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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Jazz Drummer Elvin Ray Jones Dies at 76
NEW YORK - Elvin Ray Jones, a renowned jazz drummer and member of John Coltrane's quartet who also played alongside Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, died Tuesday. He was 76. Jones died of heart failure in an Englewood, N.J., hospital, said his wife of 38 years, Keiko Jones.
"He's happy. No more suffering," said Keiko Jones. "He's been fighting for so long."
Jones, called by Life magazine "the world's greatest rhythmic drummer," was born in Pontiac, Mich., one of ten children. He had two musician brothers: Hank, a jazz pianist, and Thad, a trumpet and flugelhorn player.
Jones entered the Detroit jazz scene in the late 1940s after touring as a stagehand with the Army Special Services show Operation Happiness.
After a brief gig at the Detroit club Grand River Street, he went to work at another club, backing up such jazz greats as Parker, Davis and Wardell Grey.
Jones came to New York in 1955 for an unsuccessful audition for the Benny Goodman band but stayed in the city, joining Charlie Mingus' band and making a record called "J is Jazz." In 1960, he became a member of John Coltrane's quartet.
Jones, with his rhythmic, innovative style, became one of jazz's most famous drummers under Coltrane. He can be heard on Coltrane's "A love Supreme" and "Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard."
After leaving the Coltrane quartet, Jones briefly played with Duke Ellington and formed the Elvin Jones' Jazz Machine. He put out several solo albums and continued to tour, including last month in Oakland, Calif., Keiko Jones said.
Besides his wife, Jones is survived by a son and a daughter.
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Sad news. I saw him play twice. Charlie will have a bad day  |
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| mac_daddy |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Blues Icon `Gatemouth' Moore Dies at 90
YAZOO CITY, Miss. - Blues artist Arnold "Gatemouth" Moore, who gave up the blues and turned to preaching, died Wednesday at Kings Daughters Hospital in Yazoo City after a long illness. He was 90.
At the time of his death, Moore was pastor of the Lintonia A.M.E. Church in Yazoo City.
He was born Arnold Dwight Moore on Nov. 8, 1913, in Topeka, Kan. He claimed he earned the nickname "Gatemouth" because of his loud singing and speaking voice. He graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis in 1938.
At the age of 16, Moore went to Kansas City, where he sang with the bands of Bennie Moten, Tommy Douglas and Walter Barnes. Moore was one of the few survivors of the infamous "Natchez Rhythm Club Fire" in 1940 in which over 150 died. Other member of his band died in the fire.
In 1941 he returned to Kansas City where he recorded his first record and wrote such songs as "Somebody's Got To Go," "I Ain't Mad at You Pretty Baby" and "Did You Ever Love A Woman?", which was recorded by B.B. King and Rufus Thomas.
He was the first blues singer to sing at Carnegie Hall, according to a resolution recognizing him at the Mississippi Legislature this year.
While performing in Chicago in 1949, he turned to gospel music and was ordained was at the First Church of Deliverance in Chicago with the Rev. Clarence Cobbs as pastor.
Moore served his first church in Chicago and joined WDIA radio station where he was the station's first religious disc jockey. He also worked for a religious station in Birmingham, Ala., returning to Chicago in 1957 for gospel programs on television and radio.
He recorded gospel and blues albums into the 1970s. He recorded his last record in 1977 under as "Great R&B Oldies" on Johnny Otis ' Blues Spectrum label. This was a blues release as Gatemouth recut some classics and cut some new ones including a salute to his old stomping grounds on "Beale Street Ain't Beale Street No More."
He was also featured in Martin Scorsese 's blues series singing that song as he strolled down the famous street.
In recent years, Moore occasionally played festivals and kept busy with his duties as church pastor.
Funeral arrangements were incomplete.
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CHAT
ROOM aka THE FUN HOUSE] [
RESTROOMS]