Results for "Obituary"

Jazz Organist Bobby Forrester Goes Out Swinging!

There were about 75 people packed into a small room at Leo F. Kearns Funeral Home on Woodhaven Boulevard in Rego Park Queens on Tuesday evening November 26th, 2002. The people came to remember a great organist who played for such great jazz blues vocalists as Irene Reid and Ruth Brown. The service lasted about 45 ...

Mongo Santamar

Luis Daniel "Chichito" Cepeda Died

Puerto Rican percussionist Luis Daniel “Chichito" Cepeda died early morning last Thursday in Redway, California. He was returning from a presentation and his car, according to family reports, went down a cliff killing him instantly upon impact. “Chichito" was the youngest of the 12 sons and daughters of the late Rafael Cepeda and Caridad Brenes, who ...

Don Suhor: Veteran New Orleans jazzman (1932-2003)

January 29, 2003

By Charles Suhor Don Suhor, a clarinetist and alto saxophonist who spanned many styles and eras on the New Orleans jazz scene, died of cancer on January 27. He was 70 years old. Suhor's 55-year career “epitomized the life of the working New Orleans jazz musician," Keith Spera wrote in a Times-Picayune article. “Rarely a headliner, ...

Bobby Rodr

Babatunde Olatunji, Nigerian Drummer, Dies at 76

Babatunde Olatunji, the Nigerian drummer, bandleader and teacher who was a tireless ambassador for African music and culture in the United States, died on Sunday in Salinas, Calif. He was 76 and lived at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Calif. The cause was complications of advanced diabetes, said his daughter Modupe Olantunji Anuku. Mr. Olatunji's ...

Teddy Edwards: Major Player on the West Coast Scene

Born: April 26, 1924 in Jackson, Mississippi Died: April 20, 2003 in Los Angeles, California Teddy (Theodore Marcus) Edwards was a major figure on the post-war jazz scene in Los Angeles, where he settled in 1945, and adopted his familiar tenor (rather than alto) saxophone in a group led by Howard McGhee. He led ...

Walter Fuller, 93; Jazz Musician, Civil-Rights Pioneer

By Jack Williams Copley News Service He traveled with medicine shows in his youth, a precocious musician doubling as a rattlesnake-toting stagehand for a doctor of potions and tonics. He played his trumpet at Chicago speakeasies in the Al Capone era, often surrounded by armed patrons of dubious reputation. And for several years, before ...

Freddie Hubbard (1938-2008)

December 31, 2008

Legendary trumpeter Freddie Hubbard died yesterday in the early morning from complications of a heart attack suffered on November 26. Hubbard became an immensely influential figure in jazz during his long career, which got a kick start in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in the '60s.Here are some links to some fine obits and other ...

John Cephas, Guitarist with the Duo Cephas and Wiggins, Dies

March 7, 2009

John Cephas, a guitarist and singer who kept the Piedmont blues style alive as part of the duo Cephas and Wiggins, died on Wednesday at his home in Woodford, Va. He was 78. Less celebrated than the raw Delta blues of Mississippi or its electrified offshoot in Chicago, the jaunty and melodic Piedmont sound developed in ...