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Junior Mance (1928-2021)
Junior Mance, a pianist and early proponent of church-infused soul-jazz who played and recorded with nearly all of jazz's post-war greats before beginning a leadership career in 1959, died on January 16. He was 92. Junior's playing channeled both urban gospel and rural spirituals and hymns, resulting in a style that exuded introspective soul. Junior's brand ...
Sammy Nestico (1924-2021)
Sammy Nestico, whose swing-happy compositions and arrangements for Count Basie's orchestra in the 1960s and '70s gave the band fresh relevance and enabled Nestico to fulfill a lifelong ambition, died January 17. He was 96. Nestico started young, in the early 1940s, in the orchestra of Pittsburgh's ABC affiliate radio station before joining Charlie Barnet's band ...
In Memoriam: Jazz Musicians Who Passed in 2020
by Maxim Micheliov
As 2020 comes to a close, we wanted to take a moment to remember the extraordinarily gifted musicians who made an indelible mark on jazz. With sadness, we bid farewell to Gary Peacock, Ennio Morricone, Keith Tippett, Henry Grimes, Bucky Pizzarelli, Wallace Roney and many others including NEA Jazz Masters Jimmy Cobb, Lee Konitz, Candido Camero, ...
Cándido Camero (1921-2020)
Cándido Camero, a conga and bongo player who moved to New York from Cuba in 1946 and wound up recording on hundreds of jazz, Latin and disco albums, died November 7. He was 99. Cándido's arrival coincided with a wave of Cuban and Puerto Rican immigration. Quotas were eased to take the stress off sagging economies ...
Annie Ross: 1930-2020
Annie Ross, a pioneering vocalese singer and songwriter, and the last surviving member of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross—arguably the best-known and most successful vocal group in jazz—died on July 21. She was 89. Writing lyrics to jazz standards and modern jazz solos and singing them was a mark of subterranean hipness in the late 1940s and ...
Eddie Gale, San Jose’s Ambassador Of Jazz And A Noted Jazz Educator, Succumbs To Cancer At Age 78
Eddie Gale, the pioneering Brooklyn-born jazz trumpeter who began his career as a sideman with legendary jazz artists such as Sun Ra, Larry Young, and Cecil Taylor before forging his path as a band leader on Blue Note Records and a performer and music educator on the East and West Coasts, passed away Friday, July 10, ...
Thanks, Freddy, for the jazz connection
The fine pianist and singer Freddy Cole died Saturday, June 27, at age 88 at his home in Atlanta. He had been struggling with cardiovascular issues for a while. His manager, Suzi Reynolds, called him Mr. Magic. “He wove a web of sonic beauty with every note and kept listeners silently breathless with his casual, elegant ...
Johnny Mandel (1925-2020)
Johnny Mandel, a elegant arranger, composer, conductor and bass trumpeter who began his career writing for big bands in the 1940s, crossed over to jazz in the '50s and wound up scoring movies in the late 1950s and beyond, including main titles that became standards, died June 29. He was 94. Like other player-arrangers of the ...
Christo (1935-2020)
Lost this week in the flurry of shocking events in Minneapolis and on the nation's streets was the death on May 31 of environmental artist Christo Javacheff, known professionally as Christo. He was 84. With his wife, Jeanne-Claude, who died in 2009, Christo specialized in massive sculptural pieces that shrouded iconic architecture and intruded on landscapes ...
Lennie Niehaus (1929-2020)
Lennie Niehaus, a Los Angeles alto saxophonist and prolific composer for big bands and his own octet starting in the 1950s before moving on to television and Clint Eastwood-directed films, died May 28. He was 90. Lennie was one of the giants of the West Coast linear jazz sound. Along with Bill Holman, Shorty Rogers, Gerry ...
