Itaru Oki was a Japanese jazz trumpeter and flugelhornist.
He was part of the French Opération Rhino collective and as such appeared on the famous Nurse with Wound list.
Tag Archives: jazz
RIP Hal Singer (1919-2020)
Hal Singer was an American R&B and jazz bandleader and saxophonist. He was the last surviving male survivor of the Tulsa race massacre.
He is known for such instrumentals as “Malcolm X” on the album Paris Soul Food (1969), produced by Bernard Estardy.
If you are a melomaniac, I’d check the latter’s “Ombilic Contact” en “Cha Tatch Ka”.
RIP Salome Bey (1939 – 2020)
Salome Bey was an American-born Canadian composer and singer.
She did solo work but in my book she is famous for having part in an unforgettable version of “Round Midnight” (1944) with the unforgettable lines
“But it really gets bad,
’round midnight.”
She did that version with her brother Andy and her sister Geraldine, both of whom survive her.
RIP Bob Northern (1934 – 2020)
Bob Northern was an American jazz French hornist.
Sound Awareness (1972) was one of the nine records David Toop recently posted on his Facebook as documents from the audio recorded stage of an internal war of 400plus years (in which many were complicit).
RIP Jimmy Cobb (1929 – 2020)
Jimmy Cobb was an American jazz drummer best known for his work with Miles Davis, and perhaps most famously so for being the drummer on Kind of Blue (1959).
RIP Henry Grimes and Giuseppi Logan (1935 – 2020)
Henry Grimes was an American jazz musician working in the free jazz idiom.
Giuseppi Logan American jazz musician working in the free jazz idiom.
Also, both were tortured artists.
I’ve always had a fascination with free jazz which veers from awe to disbelief to a mild form of even scorn.
It’s as if free jazz is the locus of strife between my need for entertainment and intellectualism.
This love–hate relationship appears to be my variety of the wild orchids and Trotsky.
But jazz itself was also that locus of strife.
Because it was somewhere in the 1940s that jazz begot bebop, and the road that had been jazz permanently forked.
One side continued its entertainment course.
Another side explored the realm of high art.
So as jazz became less popular, it became more highbrow.
Behind the scenes, rock and roll and R&B had been waiting impatiently to fill this entertainment void.
RIP Onaje Allan Gumbs (1949 – 2020)
Onaje Allan Gumbs was an American pianist, best-known for having played with the fine fleur of American jazz.
As I prefer all roads to lead to Rome, and Rome is my book, the death of Onaje Allan Gumbs must inevitably lead to Strata-East Records, more specifically to Charles Sullivan’s album Genesis (1974) on which mister Gumbs played piano.
RIP Mike Longo (1937 – 2020)
Another COVID-19 victim.
Mike Longo was an American jazz pianist known for the composition “Like a Thief In the Night” (1974).
RIP McCoy Tyner (1938 – 2020)
McCoy Tyner was an American jazz pianist.
What links McCoy Tyner to the Jahsonic 1000?
Let me tell you.
Among Tyner’s most critically acclaimed albums is Trident (1975).
On that Trident album there is a musical composition called “Impressions” which features a bassline by Ron Carter which was sampled throughout the “The Choice Is Yours (Revisited)” (1991) by Black Sheep. The sample is well-known in hip hop midst because in fact it is the spine of that song. It is also in the Jahsonic 1000.
The song “Impressions” is an interpretation of Coltrane’s composition Impressions (1962).
RIP Lyle Mays (1953 – 2020)
Lyle Mays was an American musician.
He shares writing credits on “This Is Not America” (1985)
I saw the film that composition stems from. I saw that film when it came out and never forgot the music. I later bought the twelve inch. I sold my collection of records when I moved into my current apartment in 2015.