Buddy Collette
Encyclopedia
William Marcel "Buddy" Collette (August 6, 1921 – September 19, 2010) was an American tenor saxophonist, flautist
, and clarinetist. He was highly influential in the West coast jazz
and West Coast blues
mediums, also collaborating with saxophonist Dexter Gordon
, drummer
Chico Hamilton
, and his lifelong friend, bassist
Charles Mingus
.
on trombone and Charles Mingus
on bass. At 17 he started playing professionally. After serving as a U.S. Navy band leader, he played with the Stars of Swing (featuring Woodman, Mingus and Lucky Thompson
). Along with saxophonist Dexter Gordon bassist Charles Mingus, and drummer Chico Hamilton, he helped keep bebop alive in Los Angeles' historic Central Avenue neighborhood. In the early 1950s he worked as a studio musician and performed on Groucho Marx
's television program, You Bet Your Life
.
In 1955, he became a founding member of Chico Hamilton's quintet. The unusually instrumented quintet also featured guitarist Jim Hall
and cellist (and pianist) Fred Katz
, and performed chamber jazz
. A year later, Collette recorded Man of Many Parts, his first album as a bandleader.
Unlike other influential West Coast players Collette stayed in Los Angeles, recorded with his quintet, and became a noteworthy educator. His students included such renowned musicians as Eric Dolphy
, Charles Lloyd
, Frank Morgan
, Sonny Criss
, and James Newton
.
In 1996, the Library of Congress
commissioned Collette to write and perform a special big band concert to highlight his long career.
Although a stroke in 1998 had rendered him unable to continue performing, Collette remained active in jazz education, responsible for founding numerous programs for children in the Los Angeles area. Together with Steven Isoardi he wrote an autobiography titled Jazz Generations: A Life in American Music and Society (Bayou 2000).
Collette was a pioneer civil rights
activist, working to desegregate the musicians union of Los Angeles. Gerald Wilson
, Frank Sinatra
, Nat 'King' Cole
, and saxophonist Benny Carter
were some of his early supporters. He also helped organize a concert and rally protesting government repression of the African American singer, actor, and political activist Paul Robeson
.
Died in Los Angeles California.
With Blue Mitchell
With Gábor Szabó
and Bob Thiele
With The Three Sounds
Flautist
A flautist or flutist is a musician who plays an instrument in the flute family. See List of flautists.The choice of "flautist" versus "flutist" is the source of dispute among players of the instrument...
, and clarinetist. He was highly influential in the West coast jazz
West coast jazz
West Coast jazz refers to various styles of jazz music that developed around Los Angeles and San Francisco during the 1950s. West Coast jazz is often seen as a sub-genre of cool jazz, which featured a less frenetic, calmer style than bebop or hard bop. The music tended to be more heavily arranged,...
and West Coast blues
West Coast blues
The West Coast blues is a type of blues music characterized by jazz and jump blues influences, strong piano-dominated sounds and jazzy guitar solos, which originated from Texas blues players relocated to California in the 1940s...
mediums, also collaborating with saxophonist Dexter Gordon
Dexter Gordon
Dexter Gordon was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and an Academy Award-nominated actor . He is regarded as one of the first and most important musicians to adapt the bebop musical language of people like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell to the tenor saxophone...
, drummer
Drummer
A drummer is a musician who is capable of playing drums, which includes but is not limited to a drum kit and accessory based hardware which includes an assortment of pedals and standing support mechanisms, marching percussion and/or any musical instrument that is struck within the context of a...
Chico Hamilton
Chico Hamilton
Chico Hamilton , is an American jazz drummer and bandleader.-Early life through 1960s:Hamilton was born in Los Angeles, California. He had a fast-track musical education in a band with Charles Mingus, Illinois Jacquet, Ernie Royal, Dexter Gordon, Buddy Collette and Jack Kelso...
, and his lifelong friend, bassist
Bassist
A bass player, or bassist is a musician who plays a bass instrument such as a double bass, bass guitar, keyboard bass or a low brass instrument such as a tuba or sousaphone. Different musical genres tend to be associated with one or more of these instruments...
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
.
Biography
Collette took up the alto saxophone at age 12 and led his first group, which included Britt WoodmanBritt Woodman
Britt Woodman was a jazz trombonist. He is perhaps best known for his work with Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus....
on trombone and Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
on bass. At 17 he started playing professionally. After serving as a U.S. Navy band leader, he played with the Stars of Swing (featuring Woodman, Mingus and Lucky Thompson
Lucky Thompson
Eli "Lucky" Thompson was a United States jazz tenor and soprano saxophonist...
). Along with saxophonist Dexter Gordon bassist Charles Mingus, and drummer Chico Hamilton, he helped keep bebop alive in Los Angeles' historic Central Avenue neighborhood. In the early 1950s he worked as a studio musician and performed on Groucho Marx
Groucho Marx
Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...
's television program, You Bet Your Life
You Bet Your Life
You Bet Your Life is an American quiz show that aired on both radio and television. The original and best-known version was hosted by Groucho Marx of the Marx Brothers, with announcer and assistant George Fenneman. The show debuted on ABC Radio in October 1947, then moved to CBS Radio in September...
.
In 1955, he became a founding member of Chico Hamilton's quintet. The unusually instrumented quintet also featured guitarist Jim Hall
Jim Hall (musician)
James Stanley Hall is an American jazz guitarist.-Biography:Educated at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Hall moved to Los Angeles where he began to attract national, and then international, attention in the late 1950s...
and cellist (and pianist) Fred Katz
Fred Katz (cellist)
Fred Katz is an American cellist and composer. He is notable as one of the first jazz musicians to establish the cello as a viable improvising solo instrument. Katz has been described in CODA magazine as "the first real jazz cellist." Cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm Fred Katz (born February 25, 1919 in...
, and performed chamber jazz
Chamber jazz
Chamber jazz is a genre of jazz based around small, acoustic-based ensembles where group interplay is important. It is influenced aesthetically by musical neoclassicism and is often influenced by classical forms of non-Western music. That stated in many cases the influence is traditional Celtic...
. A year later, Collette recorded Man of Many Parts, his first album as a bandleader.
Unlike other influential West Coast players Collette stayed in Los Angeles, recorded with his quintet, and became a noteworthy educator. His students included such renowned musicians as Eric Dolphy
Eric Dolphy
Eric Allan Dolphy was an American jazz alto saxophonist, flutist, and bass clarinetist. On a few occasions he also played the clarinet and baritone saxophone. Dolphy was one of several multi-instrumentalists to gain prominence in the 1960s...
, Charles Lloyd
Charles Lloyd
Charles Lloyd is an American jazz musician. Though he primarily plays tenor saxophone and flute, he has also occasionally recorded on alto saxophone and more exotic reed instruments which include the Hungarian tárogató. Lloyd's saxophone playing is often characterized as an individualized,...
, Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of the title character in the film The Wizard of Oz.-Early life:...
, Sonny Criss
Sonny Criss
William "Sonny" Criss was an American jazz musician.An alto saxophonist of prominence during the bebop era of jazz, he was one of many players influenced by Charlie Parker.-Biography:...
, and James Newton
James Newton
James W. Newton is an American jazz flautist, composer, and conductor.-Biography:From his earliest years, James Newton grew up immersed in the sounds of African American music, including urban blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel. In his early teens he played electric bass guitar, alto saxophone,...
.
In 1996, the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
commissioned Collette to write and perform a special big band concert to highlight his long career.
Although a stroke in 1998 had rendered him unable to continue performing, Collette remained active in jazz education, responsible for founding numerous programs for children in the Los Angeles area. Together with Steven Isoardi he wrote an autobiography titled Jazz Generations: A Life in American Music and Society (Bayou 2000).
Collette was a pioneer civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
activist, working to desegregate the musicians union of Los Angeles. Gerald Wilson
Gerald Wilson
Gerald Stanley Wilson is an American jazz trumpeter, big band bandleader, composer/arranger, 8 time Grammy nominee, and educator. He has been based in Los Angeles since the early 1940s....
, Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, Nat 'King' Cole
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...
, and saxophonist Benny Carter
Benny Carter
Bennett Lester Carter was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He was a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and was recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him King...
were some of his early supporters. He also helped organize a concert and rally protesting government repression of the African American singer, actor, and political activist Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
.
Died in Los Angeles California.
As sideman
With Brass FeverBrass Fever
Brass Fever was an American jazz musical ensemble, which recorded two albums for Impulse! Records. Consisting of both session musicians and leaders such as Shelly Manne, their two albums covered jazz and R&B genres....
- Time is Running Out (Impulse!, 1976)
With Blue Mitchell
Blue Mitchell
Richard Allen Mitchell was an American jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, rock, and funk trumpeter, known for many albums recorded as leader and sideman for Riverside, Blue Note and then Mainstream Records.-Biography:...
- Bantu VillageBantu VillageBantu Village is an album by American trumpeter Blue Mitchell which features arrangements by Monk Higgins recorded and released on the Blue Note label in 1969.-Reception:The Allmusic review awarded the album 4 stars....
(1969)
With Gábor Szabó
Gábor Szabó
Gábor Szabó was a Hungarian jazz guitarist, famous for mixing jazz, pop-rock and his native Hungarian music.-Biography:...
and Bob Thiele
Bob Thiele
Bob Thiele was an American record producer who worked on countless classic jazz albums and record labels.-Biography:...
- Light My FireLight My Fire (Gábor Szabó album)Light My Fire is an album by Hungarian jazz guitarist Gábor Szabó and American record producer Bob Thiele featuring performances recorded in 1967 for the Impulse! label.-Reception:...
(Impulse!, 1967)
With The Three Sounds
The Three Sounds
The Three Sounds were an American jazz trio that formed in 1956 and disbanded in 1973. The trio played and recorded with Lester Young, Lou Donaldson, Nat Adderley, Johnny Griffin, Anita O'Day, Bucky Pizzarelli, Stanley Turrentine and Sonny Stitt among others.The band formed in Benton Harbor,...
- Soul SymphonySoul SymphonySoul Symphony is the final album by jazz group The Three Sounds featuring performances with an orchestra arranged and conducted by Monk Higgins recorded in 1969 and released on the Blue Note label.-Reception:...
(Blue Note, 1969) - Persistent Percussion (1960, Kent Records, KST 500)