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Buddy DeFranco, 91, Versatile Jazz Clarinetist, Dies
Buddy DeFranco, the innovative clarinetist who rose from the remains of the swing era to forge new and lasting prominence as the instrument’s pre-eminent interpreter of bebop, died on Wednesday in Panama City, Fla. He was 91. His death was confirmed by his wife, Joyce. From 1939, the year he graduated from a high school music ...
Pianist Joe Bonner Passes
By Arturo Gomez, KUVO Denver The extremely gifted composer and pianist, a resident of the Denver area since the early 1980s has passed away. Joe Bonner was born April 20, 1948 in Rocky Mount, NC, he died Friday, November 20, 2014 in Denver. He recorded and toured with many giants of jazz including Pharaoh Sanders, Woody ...
Loss Of A Quiet Giant: Will Connell 1938-2014
By John Pietaro I was heartily saddened by the sudden unexpected phone call: downtown’s unsung hero of Free Jazz, Will Connell, Jr., was hospitalized and non-responsive. Immediately the jazz and new music community rallied and the outpouring of love for Will was apparent. We’d all been preparing for his big moment at the front of the ...
Buddy Catlett, 1933-2014
I was saddened to learn on the road that Buddy Catlett died yesterday. I remember him looking as he does in this photograph made around the time we were both involved in Seattle’s vibrant jazz community in the early-to-mid 1950s. He left town to work with a variety of large and small bands. By the end ...
Acker Bilk: Legendary jazz clarinettist dies aged 85
Clarinettist Acker Bilk, who personified the trad jazz revival of the 1950s and '60s, has died after a lengthy illness at the age of 85. His most famous song Stranger on the Shore was the UK's biggest selling single of 1962 and made him an international star. Born Bernard Stanley Bilk, he changed his name to ...
Kenny Wheeler is Gone
Kenny Wheeler, a Canadian who became a towering figure in British music and an icon of jazz musicians around the world, has succumbed to a long illness. He was in a London nursing home for several months and was moved recently to the hospital where he died. He was 84. Wheeler’s brilliance as a composer and ...
Kenny Wheeler, contemporary jazz musician, dies aged 84
Trumpeter and composer became part of the free-improvisation movement after joining the London jazz scene Kenny Wheeler, one of the giants of British jazz, has died aged 84. Born in Canada in 1930, the trumpeter and composer joined the London jazz scene after moving to Britain in 1952. He played in groups alongside the likes of ...
Losses: Jackie Cain, Joe Sample
Following a long illness, Jackie Cain died Monday afternoon in her New Jersey home. She was 86. She and Roy Kral combined their talents in 1946. They incorporated the spirit of bebop in their work with Charlie Ventura’s sextet, capturing the public imagination with “East of Suez” and “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.” Recorded with Ventura at ...
Jackie Cain (1928-2014)
Jackie Cain, a vocalist who gave bebop a carefree vocalese spin in the late 1940s with her singer-pianist husband Roy Kral and, as Jackie and Roy, became one of the most beloved jazz-pop singing duos and recording artists of the 1950s and beyond, died Sept. 15 at her home in New Jersey. She was 86. Throughout ...
Gerald Wilson, 1918-2014
Word has come that Gerald Wilson died today in Los Angeles. A swing eratrumpeter, he became the pioneering leader, composer and arranger of a modern big band that was a significant presence for more than sixty years. Wilson enriched the language of large ensembles by employing expanded harmonic structures. He was noted for, among other things, ...


