Benny Golson (January 25, 1929 – September 21, 2024) was an American bebop and hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and arranger. He came to prominence with the big bands of Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie, more as a writer than a performer, before launching his solo career. Golson was known for co-founding and co-leading The Jazztet with trumpeter Art Farmer in 1959. From the late 1960s through the 1970s Golson was in demand as an arranger for film and television and thus was less active as a performer, but he and Farmer re-formed the Jazztet in 1982.
Many of Golson's compositions have become jazz standards, including "I Remember Clifford", "Blues March", "Stablemates", "Whisper Not", "Along Came Betty", and "Killer Joe". He is regarded as "one of the most significant contributors" to the development of hard bop jazz, and was a recipient of a Grammy Trustees Award in 2021.
From 1953 to 1959, Golson played with Dameron's band and then with the bands of Lionel Hampton, Johnny Hodges, Earl Bostic, Dizzy Gillespie, and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, with whom he recorded the classic Moanin' in 1958.
Golson was working with the Lionel Hampton band at the Apollo Theater in Harlem in 1956 when he learned that Clifford Brown, a noted and well-liked jazz trumpeter who had done a stint with him in Dameron's band, had died in a car accident. Golson was so moved by the event that he composed the threnody "I Remember Clifford", as a tribute to a fellow musician and friend.
In addition to "I Remember Clifford", many of Golson's other compositions have become . Songs such as "Stablemates", "Killer Joe", "Whisper Not", "Along Came Betty", and "Are You Real?", have been performed and recorded numerous times by many musicians.Bailey, Phil and Hancock, Benny (1979) Benny Golson: Eight Jazz Classics, p. iii. Jamey Aebersold Jazz.
From 1959 to 1962, Golson co-led the Jazztet with Art Farmer, mainly playing his own compositions. Golson then left jazz to concentrate on studio and orchestral work for 12 years. During this time, he composed music for such television shows as Mannix, Ironside, Room 222, M*A*S*H, The Partridge Family and . He also formulated and conducted arrangements to various recordings, such as Eric Is Here, a 1967 album by Eric Burdon, which features five of Golson's arrangements, conducted by Golson. Credits – Eric Is Here ; Discogs.com. Retrieved July 8, 2017.
During the mid-1970s, Golson returned to jazz playing and recording. Critic Scott Yanow of AllMusic wrote that Golson's sax style underwent a major shift with his performing comeback, more resembling avant-garde Archie Shepp than the swing-era Don Byas influence of Golson's youth.Yanow, Scott. AllMusic biography , accessed April 6, 2019 He made a successful second career playing in clubs and on festivals internationally. In 1982, Golson re-organized the Jazztet with Farmer.Feather, Leonard & Gitler, Ira (2007) The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz, p. 261. Oxford University Press.
Golson is central to the plot of the 2004 Steven Spielberg movie The Terminal, and makes a cameo appearance as himself. In the film, main character Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks) has the autographs of everyone who appears in A Great Day in Harlem, a famous 1958 photo of prominent jazz musicians, except Golson's; he has traveled to the US from Europe to obtain this final signature. Pianist Ray Bryant's song "Something in B-Flat," which was included on Golson's debut album as a leader, Benny Golson's New York Scene, can be heard during a scene where Viktor is painting and redecorating part of an airport terminal; in a later scene, Golson's band performs "Killer Joe". The album Terminal 1 was released by Golson shortly after the film, as a "homage to Steven Spielberg".
Golson died, following a short illness, at his home in Manhattan, New York, on September 21, 2024, at the age of 95.
In 1999, Golson was awarded an honorary doctorate of music from Berklee College of Music.
In October 2007, Golson received the Mellon Living Legend Legacy Award, presented by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation at a ceremony at the Kennedy Center. Additionally, during the same month, he won the University of Pittsburgh International Academy of Jazz Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award at the university's 37th Annual Jazz Concert in the Carnegie Music Hall.
In November 2009, Golson was inducted into the International Academy of Jazz Hall of Fame, during a performance at the University of Pittsburgh's annual jazz seminar and concert.
He received the Grammy Trustees Award in 2021.
The Howard University Jazz Studies program created a prestigious award in his honor called the "Benny Golson Jazz Master Award" in 1996. Many distinguished jazz artists have received this award.
benny-golson01.jpg benny-golson02.jpg benny-golson03.jpg benny-golson05.jpg
|
|