All Discussions Tagged 'clarinet' - Pittsburgh Jazz Network2024-03-29T13:41:09Zhttps://jazzburgher.ning.com/group/obituaries/forum/topic/listForTag?tag=clarinet&feed=yes&xn_auth=noHamiet Bluiett, Legendary Jazz Saxophonist, Dies at 78tag:jazzburgher.ning.com,2018-10-08:1992552:Topic:4378262018-10-08T04:49:34.565ZDr. Nelson Harrisonhttps://jazzburgher.ning.com/profile/NelsonHarrison
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OCTOBER 5, 2018 2:50PM PT<br></br>
<h1>Hamiet Bluiett, Legendary Jazz Saxophonist, Dies at 78</h1>
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OCTOBER 5, 2018 2:50PM PT<br/>
<h1>Hamiet Bluiett, Legendary Jazz Saxophonist, Dies at 78</h1>
<div class="l-article__author-share"><div class="c-author"><div class="c-author__name"><em>By</em><span> </span><a href="https://variety.com/author/variety-staff/" rel="author">VARIETY STAFF</a></div>
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<li class="l-list__item l-list__item--heavy"><a href="https://variety.com/2018/music/obituaries-people-news/hamiet-bluiett-jazz-saxophonist-dies-dead-1202970855/">Hamiet Bluiett, Legendary Jazz Saxophonist, Dies at 78</a><img width="1000" height="562" src="https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/sax-player.jpg?w=1000&h=562&crop=1" class="attachment-landscape-xxlarge size-landscape-xxlarge" alt="THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS - JULY 12: Hamiet Bluiett plays Bass Clarinet on stage in The Hague during the North Sea Jazz Festival on July 12 1984 (photo by Frans Schellekens/Redferns)"/></li>
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<p>Legendary jazz saxophonist<span> </span><a href="https://variety.com/t/hamiet-bluiett/" id="auto-tag_hamiet-bluiett" name="auto-tag_hamiet-bluiett">Hamiet Bluiett</a><span> </span>passed away Thursday at the age of 78, according to the<span> </span><a href="http://www.stlamerican.com/entertainment/living_it/legendary-jazz-saxophonist-hamiet-bluiett-passes-at/article_92a00368-c8ae-11e8-8767-f3fc0b1ddd4c.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">St. Louis American</a>. Widely considered to be one of the greatest baritone saxophonists in jazz history, he was active for more than five decades, performing with Charles Mingus, Babatunde Olatunji, Abdullah Ibrahim, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and others, and his influence cast a long shadow over the genre.</p>
<p>Bluiett was in Brooklyn, Illinois, near St. Louis in 1940 and studied several instruments as a child, settling on baritone saxophone at the age of ten. He played with various bands throughout his teens and joined the Navy band in 1961. Returning to St. Louis in the mid-1960s, he co-founded the multi-discipline Black Artists’ Group and worked with it for several years.</p>
<p>In 1969, he moved to New York and joined the Charles Mingus Quintet and Sam Rivers’ large ensemble. In 1976 he co-founded the World Saxophone Quartet with Julius Hemphill and Oliver Lake, fellow veterans of the Black Artists’ Group, and David Murray. The group continued with several lineup changes over the following decades (including one with Branford Marsalis), releasing some 21 albums. Along with that group, over the past three decades has also formed and performed with the Bluiett Baritone Nation — made up of baritone saxophones with percussion accompaniment — and the Clarinet Family, a group of eight clarinetists, along with session work.</p>
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</div> Pete Fountain, 86, Dies; Clarinetist Popularized Spirited New Orleans Jazztag:jazzburgher.ning.com,2016-08-26:1992552:Topic:3908902016-08-26T02:03:12.881ZDr. Nelson Harrisonhttps://jazzburgher.ning.com/profile/NelsonHarrison
<h1 class="headline" id="headline">Pete Fountain, 86, Dies; Clarinetist Popularized Spirited New Orleans Jazz</h1>
<div class="story-meta-footer" id="story-meta-footer"><p class="byline-dateline"><span class="byline">By <span class="byline-author">PETER KEEPNEWS -</span></span> AUG. 6, 2016…</p>
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<h1 id="headline" class="headline">Pete Fountain, 86, Dies; Clarinetist Popularized Spirited New Orleans Jazz</h1>
<div id="story-meta-footer" class="story-meta-footer"><p class="byline-dateline"><span class="byline">By <span class="byline-author">PETER KEEPNEWS -</span></span> AUG. 6, 2016</p>
<div class="story-meta-footer-sharetools"><div id="sharetools-story-meta-footer" class="sharetools theme-classic sharetools-story-meta-footer"><a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/arts/music/pete-fountain-clarinetist-known-for-his-high-spirited-new-orleans-jazz-dies-at-86.html?_r=0#story-continues-1"></a></div>
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<p class="story-body-text story-content">Pete Fountain, a clarinetist who brought the traditional jazz of his native New Orleans to a national audience through frequent appearances on the Lawrence Welk and Johnny Carson television shows, died on Saturday in New Orleans. He was 86.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">The cause was heart failure, said Benny Harrell, Mr. Fountain’s son-in-law and manager.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">Mr. Fountain was a mainstay of the New Orleans music scene for more than six decades, a familiar sight at Mardi Gras and the annual Jazz and Heritage Festival. And the appeal of his high-spirited brand of Dixieland stretched far beyond New Orleans, especially after he began appearing on “The Lawrence Welk Show” in 1957.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">His outgoing musical style made an odd fit with the sedate “Champagne music” of Mr. Welk’s orchestra — Mr. Fountain often noted that Champagne and bourbon did not mix — but the combination was a hit with viewers, and his segments became a staple of the show. In later years he was also a frequent guest on Mr. Carson’s “Tonight Show.”</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">Peter Dewey Fountain Jr. was born in New Orleans on July 3, 1930, and was exposed from an early age to the lively small-group jazz that was an integral part of that city’s atmosphere. Inspired by Benny Goodman and the New Orleans clarinetist Irving Fazola — and by a family doctor who recommended that he learn a wind instrument to strengthen his weak lungs — he began playing clarinet at age 12. Before he was out of his teens, he had become a familiar presence in the nightclubs on Bourbon Street.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">“When I was a high school senior, my history teacher asked me why I didn’t study more,” he wrote in 2001, in the notes of a CD anthology of his recordings from the 1950s and 1960s. “I answered that I was too busy playing clarinet every night, and when I told him I was making scale — about $125 a week — he said that was more than he made and I should play full time. I guess I was a professional from that point on.”</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-1">In 1950, after some local success as a sideman, Mr. Fountain formed his own band, the Basin Street Six, with the trumpeter George Girard. “We clowned around a lot with that group,” he recalled, “but most of the time we played good music.”</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">The Basin Street Six broke up in 1954, and he then worked briefly with the Dukes of Dixieland in Chicago before teaming with the trumpeter Al Hirt to lead a band that had a successful extended engagement at a New Orleans nightclub, Dan Levy’s Pier 600.</p>
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<span class="caption-text">Pete Fountain at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2009. He lived away from New Orleans for only two years.</span> <span class="credit"><span class="visually-hidden">Credit</span> Cheryl Gerber/Associated Press</span><br />
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<p class="story-body-text story-content">A talent scout for Mr. Welk heard him there in 1957 and flew him to Los Angeles for the first of his many featured appearances on Mr. Welk’s popular ABC variety show. He soon moved to Los Angeles, but he moved back home after two years. It was the only time in his life that he was away from the New Orleans area for a significant period.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">While living in Los Angeles, Mr. Fountain began a long association with Coral Records. Most of his albums for the label were closer to instrumental pop than to traditional jazz, and the critics were unimpressed, but sales were healthy.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">He is survived by his wife, Beverly; a daughter, Darah Fountain Harrell; two sons, Kevin and Jeffery; a sister, Del Materne, six grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">In 1960, shortly after returning to New Orleans, Mr. Fountain bought a local nightclub, the French Quarter Inn, and began a residency there with a small group. Eight years later, he opened a larger room on Bourbon Street, Pete’s Place. The club moved to the New Orleans Hilton (now the Hilton New Orleans Riverside) in 1977 and remained in business until he reluctantly shuttered it in 2003, citing a decline in tourism after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">“I needed a change. I didn’t want it, but I needed it,” he told The Advocate, a newspaper in Baton Rouge, La. “It’s been a real good ride, and we’ve still got a lot of riding to do.” He continued to perform regularly at a casino in nearby Bay St. Louis, Miss., for many years.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">Mr. Fountain struggled to get his life and career in order after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The roof was blown off his house in New Orleans; a second house, in Bay St. Louis, was destroyed. Most of his possessions were lost. Over the next year and a half, by his estimate, he moved eight times.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-2">He was hospitalized shortly after the hurricane, complaining of dizziness and other symptoms. He later told The Associated Press that doctors could find nothing physically wrong with him, and he attributed his illness to “depression about all the stuff that happened.”</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">His health problems caused Mr. Fountain to miss Mardi Gras in 2006; it was the first time in 46 years that his whimsically named Half-Fast Walking Club participated in the festivities without him. Shortly afterward, he suffered a heart attack and underwent quadruple bypass surgery. But he was well enough to perform at the Jazz and Heritage Festival that May (his cardiologist was in attendance in case of an emergency), and despite continuing health problems, he remained a mainstay of that festival, and of the city itself, until 2013.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">His performance at the 2013 Jazz and Heritage Festival turned out to be his swan song. “Last year was his last public performance,” Mr. Harrell announced shortly before the 2014 festival. “He’s fully retired now.”</p>
<div id="addenda" class="addenda"><div class="story-addendum story-content theme-correction"><strong>Correction: August 10, 2016</strong> <br/><p>An obituary on Monday, and in some editions on Sunday, about the jazz clarinetist Pete Fountain misstated the name of the hotel that housed his nightclub from 1977 to 2003. It is the Hilton New Orleans Riverside (originally the New Orleans Hilton), not the Hotel Riverside. The obituary, in some copies on Sunday, also misstated part of the name of a group Mr. Fountain led at Mardi Gras for many years. It is the Half-Fast Walking Club, not the Half-Fast Marching Club.</p>
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</div> Ron "George" Hall affectionately known to musicians as Rev. Ron passes at 87.tag:jazzburgher.ning.com,2012-08-03:1992552:Topic:2637372012-08-03T15:22:17.290ZDr. Nelson Harrisonhttps://jazzburgher.ning.com/profile/NelsonHarrison
<p>RONALD "GEORGE" HALL</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1044977026?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1044977026?profile=original" width="100"></img></a> <br></br>Age 87, of the Hill District. Passed away suddenly on July 23, 2012. Son of the late Anna Margarite and <strong>Sellars Hall</strong>; brother of Doris Curry, Wanda Jackson, Nedra Miller, Marilyn Austin (Joseph), Elizabeth Waters (Harry), David Hall, Darryl Hall and the late Malcolm Hall; also a host of nieces, nephews, and friends. A Memorial…</p>
<p>RONALD "GEORGE" HALL</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1044977026?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1044977026?profile=original" width="100"/></a><br/>Age 87, of the Hill District. Passed away suddenly on July 23, 2012. Son of the late Anna Margarite and <strong>Sellars Hall</strong>; brother of Doris Curry, Wanda Jackson, Nedra Miller, Marilyn Austin (Joseph), Elizabeth Waters (Harry), David Hall, Darryl Hall and the late Malcolm Hall; also a host of nieces, nephews, and friends. A Memorial Service to celebrate his life will be held on Thursday, Aug. 2, 2012 at 1 p.m. SAMUEL J. JONES FUNERAL HOME. The family will receive friends one hour prior to the service from 12 p.m. until time of service at 1 p.m. <br/>Send condolences at post-gazette.com/gb<br/><br/></p>