Home » Search Center » Results: Obituary
Results for "Obituary"
Charlie Watts (1941-2021)
In most photos of the Rolling Stones, Charlie Watts always looked like the band's accountant. Unlike Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Bill Wyman, he didn't seem to fit in nor did it appear in photos that he wanted to. And in many ways he didn't. Watts, at the tail end of the 1950s, was ...
Ronnell Bright (1930-2021)
Ronnell Bright, a jazz pianist and composer who accompanied many of the finest mid-century female jazz vocalists, including Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Nancy Wilson, Lena Horne, Lorez Alexandria and Anita O'Day and subbed for Count Basie on several albums and tours, died on August 12. Ronnell was 91. His wife, Dianne Bright, said the cause was ...
Elliot Lawrence: 1925-2021
Elliot Lawrence, one of the last surviving big band leaders of the late 1940s and early 1950s who employed many of the finest and most sophisticated New York jazz musicians who went went on to leadership careers in the LP era, died on July 2. He was 96. In 1960, Elliot began composing, arranging and conducting ...
Margie Evans, Iconic And Sophisticated Queen Of The Blues, Dies At 81
Margie Evans, a legendary, international Blues and Gospel entertainer, songwriter, music producer, actress, music historian, community activist and motivational spokeswoman, who broke barriers for African American female Blues performers with poise, dignity and sophistication, died on March 19, 2021. In addition to her musicianship, Evans is noted as an activist for parity in music education as ...
Bertrand Tavernier (1941-2021)
Bertrand Tavernier, a French filmmaker who directed A Sunday in the Country, Life and Nothing But and, most notably, Round Midnight, a poetic film starring tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon and patterned after the last years of Bud Powell and Lester Young, died in Sainte-Maxime, France, on March 25. He was 79. Produced by Irwin Winkler and ...
Freddie Redd (1928-2021)
Freddie Redd, a hard-bop pianist whose funk-driven, percussive style and sophisticated sense of harmony were reminiscent of Horace Silver but whose recording output seemed thinner than his initial promise, died March 17. He was 92. Born in New York and largely self-taught, Redd recorded sporadically in the 1950s as a sideman, disappearing for blocks of time ...
Chris Barber, Giant of British Jazz, Dies at Age 90
Born in 1930, Chris Barber was one of the leading figures in European jazz. Together with Kenny Ball and Acker Bilk, he was one of the “Three B’s” who defined traditional jazz in Britain and spearheaded the “Trad” revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s. His interest in jazz began while he was evacuated from ...
Johnny Pacheco (1935-2021)
Johnny Pacheco, a bandleader who championed pachanga dance music in the late 1950s and co-founded Fania Records in 1964, a label that specialized in New York Latin music and paved the way for salsa in the late '60s and early '70s, died on February 15. He was 85. Pacheco was important for several reasons. While many ...
Chick Corea (1941-2021)
Chick Corea, one of the most spirited and heralded jazz keyboardists and composers of the rock era who launched a mystical form of psychedelic jazz fusion in the early 1970s that influenced a generation of young musicians, died on February 9. He was 79. Chick was enormously prolific. Not a day went by that he didn't ...
Phil Spector (1939-2021)
Phil Spector, a record producer, songwriter and co-founder of Philles Records whose “wall of sound" studio formula launched a new, influential approach to pop-rock orchestration in the early 1960s, died at the California Health Care Facility in Stockton on January 16 at age 81. He was 11 years into a 19-year prison sentence for killing actress-model ...
