In a seven-decade career, he composed such jazz standards as “I Remember Clifford,” “Along Came Betty” and “Whisper Not.”
By Matt Schudel, The Washington PostBenny Golson speaks at the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Awards Ceremony and Concert held in New York, Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2011.
His best-known tune was “I Remember Clifford,” a tribute to trumpeter Clifford Brown, a friend and onetime bandmate who died, at 25, in a car accident in 1956. Mr. Golson, then on tour with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie’s band in California, spent two weeks crafting the poignant, slow-moving melody, which evokes both sadness and the buoyant tone of Brown’s trumpet.
Blakey gave Mr. Golson a bandstand lesson that he never forgot, playing loud rolls or shots on the drums during Mr. Golson’s sax solos. Blakey was still skeptical, but Mr. Golson persuaded him to try out the tune at Small’s Paradise, a crowded club in Harlem. Mr. Golson studied classical composers - “I’ve always loved melody. My heroes are Puccini, Brahms, Chopin and Duke Ellington” - and stopped playing the saxophone for 12 years. When he picked up the instrument again in the mid-1970s, Mr. Golson found that he could no longer play.
Several uncles and aunts were musical, and young Bennie - who later legally changed the spelling of his name to Benny - began taking piano lessons at 9. When he was 14, he saw Lionel Hampton’s band, featuring Arnett Cobb on tenor saxophone, at Philadelphia’s Earle Theater.
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