Frank Sinatra and numerous others as well as film scores for George Pal's “The Time Machine" and “Atlantis: The Lost Continent" and his orchestrations for Charlie Chaplin's “Limelight," died Sunday, November 20, 2011. He passed away peacefully at his home in Kerikeri, New ...
Continue Reading
Russ Garcia (1916-2011)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Russ Garcia, an early West Coast jazz-classical theorist, composer, arranger and teacher whose trombone-centric big band scores in the 1950s could swing with pixie delight and jack-hammer power, died on Nov. 19. He was 95. I interviewed Russ in 2008 about his life as well as his assertion that he had been mistakenly overlooked by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when Oscars were awarded in 1972 for the score to Charlie Chaplain's Limelight. My interview with Russ ...
Continue Reading
RIP Singer Smokin' Joe Frazier [video]
![RIP Singer Smokin' Joe Frazier [video]](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/logo/hypebotlogo2015.jpg){kind=logo}
Source:
HypeBot
Joe Frazier died on Monday. Also known as Smokin' Joe, he was an Olympic and Undisputed World Heavyweight boxing champion beating and later losing to Muhammad Ali, whose professional career lasted from 1965 to 1976, with a brief comeback in 1981. But did you also know he was a singer, releasing a string of songs like Frank Sinatra's “My Way" and Eddie Floyd's “Knock On Wood on Knockout Recorrds. Here is Frazier singing his love beer in a 1978 Miller ...
Continue Reading
Gordon Beck: British Piano Legend Dies at 76
Source:
Art of Life Records
British piano legend Gordon Beck passed away on November 5th, 2011. Gordon performed and recorded with many of the worlds finest musicians including Tubby Hayes, Allan Holdsworth, Jeff Clyne, John McLaughlin, Tony Oxley, Lena Horne, {{Helen Merrill, John Stevens, Jimmy Deuchar, Alan Ganley, Kenny Wheeler and many more. His musical legacy lives on in the dozens of recordings he released as a leader and the hundreds of sideman appearances that he participated on. To learn more about Gordon and his ...
Continue Reading
Andy Rooney dead at 92
Source:
Michael Ricci
Andy Rooney, the “60 Minutes" commentator known to generations for his wry, humorous and contentious television essays—a unique genre he is credited with inventing—died Friday night in a hospital in New York City of complications following minor surgery. He was 92, and had homes in New York City, Rensselaerville, N.Y. and Rowayton, Conn. “It's a sad day at '60 Minutes' and for everybody here at CBS News," said Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News and the executive producer of “60 ...
Continue Reading
Walter Norris, 1931-2011
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Pianist Walter Norris died this week at his home in Berlin. He was two months short of his 80th birthday. Because of his early recording with Ornette Coleman and later experimental work, he is often described as associated primarily with free jazz, but Norris's stylistic range was virtually unlimited. He was born in Little Rock, Arkansas and first received substantial notice in the 1950s in Los Angeles when he recorded with Jack Sheldon and was the pianist on Coleman's first ...
Continue Reading
