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Benny Golson, master of hard-bop, jazz legend, died on September 21, 2024.
Founder along with Art Farmer of the group “The Jazztet”, Benny Golson has continued offering concerts until he was 90 years old.
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Benny Golson
It is always sad to say goodbye to the greatest ones. was announced . And so it is, as three days ago the death of Benny Golson , one of the most beloved tenor saxophones and one of the most sought-after composers in the world of jazz.
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.
Golson, who has died at the age of 95 in his home in Manhattan, shone especially with the emergence of hard-bop, being, together with Art Farmer , the co-founder of The Jazztet , one of the most important bands of the movement and which combined improvisation with sophisticated arrangements. Among other merits, we owe this group the launch of musicians such as McCoy Tyner, Grachan Moncur III or Curtis Fuller.
Several of his compositions are considered jazz standards, including “I Remember Clifford” (written in memory of trumpeter Clifford Brown, shortly after he died in a car accident in 1956), “Whisper Not”, “Blues March” or “Killer Joe” , which would end up being covered with great success by Quincy Jones. It is also worth remembering “Stablements,” a song he composed for Miles Davis , after John Coltrane told him that the famous trumpeter was looking for new material.
As a performer, Golson had a rounded sound and style that was rooted in the sound of Coleman Hawkins and other pre-bebop saxophonists. During his time with the Jazz Messengers, and later in The Jazztet, his style evolved into a more dynamic and energetic sound, as precisely dictated by the canons of hard bop.
A traditionalist at heart, Golson was known for “belittling” avant-garde jazz and musicians who, in his opinion, valued fireworks more than style. “There is a uniformity about them,” he once said, referring to pyrotechnicians. “In the old days, if you heard Ben Webster, Don Byas or Dexter Gordon, it only took a few bars for you to immediately know who it was.”
Bennie (later changed to Benny) Golson was born on January 25, 1929 in Philadelphia. His father, also named Bennie, worked for the National Biscuit Company; His mother, Celedia, was a seamstress in a factory, and yet his childhood took place in a “musical” home. He began playing piano at age 9, but switched to sax at age 14 after seeing a powerful performance by energetic Texas tenor saxophonist Arnett Cobb with Lionel Hampton’s big band at Philadelphia’s Earle Theater.
Shortly after. He began playing with local musicians who would soon become great references in the history of jazz, among them a certain John Coltrane, drummer Philly Joe Jones and the Heath brothers (Jimmy, Percy and Albert “Tootie”). His training as a saxophonist and arranger was completed in Lionel Hampton’s band, but also in those of Earl Bostic, Tadd Dameron and Dizzy Gillespie. In 1958, the same year he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, he married Bobbie Hurd.
It was in 1959 when he founded Jazztet, but already in the mid-60s and partly because the audience began to move away from jazz in favor of other styles, the group ended up dissolving and Golson moved to Los Angeles, where, following the example of Quincy Jones, he will spend the next decade composing music for film and television (Mission Impossible, MASH…).
Upon his return to New York in 1982, he would get his group back on track, release six highly successful albums, and spend much of the decade holding concerts virtually all over the world. Golson continued to tour into his 90s and racked up all sorts of awards and recognitions, and in 1996 the Benny Golson Jazz Master Award was launched at Howard University.
And finally, two curiosities. Until a few days ago, Benny Golson was one of two people (the other is Sonny Rollins) who in 2024 survived Art Kane’s famous 1958 photograph, “A Great Day in Harlem.”
The other, if you remember the movie “The Terminal” (Steven Spielberg, 2004), we find Tom Hanks playing a man from Eastern Europe who was on his way to New York to meet Golson, the only musician portrayed in the film. photo from 1958 whose autograph his father had not gotten before he died; However, he ends up stranded in a terminal at Kennedy Airport when he is denied entry to the US. Benny Golson plays himself in the film, when Hanks finally manages to reach New York and locates him at a club.
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