Ray Bryant, Jazz Pianist, Dies at 79 - NYTimes.com

Cover of Alone at MontreuxRay Bryant, Jazz Pianist, Dies at 79 - NYTimes.com

By NATE CHINEN

Ray Bryant, a jazz pianist whose sensitivity and easy authority made him a busy accompanist and a successful solo artist, beginning in the mid-1950s, died on Thursday. He was 79.

His wife of 20 years, Claude Bryant, said he died at New York Hospital Queens after a long illness. He lived in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Mr. Bryant had a firm touch and an unshakable sense of time, notably in his left hand, which he often used to build a bedrock vamp. Even in a bebop setting, he favored the ringing tonalities of the gospel church. And he was sumptuously at home with the blues, as a style and a sensibility but never as an affectation.

All of this contributed to his accomplishment as a solo pianist. His first solo piano album was “Alone With the Blues,” in 1958, and he went on to make a handful of others, including “Alone at Montreux,” “Solo Flight” and “Montreux ’77.” His most recent release, “In the Back Room,” was yet another solo album, recorded live at Rutgers University and released on the Evening Star label in 2008.

Raphael Homer Bryant was born on Dec. 24, 1931, in Philadelphia, and made his name in that city during its considerable postwar jazz boom. Along with his brother, Tommy, a bassist, he played in the house band at the Blue Note Club in Philadelphia, which had a steady flow of major talent dropping in from New York. (Charlie Parker and Miles Davis were among the musicians they played with there.) In short order Mr. Bryant had plenty of prominent sideman work, both with and without his brother.

One early measure of his ascent was the album “Meet Betty Carter and Ray Bryant,” released on Columbia in 1955. It was a splashy introduction for him as well as for Ms. Carter, the imposingly gifted jazz singer. It was soon followed by “The Ray Bryant Trio” (Prestige), an accomplished album that introduced Mr. Bryant’s composition “Blues Changes,” with its distinctive chord progression.

That song would become a staple of the jazz literature, if less of a proven standard than “Cubano Chant,” the sprightly Afro-Cuban fanfare that Mr. Bryant recorded under his own name and in bands led by the drummers Art Blakey, Art Taylor and Jo Jones.

Mr. Bryant had several hit songs early in his solo career, beginning with “Little Susie,” an original blues that he recorded both for the Signature label and for Columbia. In 1960 he reached No. 30 on the Billboard chart with a novelty song called “The Madison Time,” rushed into production to capitalize on a dance craze. (The song has had a durable afterlife, appearing on the soundtrack to the 1988 movie “Hairspray,” and in the recent Broadway musical production.) He later broke into the Top 100 with a cover of Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe,” released just a few months after the original, in 1967.

But Mr. Bryant’s legacy never rested on his chart success or his nimble response to popular trends. It can be discerned throughout his own discography and in some of his work as a sideman, notably with the singers Carmen McRae and Jimmy Rushing, and on albums like Dizzy Gillespie’s “Sonny Side Up,” on Verve. “After Hours,” a track on that album, begins with Mr. Bryant and his brother playing a textbook slow-drag blues.

Along with his wife, Mr. Bryant is survived by a son, Raphael Bryant Jr.; a daughter, Gina; three grandchildren; and two brothers, Leonard and Lynwood. Mr. Bryant’s sister, Vera Eubanks, is the mother of several prominent jazz musicians: Robin Eubanks, a trombonist; Kevin Eubanks, the guitarist and former bandleader on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno”; and Duane Eubanks, a trumpeter.

________________________________________

Back during the mid and late seventies Ray Bryant used to play piano regularly at a restaurant around the corner from my apartment on 2nd Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan called Hanratty's.  That restaurant has been gone for many years.  Bryant was a funky two fisted pianist who had a winning combination of prodigious technique coupled with a soulful feeling.  He will live on through his numerous recordings.

John H. Armwood

Randy Weston's African Rhythms Quartet featuring Lewis Nash

Cover of Randy WestonImmersed in African rhythms


By Geoffrey Himes Friday, April 8, 2011
Most people agree that much of American music — blues, jazz, R&B, hip- hop and gospel — has its roots in Africa, but for many that formula is a vague, sentimental notion, rarely explored and little understood. For pianist Randy Weston, however, that linkage has been the central theme of his music for more than 50 years.
The 85-year-old pianist, who performs at the Kennedy Center on Saturday, has composed jazz suites about Africa, studied African history, collaborated with African musicians, performed across the continent and even lived in Morocco for five years.
“Everybody loves jazz and blues, all these rhythms, and it all comes from Africa,” Weston says. “Africa has always been a mystery, because there’s so little information about what it was like before the people from the north invaded, but you have to know something about Africa to know the human race, because that’s where it started. When I go to Africa, I don’t go as a teacher; I go as a student. I want to find out why I play the way I play.”
Weston is coming to town with a new album, “The Storyteller,” and a new book, “African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston,” co-written by Rockville jazz writer Willard Jenkins. In the book, Weston describes how his fascination with Africa began with an unusual childhood. As a boy in the 1930s, when most Americans’ images of Africa came from Tarzan movies, he was reading books about ancient African kingdoms. His father was a fervent follower of Marcus Garvey, who advocated pride, unity and self-determination for the entire African diaspora.
“The way I was raised made me a much older person,” Weston says on the phone from his home in Brooklyn. “It made me realize that our civilization went back for centuries, that our history didn’t just begin with slavery. I wanted to know how my ancestors could come here in chains to pick cotton and still produce such incredible music. They suffered so much to make it possible for Randy Weston to play the piano, so I have to respect them. To deny them would be to disrespect their efforts.”
By 1960, Weston had recorded 10 albums and established himself as a worthy heir to the jazz-piano tradition of Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. But he hadn’t musically addressed his fascination with Africa. By that decade, however, the civil rights movement in the United States was gathering steam at the same time as the freedom movement in colonial Africa (17 nations would declare their independence that year).
So Weston composed a five-part suite, “Uhuru Afrika” (Swahili for “Freedom Africa”), with help from lyricist Langston Hughes and arranger Melba Liston. They recorded the piece with a 27-member big band that featured Freddie Hubbard, Yusef Lateef, Clark Terry, Kenny Burrell, Max Roach and actor-singer Brock Peters. It was a landmark recording that only whetted Weston’s appetite for further explorations of his African heritage.
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He joined a State Department-sponsored tour of Africa in 1961 and another in 1964, and in 1967 moved to Morocco.
“Everywhere I went, I always asked for the most traditional music and the oldest musicians,” Weston recalls. “Jazz is a very young music and America is a very young country, so to gain some perspective you have to go all the way back to where it came from. Like my father and mother, these old musicians have secrets we’ll never fully understand because they lived in a time before us. But we can always learn something from their experiences, so I try to be around the elders as much as possible.”
Willard Jenkins, a frequent contributor to Jazz Times and Downbeat magazines, recognized that Weston had an important story to tell.
“What drew me in Randy’s direction is that I’ve always felt that he’s been underappreciated, perhaps because he was out of the country during a crucial period of his development,” Jenkins says. “He was the only major jazz artist that I know of who actually lived in Africa. It was as if he were on a journey of self-discovery.”
The book is told in Weston’s voice, but it was Jenkins who guided the many interviews over nine years and molded the results into a narrative arc.
“I worked with Willard like I did with Melba [Liston],” Weston says. “He’d turn on the tape recorder, I’d go, ‘Blah, blah, blah,’ and he’d take it away and arrange it. It was the same with Melba; I’d play a piano piece and I’d say, ‘This might be a saxophone solo; this might be for trumpet,’ and she would take it away and arrange it. She had a way of hearing what I did, adding colors and making it sound like me.”
Weston’s album “The Storyteller” was recorded live in 2009 and released late last year. Because it was intended to complement the autobiography, it touches on several scenes from the book. It opens with a solo piano piece titled “Chano Pozo,” the Cuban drummer whose injection of African rhythms into Dizzy Gillespie’s band stimulated Weston’s interest in the roots of jazz. The album revisits such major Weston pieces as “African Sunrise,” “African Cookbook” and Weston’s most recorded composition, “Hi-Fly.” And its title reflects a lesson Weston learned from his time in Africa.
“In Western music,” he says, “to be a master all you have to do is play good — be a great pianist or a great saxophonist — but in Africa, to be a master you also have to be a healer, a naturalist and a storyteller.”
Now that he’s 85, Weston himself is one of those storytelling elders, though he laughingly scoffs at the notion, insisting, “I’m still a baby trying to understand the origin of music, the meaning of music.”

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Post Mortem - Jazz great Billy Taylor, pianist, educator & media personality, dies at 89

Cover of Billy TaylorPost Mortem - Jazz great Billy Taylor, pianist, educator & media personality, dies at 89

Billy Taylor, one of the musical treasures of Washington and the world, died last night, Dec. 28, at a hospital in New York City. He was 89 and died of a heart attack.

Dr. Taylor, as he was known to one and all, was a first-rate jazz pianist who grew up in Washington and was a graduate of Dunbar High School. He moved to New York in the early 1940s and was present at the birth of bebop, the new vernacular of music that transformed jazz. He played alongside Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis and became a protege of the greatest jazz pianist ever, Art Tatum.

In the 1950s, Dr. Taylor began to branch out into broadcasting with a television series, "The Subject Is Jazz," and with radio programs. He appeared on CBS over the years, particuarly on "CBS Sunday Morning," interviewing and performing many of the great artists in jazz.

Dr. Taylor -- who earned a doctorate in education, by the way -- had been the artistic adviser for jazz programming at the Kennedy Center and was a constant presence at concerts at the center. He often performed with his own trio and other groups and helped make the Kennedy Center one of the most important venues for jazz in America. He launched the annual Women in Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center and was instrumental in developing other concert series.

For several years, he was the host of an NPR series, "Billy Taylor's Jazz at the Kennedy Center," and many people considered him the foremost jazz educator of his -- or any -- time.

Dr. Taylor received every award there is in jazz and the arts, including the National Medal of Arts in 1992, and was designated a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1988.

I knew Dr. Taylor somewhat, and I treasure the memory of visiting him once at the Watergate hotel, interrupting him as he was practicing on an electric piano in his room. We sat and talked for more than an hour for background for a story you can find here

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James Moody, Jazz Saxophonist, Dies at 85 - NYTimes.com

James Moody, Jazz Saxophonist, Dies at 85 - NYTimes.com

By PETER KEEPNEWS

James Moody, a jazz saxophonist and flutist celebrated for his virtuosity, his versatility and his onstage ebullience, died on Thursday in San Diego. He was 85 and lived in San Diego.

His death, at a hospice in San Diego, was confirmed by his wife, Linda.

In November 2010, Mr. Moody revealed that he had pancreatic cancer and had decided against receiving chemotherapy or radiation treatment. He underwent surgery in February to have his gall bladder and blockage in his digestive system removed.

Mr. Moody, who began his career with the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie shortly after World War II and maintained it well into the 21st century, developed distinctive and equally fluent styles on both tenor and alto saxophone, a relatively rare accomplishment in jazz. He also played soprano saxophone, and in the mid-1950s he became one of the first significant jazz flutists, impressing the critics if not himself.

“I’m not a flute player,” he told one interviewer. “I’m a flute holder.”

The self-effacing humor of that comment was characteristic of Mr. Moody, who took his music more seriously than he took himself. His fellow musicians admired him for his dexterity, his unbridled imagination and his devotion to his craft, as did critics; reviewing a performance in 1980, Gary Giddins of The Village Voice praised Mr. Moody’s “unqualified directness of expression” and said his improvisations at their best were “mini-epics in which impassioned oracles, comic relief, suspense and song vie for chorus time.” But audiences were equally taken by his ability to entertain.

Defying the stereotype of the modern jazz musician as austere and humorless (and following the example of Gillespie, whom he considered his musical mentor and with whom he worked on and off for almost half a century), Mr. Moody told silly jokes; peppered his repertory with unlikely numbers like “Beer Barrel Polka” and the theme from “The Flintstones”; and often sang. His singing voice was unpolished but enthusiastic, and his noticeable lisp, a result of having been born partly deaf, added to the comic effect.

The song he sang most often had a memorable name and an unusual history. Based on the harmonic structure of “I’m in the Mood for Love,” it began life as an instrumental when Mr. Moody recorded it in Stockholm in 1949, improvising an entirely new melody on a borrowed alto saxophone. Released as “I’m in the Mood for Love” (and credited to that song’s writers) even though his rendition bore only the faintest resemblance to the original tune, it was a modest hit for Mr. Moody in 1951. It became a much bigger hit shortly afterward when the singer Eddie Jefferson wrote lyrics to Mr. Moody’s improvisation and another singer, King Pleasure, recorded it as “Moody’s Mood for Love.”

“Moody’s Mood for Love” (which begins with the memorable lyric “There I go, there I go, there I go, there I go ...”) became a jazz and pop standard, recorded by Aretha Franklin, George Benson and others, and a staple of Mr. Moody’s concert and nightclub performances as sung by Mr. Jefferson, who was a member of his band for many years. Mr. Jefferson was shot to death in 1979; when Mr. Moody, who was in the middle of a long hiatus from jazz at the time, resumed his career a few years later, he began singing the song himself. He never stopped.

James Moody — he was always Moody, never James, Jim or Jimmy, to his friends and colleagues — was born in Savannah, Ga., on March 26, 1925, and raised in Newark. Despite being hard of hearing, he gravitated toward music and began playing alto saxophone at 16, later switching to tenor. He played with an all-black Army Air Forces band during World War II. After being discharged in 1946, he auditioned for Gillespie, who led one of the first big bands to play the complex and challenging new form of jazz known as bebop. He failed that audition but passed a second one a few months later, and soon captured the attention of the jazz world with a brief but fiery solo on the band’s recording of the Gillespie composition “Emanon.”

Mr. Moody’s career was twice interrupted by alcoholism. The first time, in 1948, he moved to Paris to live with an uncle while he recovered. He returned to the United States in 1951 to capitalize on the success of “I’m in the Mood for Love,” forming a seven-piece band that mixed elements of modern jazz and rhythm and blues. After a fire at a Philadelphia nightclub destroyed the band’s equipment, uniforms and sheet music in 1958, he began drinking again and checked himself into Overbrook, a psychiatric hospital in Cedar Grove, N.J., for several months. He celebrated his recovery by writing and recording the up-tempo blues “Last Train From Overbrook,” which became one of his best-known compositions.

In 1963 he reunited with Gillespie, joining his popular quintet. He was extensively featured as both a soloist and the straight man for Gillespie’s between-songs banter, sharpening his musical and comedic skills at the same time. He left Gillespie in 1969 to again try his luck as a bandleader, but met with limited success; four years later he left jazz entirely to work in Las Vegas hotel orchestras, first at the Flamingo and later at the Hilton.

“The reason I went to Las Vegas,” he told Saxophone Journal in 1998, “was because I was married and had a daughter and I wanted to grow up with my kid. I was married before and I didn’t grow up with the kids. So I said, ‘I’m going to really be a father.’ I did much better with this one because at least I stayed until my daughter was 12 years old. And that’s why I worked Vegas, because I could stay in one spot.”

After seven years of pit-band anonymity, providing accompaniment for everyone from Milton Berle to Ike and Tina Turner to Liberace, Mr. Moody divorced his wife and returned to the East Coast to resume his jazz career. The final three decades of his life were active and productive, with frequent touring and recording (as the leader of his own small group and, on occasion, as a sideman with Gillespie, who died in 1993) and even a brief foray into acting, with a bit part in the 1997 Clint Eastwood film “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” set in Mr. Moody’s birthplace, Savannah.

The National Endowment for the Arts named him a Jazz Master in 1998. “Moody’s Mood for Love” was named to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001. His last album, “Moody 4B,” was recorded in 2008 and released in 2010 on the IPO label.

Mr. Moody, who was divorced twice, is survived by his wife of 21 years, Linda, and three sons, Patrick, Regan and Danny, all of California.

For all his accomplishments, Mr. Moody always saw his musical education as a work in progress. “I’ve always wanted to be around people who know more than me,” he told The Hartford Courant in 2006, “because that way I keep learning.”

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Jazz Articles: Jazz Saxophonist James Moody Dies — By Lee Mergner — Jazz Articles

Cover of James MoodyJazz Articles: Jazz Saxophonist James Moody Dies — By Lee Mergner — Jazz Articles

Saxophonist achieved fame as an associate of Dizzy Gillespie and co-composer of “Moody’s Mood for Love”

By Lee Mergner

Saxophonist, flutist and composer James Moody died today at his home in the San Diego area. He was 85 years old. Moody had been suffering from pancreatic cancer and had recently chosen to decline treatment by radiation or chemotherapy.

Funeral services are scheduled for December 18 at Greenwood Memorial Park, 4300 Imperial Ave in San Diego with a morning viewing and graveside service at 12:30 and a celebration of his life at Faith Chapel on 9400 Campo Road in Spring Valley at 2 PM.

Dragan Tasic

James Moody

In February of this year, Moody was operated on have the tumor resected, but according to his wife Linda, it proved to be impossible without endangering his life. The doctors removed his gallbladder and did a double bypass of his digestive system to remove the blockage. He was in the ICU at UCSD Thornton Hospital for almost 8 weeks with life threatening infections and was finally able to come home in May. Since that time Moody rested at home under the care of his wife and a team of hospice care workers, his time spent watching TV, listening to music and playing occasionally.

Once the Moody’s announced about a month ago via his website that he was suffering from pancreatic cancer and awaiting his fate sans medical intervention, the jazz community flooded his site and his e-mail with their prayers and well-wishes. Above and beyond his impact as a jazz musician, Moody was a man who seemed to make friends everywhere he went.

"There's an old philosophy, and it's been said many times, but people don't heed it," Moody told JT’s Bill Milkowski in 2004. "And that is simply this: 'So a man thinketh, so it is.' I think I'm young. My wife says I'm 78 going on 18, and that's very true in a way. That's how I feel."

Moody, who preferred to be called by his last name, was born in Savannah, Georgia on March 26, 1925. It is little known that Moody was born partially deaf. As a result when he was young and unable to hear the teacher, he was labelled mentally deficient and ordered to attend a school for the mentally disabled. Shortly thereafter, his family moved to Newark, New Jersey, where he attended public school. Eventually, his hearing problem was diagnosed and he was sent to the Bruce Street School for the Deaf He later attended Arts High in Newark, N.J.

His uncle gave him an alto sax when he was 16. After hearing Buddy Tate and Don Byas perform with the Count Basie Band at the Adams Theater in Newark, New Jersey, Moody switched to the tenor saxophone. He was just 18 years old when he was drafted into the Air Force in 1943 during World War II. Unable to play with the white Air Force band, Moody played in an unofficial Negro Air Force band for three years. He was disturbed by the segregation that was prevalent in the military service at that time. Incredibly, he met Dizzy Gillespie while in the Air Force, as Gillespie came through for a performance on the base. After he got out of the service, in 1946, he joined the recently formed Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, one of the most important jazz groups at that time.

In a piece in the March 2004 issue of JazzTimes, Moody told writer Bill Milkowski that Dizzy Gillespie had an enormous impact on his life. "Diz influenced me from every standpoint. He was a friend, a father, a confidante, just everything to me. I'm 78 years old and I'm still realizing how much he affected me. And man, a lot of times I'll see something, and I'll remember what Diz told me and I'll go, 'Ah, that's what he meant!' Diz, boy-he was just a nice guy, a good man. And he was a child, too; he never grew up. But he was a child like a fox. I'm just thankful to him every day for giving me a chance because he knew-he must've seen something in me to let me be in the band for a minute." In turn, Gillespie once said of his frontline partner, "Playing with James Moody is like playing with a continuation of myself."

He stayed with Gillespie for two years and appeared on several key recordings from that period, including "O.W.," "Oop-Pop-a-Da" and "Two Bass Hit."

[Note: The rest of this article is excerpted from Bill Milkowski’s feature on Moody from 2004.]

In 1946, Moody was also a member of the Bebop Boys, an all-star group led by Ray Brown and featuring Dizzy and Dave Burns on trumpets, John Brown on alto sax, Moody on tenor, Hank Jones on piano, Milt Jackson on vibes and Joe Harris on drums. (Moody's first-ever recordings in the studio come from a September 25, 1946, session with the Bebop Boys, which also produced the blazing tenor feature "Moody Speaks").

In 1948, Moody made his recording debut as a leader for the Blue Note label-James Moody and His Modernists, featuring arranger Gil Fuller and Art Blakey on drums along with such regular Gillespie sidemen as Ernie Henry on alto sax, Cecil Payne on baritone sax, Dave Burns and Elmon Wright on trumpets, Chano Pozo on bongos and vocals, Nelson Boyd on bass, James Forman on piano and Teddy Stewart on drums.

In 1949 Moody moved to Europe, and in Sweden that year he recorded his tour de force of improvisation on the Jimmy McHugh Tin Pan Alley tune "I'm in the Mood for Love" (which can be heard on James Moody & His Swedish Crowns on the Dragon label). Back in the States, pioneering vocalese artist Eddie Jefferson penned lyrics to Moody's exact solo on that tune and dubbed it "Moody's Mood for Love."

Meanwhile, an unknown singer named Clarence Beeks-aka King Pleasure-heard Jefferson sing his vocalese version of Moody's masterpiece at the Cotton Club in Cincinnati. Beeks promptly committed the performance and song to memory-the lyrics, phrasing and all of the nuances. In November 1951, Beeks sang Jefferson's signature vocalese offering at the Apollo Theater Amateur Hour, winning first prize along with a contract to record the tune for Prestige. The 1952 release of King Pleasure's debut recording, "Moody's Mood for Love," became an instant hit, to the utter surprise of Moody, who found himself an "overnight sensation" when he returned to the States that same year.

"It was amazing!" he recalls, "because I had no idea what a hit it was. So when I went to play a gig somewhere I'd be shocked at how packed the place would be. Suddenly I was being treated like a star or something. I never will forget the record company guy calling me up and asking, 'You want a Cadillac? You want a Buick? Whatever you want, I'll buy it for you.' And when I told my mother that, she said, 'Son, people do not give you anything for nothing. Watch out!' And she was right. There were all kinds of come-ons in those days but my mother-God bless her, man-she hipped me to a lot of things."

Today, Moody still includes "Moody's Mood for Love" in every set he plays. "Yeah, and if I don't, I might as well not come to the gig," he laughs. "It's like Tony Bennett with 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco.' He still sings it and loves singing it, and I'm still singing 'Moody's Mood.'" (On a side note: After King Pleasure's version of "Moody's Mood for Love" became a smash hit, Jimmy McHugh sued for copyright infringement and won a partial victory in court, ultimately splitting proceeds with Moody on sales of any versions of the tune.)

Upon returning to the States in 1952, Moody worked with vocalist-hipster Babs Gonzales until they had a parting of the ways a year later. As Moody explains, "Babs was talking about 'I want more bread,' and I thought he was getting enough 'bread,' as he called it. So he said, 'Well, then I'm leaving.' And I said, 'Bye.' After Babs split we went to Cleveland and the word was out that I was looking for a singer to sing 'Moody's Mood for Love' with the band. And Eddie Jefferson came back and applied for the gig. I had no idea that he was the one who wrote the lyrics to 'Moody's Mood,' so when I found out I said, 'You got the job, man.' And it was cool from then on. Everywhere we would go we'd have to do that tune two or three times a night. I'd have to play it, and Eddie would have to sing it. And it was wonderful."

Jefferson remained a fixture in Moody's group through 1962. In 1963, Moody rejoined Gillespie and performed in the trumpeter's quintet for the remainder of the decade, but by the outset of the '70s he had lost his enthusiasm for the road. As he recalls, "My daughter was born, and I wanted to see her grow up. I didn't get to see my other children grow up since I was always away. So I finally just said, 'Aw, the heck with this.' That's when I went to Las Vegas, and I stayed there for seven and a half years."

Moody's tenor-playing pal Harold Land is the one who hipped him to the steady gig opportunities in Las Vegas. During that lucrative period, from 1971 to 1978, Moody worked at the Flamingo Hilton, where he played shows with Leslie Uggams and Sandler & Young, and also at the bigger Las Vegas Hilton, where he played with a host of big-name entertainers including Elvis Presley, Ann-Margret, Liberace, Milton Berle, Bill Cosby, the Rockettes, Lou Rawls, Ike and Tina Turner, Glen Campbell, Charlie Rich, Connie Stevens, the Everly Brothers, Steve and Eydie, Eddie Fisher and Bobbie Gentry.

He was back in New York by the early '80s, and Moody's career received a boost with a Grammy nomination in 1985 for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance for his playing on Manhattan Transfer's Vocalese. He then signed to RCA/Novus, and Moody's 1986 debut for the label was the straightahead quartet date Something Special featuring pianist Kenny Barron. His follow-up was Moving Forward, and in 1989 he was reunited with his friend and mentor Dizzy Gillespie on "Con Alma" and "Get the Booty" on Sweet and Lovely.

On March 26, 1995, a 70th birthday celebration for Moody, hosted by Bill Cosby, was held at New York's Blue Note club. Telarc recorded the show and released it as Moody's Party: Live at the Blue Note. He followed that up with two tribute recordings for Warner Bros.: 1996's Sinatra tribute Young at Heart and 1997's Moody Plays Mancini.

He made several recordings during the last decade of his life, including Homage, Moody 4A and Moody 4B, the latter two for IPO. Moody 4B was recently nominated for a Grammy award.

"I have a goal in life, and my goal is to play better tomorrow than I did today," Moody says. "I'm not in competition with other musicians because there's too much going on, you can't be into that. So I'm in competition with myself. I just want to be able to play better tomorrow than I did today. And I've got to hurry up and play better because it seems like when I practice and I think I got something, I go outside and everybody else has got it and gone. So I'm still working at it because I haven't found it yet. It's a never-ending search. It's the old thing of I'll never get it but it's worth trying."

Moody’s 2004 album for Savoy, Homage, featured tunes specially composed for the record by some of his friends. Here's what a few of the composers had to say about Moody, for the piece written by Bill.Milkowski.

Kenny Barron: "He's just an amazing person for so many reasons. Number one is just his boundless energy. Number two is his humility. He's just a great musician and a really great guy. We spent four years together with Dizzy and what used to amaze me is that he would eat these chord changes up and then come back and say, 'Man, does that sound OK?' And I'd say, 'Come on, Moody, are you kidding?' He's like the eternal student of music, and he keeps on getting better. The other thing I can say about Moody is I wanna be like him when I grow up. The piece I contributed was just a blues because that's something that Moody excels at, and he can put any kind of twist on it-it could be very modern, it could be gutbucket, whatever it is, whatever it calls for. He's just a real open-minded cat, and he brings so much to the music. He's open to what the younger guys are doing, interested in finding out what it is and how they're doing it. So I really take my hat off to him. And I really would like to be like that when I'm 78-always ready to learn."

Marc Copland: "I found working with Moody to be a humbling and humanizing experience. This is the kindest person I ever worked for, and he became the godfather of my son. Here's a man who played with the greats, yet he doesn't carry an attitude or rest on his laurels. All he talks about sometimes is how much he needs to practice, how far he still has to go in this music. As a human being, he's old enough to be my father, and over the years we've had a deep exchange of musical and personal ideas. He once said to me with a twinkle in his eye, 'Marc, sometimes I'm the father, and sometimes you're the father. I know!' My personal homage to Moody is this: Every time I play, every time I travel, I hope to play with the same spirit that he does and hope to treat other musicians with the same kindness and respect that he does."

Chick Corea: "James is a treasure of an artist and musician. He makes me smile every time I meet him and every time I hear him play. His work with Dizzy will remain unforgettable."

David Hazeltine: "What's amazing to me is that at his age, after all the music that Moody has performed and recorded, he remains a serious student of jazz, always looking for new ideas and interesting, innovative ways to articulate the chord changes."

Martin Drew, British Jazz Drummer, Dies at 66 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Martin Drew, British Jazz Drummer, Dies at 66 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Martin Drew, a British jazz drummer who was a member of the pianist Oscar Peterson’s internationally popular group for three decades, died on July 29 in London. He was 66.

The cause was a heart attack, his wife, Tessa, said.

Mr. Drew first worked with Peterson in 1974 at the celebrated London nightclub Ronnie Scott’s, where Mr. Drew was the house drummer. In that role he also accompanied Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and many other visiting American jazz artists.

He performed all over the world with Peterson from the mid-1970s until a few years before Peterson’s death in 2007. For most of that time the group also included the Danish bass virtuoso Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, who died in 2005.

Two other prominent former Peterson sidemen have died this year: the drummer Ed Thigpen in January and the guitarist Herb Ellis in March.

Born in Northampton, England, on Feb. 11, 1944, Mr. Drew made his professional debut at 13 and worked with various British jazz musicians before beginning a long association with the saxophonist Ronnie Scott, as the drummer both in his small groups and at the nightclub he ran.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Jason; two daughters, Danielle and Michelle; and three granddaughters.

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Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola Sets New Jazz Festival - WSJ.com

Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola Sets New Jazz Festival - WSJ.com

On any given night at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, programming director Todd Barkan introduces the band, thanks the audience (profusely) and issues his catch-phrase: "Take care of the music, and the music will take care of you."

On Monday, Jazz at Lincoln Center will announce a new way in which it is taking care of the future of the music: the Coca-Cola Generations in Jazz Festival, a five-week event, running from Sept. 6 to Oct. 10, that will aim to bring jazz musicians of all ages onstage together.

The Man Who Keeps the Jazz

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Todd Barkan, the Program Director for Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center, has been runnign jazz clubs since the seventies, when he owned the Keystone Korner in San Fraincisco. In addition to programming a mix of jazz musicians, he also finds time to produce original recordings. Pia Catton reports.

"We are reaching a critical stage in jazz music because we've lost a lot of people in the last few years," Mr. Barkan said. "Older artists teach a lot by example and the practice of jazz."

Mr. Barkan pointed specifically to the Kenny Barron Quintet, which will perform Oct. 6 to Oct. 11. "Kenny Barron was one of the kids working with Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy helped mould Kenny Barron—now Barron is moulding some younger players," Mr. Barkan said.

Mr. Barron, a piano legend at 67, will be joined by 27-year-old trumpeter Brandon Lee and 34-year-old drummer Jonathan Blake.

Among the vocalists, Shelia Jordan, 81, and Karrin Allyson, 47, will sing together from Sept, 20 to Sept. 22. And the "Triumph of the Trumpets" program (Sept. 23 to 26) will include trumpeters spanning three generations: Jon Faddis, 57; Terell Stafford, 44; and Sean Jones, 28.

The most seasoned musician in the line up is Marian McPartland, 92, who will be joined on a program that introduces newer pianists (Oct. 4). The youngest musician is trumpeter Adam O'Farrill, 15, who, with his father, pianist Arturo O'Farrill, 50, and brother/drummer Zack, 18, will open the festival on Sept. 6.

Presenting the O'Farrill Family Band is especially important to Mr. Barkan: He worked for several years with Arturo's father, Chico O'Farrill, the renowned Cuban composer and big-band leader who died in 2001. "I produced his comeback album. For me, this represents working with three generations," he said.

If it all seems rather personal, well, it is. Mr. Barkan is more than a host or booker or just the guy who talks before the show. He's a jazz-world celebrity—one whose fame is largely based on making other people famous.

From 1972 to 1983, he ran a jazz club in San Francisco called the Keystone Korner that showcased the likes of Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon and Bill Evans. Wynton Marsalis, now artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, played there with Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, and recorded two live albums in the club. Mary Lou Williams called it "the Birdland of the Seventies." Along the way, Mr. Barkan produced more than 800 recordings, earning dozens of Grammy nominations and many other awards. He also developed personal relationships that spanned decades: Grover Washington Jr. was the best man at is wedding; Rahsaan Roland Kirk was a musical mentor.

The depth and duration of those relationships shapes the programming at Dizzy's all year round, but especially so in this new festival. Among Mr. Barkan's ideas was the pairing of pianist Eldar, a "wunderkind" at 22 years old, and guitarist Pat Martino, a "grand master of jazz guitar" at 66. The two have played the Iridium together, and they will perform in the festival on Sept. 13. "They have a musical affinity. They are harmonically akin to each other," said their matchmaker.

There are also direct links to the past. "Bobby Watson & Horizon are the closest thing in our whole jazz culture to Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers. Bobby Watson embodies that tradition," said Mr. Barkan.

Mr. Watson, the 57-year-old alto saxophonist, served as musical director for Art Blakey. His performances (Sept. 29 to Oct. 3) will be followed by the Paris Wright Band playing an After Hours program title, in true Barkanian wit, "Our Father Who Art Blakey."

After Hours programs ($10) will follow all of the headliners—just as they do every week. On Thursdays, the deal is even sweeter: $5 cover charge, $5 drinks and a $5 menu. The pricing will continue after the festival, something that will also help to ensure the future of jazz: The artists scheduled for the After Hours slot—11 p.m. (Tuesday-Thursday) and 12:45 a.m. (Friday and Saturday)—are the up-and-comers.

"One of the most important things we do is After Hours," Mr. Barkan said. "I can hire a lot of younger artists. I am trying to integrate them into the whole fabric of the booking at Dizzy's. He added, however, that age has to be paired with talent. "The only thing that is going to keep people interested in the music is consistent quality."

The Jazz at Lincoln Center website (www.jalc.org) contains the full listing of the festival, times and prices.

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