Sparkle Moore (November 6, 1936 in Omaha, Nebraska, United States) is an American rockabilly singer who was influential as a pioneer of female rockabilly.
Sparkle Moore was born Barbara Morgan in Omaha, Nebraska. She grew up loving music and had diverse influences. She developed a particular affinity for the sound of the Hawaiian steel guitar and learned to play the instrument herself, but she also listened to country, gospel, vaudeville. She discovered rock and roll unexpectedly when she saw Bill Haley perform at a country music show in the mid 1950s. She began playing rockabilly at venues around Omaha by 1955.
Moore was discovered by a local DJ, Grahame “Crackers” Richards, who became her manager. She adopted the stage name “Sparkle Moore” because her signature stage look—a blonde pompadour—resembled the character Sparkle Plenty in the Dick Tracy comics. Her flashy jackets earned mentions in the press: teen magazine Dig declared that Moore bore “an amazing resemblance to the late James Dean…Presley’s style and Dean’s looks.” Moore recalls that she simply dressed like the male rockabilly musicians she was influenced by.
Through Richards, Moore secured an opportunity record for Cincinnati-based label Fraternity. The single the label put out for her in 1956 includes two songs she wrote: “Rock a Bop” and “Skull and Crossbones.” A second single followed the next year. Though still 19 years old she toured widely to promote the records, even opening for Gene Vincent at the peak of his fame.
A planned appearance on radio's Grand Ol' Opry was cancelled due to a bout with laryngitis, however. She also remained active as a songwriter; by 1957, she had about forty song-writing credits to her name. The sultry yet sinister "Killer" followed in 1957, but soon after Moore learned she was pregnant and abruptly quit performing to focus on raising a family.
No subsequent recordings are known to exist, although an unreleased Fraternity ballad called "Flower of My Heart" subsequently appeared on several compilations, most notable among them 2004's Good Girls Gone Bad: Weird, Wild & Wanted, the first to assemble her complete recorded output in one disc (including a handful of alternate takes). She has kept a very low-key media profile and refused most requests for interviews since retiring from the spotlight, yet remains a strong favourite with rockabilly fans.
In 2010, she was inducted into the Iowa Rock n Roll Hall of Fame for the inspiration she provided to rockabilly and early female rock and roll musicians. Also in 2010, she released a home-produced album called “Spark-A-Billy” that proved that the passing of 55 years hasn’t rendered her musical talents any less captivating.
Charles Edward Bradley (November 5, 1948 – September 23, 2017) was an American funk and soul singer. After years of obscurity and a part-time music career, Bradley came to prominence in the early 2000s. His performances and recording style were consistent with the revivalist approach of his main label Daptone Records, celebrating the feel of funk and soul from the 1960s and 1970s. One review said he "echoes the evocative delivery of Otis Redding".
Abandoned by his mother at eight months of age, Bradley was raised by his maternal grandmother in Gainesville, Florida. At age eight, his mother returned, and took him to live with her in Brooklyn, New York. In 1962, his sister took him to the Apollo Theater to see James Brown perform. Bradley was so inspired by the performance that he began to practice mimicking Brown's style of singing and stage mannerisms at home. When he was fourteen, Bradley ran away from home to escape poor living conditions—his bedroom was in a basement with a sand floor—and lived on the streets during the day and slept nights in subway cars for two years.
Later, he enlisted in Job Corps which eventually led him to Bar Harbor, Maine to train as a chef. A co-worker told him he looked like James Brown and asked if he could sing; Bradley overcame his stage fright (when a crew member pushed him through the curtains onto the stage) and performed five or six times with a band. His bandmates were later drafted into the Vietnam War, and the act never re-formed.
Bradley worked in Maine as a cook for ten years, and then decided to head west, hitchhiking across the country. He lived in upstate New York, Seattle, Canada and Alaska before settling in California in 1977. There, Bradley worked odd jobs and played small shows for 20 years. He earned extra money doing James Brown performances, where he used such stage names as the Screaming Eagle of Soul, Black Velvet and even James Brown Jr.
In the mid-1990s, Bradley's mother called him and asked him to move back in with her in Brooklyn so she could get to know him. It was there he began making a living moonlighting as a James Brown impersonator in local clubs under the name Black Velvet. During this time, Bradley experienced more difficulties, including almost dying in a hospital after having an allergic reaction to penicillin, and, in a separate episode, awakening at his mother's house to a commotion as police and ambulances were arriving to the scene of his brother's murder close by.
While performing as Black Velvet, he was eventually discovered by Gabriel Roth (better known as Bosco Mann), a co-founder of Daptone Records. Roth introduced Bradley to his future producer, Daptone artist Tom Brenneck (then the songwriter and guitarist for The Bullets, and later for Menahan Street Band) who invited Bradley to his band's rehearsal. Bradley asked that the band simply perform while he made up lyrics on the spot. After writing several songs, Daptone released some of these initial recordings on vinyl starting in 2002. Brenneck and Bradley chose ten of these recordings to be released as Bradley's debut album No Time for Dreaming in 2011. It was named one of Rolling Stone magazine's best albums of the year.
In the spring of 2012, Charles Bradley: Soul of America, a documentary directed by Poull Brien, debuted at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Brien first met Bradley when he directed the music video for "The World (Is Going Up In Flames)". This feature film told Bradley's story from his childhood in Florida, to the days of homelessness and heartache, then later his gigs as Black Velvet, and finally ended with him touring and recording at Daptone Records. The film included his performance at festivals around the world.
Bradley's second album, Victim of Love came out on April 2, 2013. Speaking to the BBC's Craig Charles show in 2013, Bradley spoke about his difficult journey to stardom. "I've been out there, ever since I was 16, doing music and searching for it, but I just never could find the people that really believed in me. It took a long time coming, but God, I'm glad it's here," he said. But he admitted: "I just wish I'd have gotten my break when I was in my 20s."
Bradley's third album, Changes, was released on April 1, 2016, and featured a cover of the Black Sabbath song "Changes" along with the original song "Change for the World", which became popularized shortly after his death as the theme for the first three seasons of the Netflix animated comedy series Big Mouth. "Changes" was widely praised and led to numerous mainstream television appearances, including a performance on "CBS This Morning Saturday" that earned an EMMY nomination for outstanding on-camera musical performance in a daytime program. He continued to perform live, often together with other Daptone artists.
In August 2016, Bradley fell ill and cancelled a Canadian tour and his appearance at the Cambridge Folk Festival due to take place on July 30. Bradley died on September 23, 2017, of stomach and liver cancer in Brooklyn, New York, at the age of 68. He was surrounded by family and friends, including members of all the bands he worked closely with. Since his death Bradley has featured on several archive recordings, including a live-recording from the Apollo Theatre, as part of the Daptone Super Soul Revue release.
Black Velvet was his fourth and final studio album released on 9 November 2018. The album release was preceded by two singles, "Can't Fight the Feeling" and "I Feel a Change". The album consists of songs originally recorded for Bradley's three previous studio albums, and was compiled by producer Thomas Brenneck after Bradley's death .Included are covers of "Stay Away" by Nirvana and "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young.
Willie Love Jr. (November 4, 1906 – August 19, 1953) was an American Delta blues pianist who was a familiar figure on the Memphis, West Memphis, and Mississippi Delta blues scenes.
Love was born in Duncan, Mississippi. Little is known of his youth only that he worked on his father's farm, was interested in music and at an early age and learned how to play the piano. He began his musical journey performing in juke joints and clubs in Clarksdale, Tunica and Belzoni throughout the Mississippi Delta, where his adeptness at both standard blues and boogie-woogie piano styles quickly earned him local renown. In 1935/36 he worked with Barber Parkers Silver Kings band, which often played in the dance halls of the Delta. In 1938 he left Parker and together with Pinetop Perkins played in clubs in Indianola also performing occasionally with Dr. Ross.
From 1940 he stopped playing as a soloist, staying until 1952, except for a short intermission in Greenville. It was here that he would become friendly with the harmonica player Sony Boy Williamson (Alex "Rice" Miller) and from 1942 he was a regular visitor to Helena, a little town where, as one of the King Biscuit Boys, he played in the King Biscuit Time programme on KFFA Radio. Up until 1946 he was also a member of The Three Aces (the other two were Barber Parker and G.P. Jackson), a very popular act at dance parties and juke joints. In 1946 Willie played with guitarist Elmore James and his friend Sonny Boy on Greenville's WVGM radio.
Alex "Rice" Miller
In 1948/49 Willie did a lot of work with Sonny Boy, Willie Nix and Joe Willie Wilkins as the Four Aces, at the same time playing clubs, including the Harlem Club and the 49 Club, with guitarist Little Bill and bassist Willie Dotson. In late 1949 Willie had his own Broadway Furniture Store Show on KWEM Radio in West Memphis. By 1950 he moved back with his wife to Greenville and played in the Silver Dollar Café. When Williamson recorded for Trumpet Records in March 1951, Love played the piano on the recordings. Trumpet's owner, Lillian McMurray, had Love return the following month and again in July 1951, when he recorded his best-known song, "Everybody's Fishing", which he wrote. Love played piano and sang, with guitar accompaniment by Elmore James and Joe Willie Wilkins. A studio session in December 1951 had Love backed by Little Milton (guitar), T.J. Green (fiddle), and Junior Blackman (drums). In his teenage years, Eddie Shaw played tenor saxophone with both Milton and Love.
Baby Boy Warren
In the best traditions of the blues, Willie Love was a very heavy drinker and this began to cause trouble as he also had domestic problems because he was always away from home. In 1952 his wife left him and Willie went to Detroit to play in the Harlem Inn with guitarist Baby Boy Warren. In January 1953 he returned to Jackson in very bad health and in April 1953, he recorded "Worried Blues" "Lonesome World Blues" and "Shout Brother Shout" which was to be his final session. All of Love's recordings under his own name appeared on the compilation album Greenville Smokin', issued in 2000.
After suffering the effects of years of heavy drinking, Love died of bronchopneumonia on August 19, 1953, in the Jackson Baptist Hospital, Mississippi, at the age of 46, cutting short a promising career. Though always surrounded by friends, Willie was quickly forgotten once dead, yet his legacy lies in his contributions to the Delta blues tradition, both as a collaborator and as a solo artist. His recordings showcase his expressive piano work and soulful vocals, cementing his place among the greats of Mississippi blues.
In 2017 the Killer Blues Headstone Project placed the headstone for Willie Love at Elmwood Cemetery in Jackson.
(Edited from Martin Van Olderen LP liner notes, Jazzapedia & Wikipedia) (Please note there seems to be only one known photograph of Willie Love so I have used others of musicians he worked with at the time)
Clarence Smith (born Clarence Edward Mauldin; November 3, 1940 – December 14, 2021), known as Sonny Rhodes, was an American blues singer and lap steel guitar player. He recorded over two hundred songs. "I'm what you call a self-proclaimed Disciple of the Blues!" said Rhodes about his years playing and singing for fans of blues around the world.
He was nominated 15 times for Blues Music Awards and won in the category 'Instrumentalist – Other' in 2011. Rhodes was born in Smithville, Texas on November 3, 1940, as the son of Emma Mauldin. He was orphaned as a baby and was adopted by sharecroppers Leroy and Julia Smith. He received his first guitar at the age of eight as a Christmas present and became serious about playing the blues at age 12. He credited his uncle as his source of inspiration.
Rhodes began performing around Smithville and nearby Austin in the late 1950s, while still in his teens. He listened a lot to T-Bone Walker when he was young. He acknowledged as influences the guitarists L.C. Robinson, Pee Wee Crayton and B.B. King and the singer Percy Mayfield. With his first band, Clarence Smith and the Daylighters, he played blues clubs in the Austin area until he joined the U.S. Navy after high school graduation.
In the Navy, he was stationed in California, where he worked for a while as a radio man and closed-circuit Navy ship disc jockey, telling off-color jokes in between the country and blues records he would spin for the entertainment of the sailors. Rhodes recorded a single, "I'll Never Let You Go When Something Is Wrong", for Domino Records in Austin in 1958. He also learned to play the bass guitar. He played bass accompanying the guitarists Freddie King and Albert Collins.
After his stint in the Navy, in his mid-20s, Rhodes returned to California and lived in Fresno for a few years before signing a recording contract with Galaxy Records in Oakland. He recorded a single, "I Don't Love You No More", in 1966 and another single for Galaxy in 1967, changing his stage name from Clarence Smith to Sonny Rhodes at that time. Frustrated with the San Francisco Bay area record companies, he recorded "Cigarette Blues" on his own label, Rhodes-Way Records, in 1978.
Rhodes toured Europe in 1976 and released numerous recordings on European labels, including I Don't Want My Blues Colored Bright and the live album In Europe. In 1985, he released Just Blues on Rhodes-Way. In the late 1980s, he recorded Disciple of the Blues, released by Ichiban Records in 1991, and Living Too Close to the Edge, released in 1992.
He later moved to Kingsnake Records, releasing several albums including The Blues Is My Best Friend (1994) and Out of Control (1995), and touring widely in the US, Canada and Europe. In 2008, he released I'm Back Again. His last release, The Essential Sonny Rhodes – Songs & Stories, on Need To Know Music is a retrospective of his career to date, featuring Rich Kirch, Barry Goldberg, Frank Howard Swart and Dawn Richardson. The record was produced by Brian Brinkerhoff and Swart.
By 2018 at the age of 78 years old Sonny was still performing 200 shows a year, slowing down only slightly despite his increasing frailty. He died on December 14, 2021, at the age of 81.
Phil Woods (November 2, 1931 – September 29, 2015 was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinettist, bandleader, and composer.
Born Philip Wells Woods in Springfield, Massachusetts, Woods began playing the saxophone at the age of 12, and was at first an admirer of the swing altoists Benny Carter and Johnny Hodges. He had a few private lessons in his mid-teens with the pianist Lennie Tristano, the architect of a new jazz style that presented a more measured alternative to bebop’s full-on intensity, and subsequently came to be labelled the Cool School. But Woods was too visceral a performer to turn down the temperature on his sound, and he remained closer to the direct and explicitly communicative swing of a rootsier kind of jazz.
He studied music formally, first at the Manhattan School of Music, New York, from 1948, then at the Juilliard School, where he majored in clarinet, graduating in 1952 – an education that made him a popular sideman for his sight-reading skills. Woods preferred the two-sax front line adopted by Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt and others to the classic 40s sax/trumpet bop ensemble, although his debut album as a leader, Pot Pie (1954), did pair him with the bright-toned trumpeter Jon Eardley. He already played in the millionaire Charlie Barnet’s vivacious orchestra, but by in 1955-6 he worked with the bop pianist George Wallington, trumpeter Kenny Dorham and Frederich Gulda. Woods then began working with Dizzy Gillespie, whose globetrotting career as a jazz ambassador for America was beginning to accelerate – the assignment took Woods to South America and the near east.
For the next decade he led a number of small jazz groups, including a quintet with Gene Quill. He also performed in Buddy Rich's band, toured Europe with Quincy Jones (1959-60) and the USSR with Benny Goodman (1962), and worked as a studio musician, playing various reed instruments for recording sessions, television, films and advertising jingles. During the summers from 1964 to 1967 he taught at the Ramblerny performing arts camp in New Hope, Pennsylvania. In March 1968 Woods moved to France, which marked his return to playing small-group jazz. In Paris that same year he formed a quartet called the European Rhythm Machine with player Henri Texier, and the drummer Daniel Humair. The group remained intact until 1972, when Woods organized an experimental electronic quartet in Los Angeles. This was given a cold reception and soon disbanded.
Woods then moved to the East Coast, and in October 1973 formed an outstanding acoustic jazz group with Mike Melillo, Steve Gilmore, and Bill Goodwin. With this ensemble he won acclaim as the finest alto saxophonist in mainstream jazz, a reputation confirmed by his performances on Images(1975 with Michel Legrand), Live from the Showboat (1976) and I love you just the way you are (1977 with singer Billy Joel, all of which he received Grammy awards). With Hal Galper replacing Melillo (1981) and Tom Harrell added to the group (1983), Woods continued to tour internationally and record into the late 1980's. He began to play clarinet on a regular basis, especially in combination with Harrell's muted trumpet.
His repertory expanded to include not only bop (Airegin, 1974), but also, with the European Rhythm Machine, funk (The Meeting) and occasional passages of free jazz (Riot (both 1970), and with his new group, Latin jazz (Brazilian Affair, 1076). In 1979, Woods recorded the album More Live at Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas.
Woods, along with Rick Chamberlain and Ed Joubert, founded the organization Celebration of the Arts (COTA) in 1978 late one night in the bar at the Deer Head Inn in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania. The organization would eventually become the Delaware Water Gap Celebration of the Arts. Their initial goal was to help foster an appreciation of jazz and its relationship to other artistic disciplines. Each year, the organization hosts the Celebration of the Arts Festival in September.
A series of brilliant albums for the Concord label, including Bop Stew (1987), Bouquet (1989) and Flash (1992), confirmed Woods’s elevation to the front rank of the world’s jazz soloists, a position he had deserved long previously. The trombonist Hal Crook and trumpeter Brian Lynch took Harrell’s place after 1989. Always a perfectionist, Woods often insisted on unplugged, all-acoustic performances even in jazz premises apparently unsuited to such low-key methods, but his commitment and musicality usually won over the most unruly of audiences.
Woods also took his role as a teacher very seriously, helping to found an annual arts festival in Delaware, and regularly taking masterclasses and musician-in-residence roles with student jazz bands around the world, including the National Youth Jazz Orchestra in Britain, and the Catania City Brass Orkestra in Italy. Woods would frequently take the featured-soloist role in these enterprises, performing as if there were nothing in the world he would rather be doing.
He developed a productive musical relationship with the Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi in the 90s, and Woods regularly documented his work both in the US and in Europe throughout the decade. High points were The Complete Concert (1996), live from the Wigmore Hall – a performance that caught Woods in more keening and delicate mood, notably on the Bill Evans dedication Goodbye Mr Evans; and Celebration! (1997), an American big band album in which Woods sweeps through a repertoire to which he contributed most of the arrangements with all the composed fire of his earlier years, and no hint of the chronic emphysema that hampered his work late in his life.
He was fluently creative, making characteristically witty spoken asides, on tributes to Marty Paich and Woody Herman with the Los Angeles Jazz Orchestra in 2004, and became a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master and received a Living Legend jazz award from the Kennedy Center in 2007. His last significant recording was 2011’s Man With the Hat, a co-leader session with fellow alto saxophonist Grace Kelly. Carrying his obligatory oxygen tank, Woods was playing in Pittsburgh with members of the city’s symphony orchestra as recently as 4 September, interpreting his own arrangements of the famous Charlie Parker With Strings repertoire and announced at the end of the show that he would be retiring. He died a little more than three weeks later of emphysema on September 29, 2015, at the age of 83.
(Edited from The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz & John Fordham's obit for the Guardian)
Sippie Wallace (November 1, 1898 – November 1, 1986) was an American singer, pianist, songwriter and one of the a major blues artists of the 1920s, whose renown as a performer carried well into the 1980s. Her early career in tent shows gained her the billing "The Texas Nightingale".
Wallace was born Beulah Belle Thomas in the Delta lowlands of Jefferson County, Arkansas, the fourth of 13 children in her family. Wallace came from a musical family: her brother George Washington Thomas became a notable pianist, bandleader, composer, and music publisher; a brother Hersal Thomas, was a pianist and composer; her niece Hociel Thomas (George's daughter) was a pianist and composer. When she was a child her family moved to Houston, Texas. She was nicknamed "Sippie" because, as she states, "my teeth were so far apart and I had to sip everything." In her youth she sang and played the piano in Shiloh Baptist Church, where her father was a deacon, but in the evenings she and her siblings took to sneaking out to tent shows. By the time she was in her mid-teens, Wallace learned blues and ragtime music in the shows, in addition to performing in chorus lines and acting in comedy skits. These experiences influenced her contributions as a blues artist.
In 1915, Wallace moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, with Hersal. Two years later she married Matt Wallace and took his surname. Wallace followed her brothers to Chicago in 1923 and worked her way into the city's bustling jazz scene. Her reputation led to a recording contract with Okeh Records in 1923. Her first recorded songs, "Shorty George" and "Up the Country Blues", the former written with her brother George, sold well enough to make her a blues star in the early 1920s. Other successful recordings followed, including "Special Delivery Blues" (with Louis Armstrong), "Bedroom Blues" (written by George and Hersal Thomas), and "I'm a Mighty Tight Woman". Hersal Thomas died of food poisoning in 1926, at age 19. In 1929 Wallace settled in Detroit, where she would live for the rest of her life.
Matt Wallace died in 1936 and George Thomas Washington died on March 6, 1937. With neither the experience nor the guidance from her brother to guide her in refocusing her career, Wallace was unable to adapt her style to changing tastes, and by 1932 she had slipped into the same obscurity as other female blues artists of her era.
Aside from an occasional performance or recording date, she did little in the blues until she launched a comeback in 1966, after her long-time friend Victoria Spivey coaxed her out of retirement, and Wallace toured on the folk and blues festival circuit. Wallace recorded an album, Women Be Wise, on October 31, 1966, in Copenhagen, Denmark, with Roosevelt Sykes and Little Brother Montgomery playing the piano. She recorded another album in 1966, Sippie Wallce Sings the Blues, on which she accompanied herself on piano on the title song, with Sykes or Montgomery playing piano on other tracks. Both albums include her signature song, "Women Be Wise". These recordings helped inspire the musician Bonnie Raitt to take up singing and playing the blues in the late 1960s. Raitt recorded renditions of "Women Be Wise" and "Mighty Tight Woman" on her self-titled debut album in 1971.
Wallace contributed to Louis Armstrong's album Louis Armstrong and the Blues Singers (1966), singing "A Jealous Woman Like Me", "Special Delivery Blues", "Jack o'Diamond Blues", "The Mail Train Blues" and "I Feel Good". She and Spivey recorded an album of blues standards, Sippie Wallace and Victoria Spivey, released in 1970 by Spivey's label, Spivey Records. In 1981, Wallace recorded the album Sippie for Atlantic Records, which earned her a 1983 Grammy nomination and won the 1982 W. C. Handy Award for Best Blues Album of the Year. Wallace's backup group was pianist James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band, consisting of Paul Klinger on cornet, Bob Smith on trombone and Russ Whitman and Peter Ferran on reeds.
She appeared at the Newport Folk Festival in 1966 and 1967, toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival in 1966, performed at the Chicago Blues Festival in 1967. In the 1970s Wallace's performances were curtailed due to failing health. She suffered a stroke in 1970 that left her temporarily wheelchair-bound and forced her to end her stint as organist of the Leland Baptist Church, but recovered sufficiently to perform at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1972, Wallace toured and recorded with Raitt in the 1970s and 1980s and continued to perform on her own. The duo performed the song "Woman Be Wise" on Late Night with David Letterman on April 27, 1982, with Dr. John accompanying on piano, in support of her album "Sippie". With backing vocals by Raitt, the album was nominated for a 1983 Grammy award for best traditional blues and earned the W.C. Handy Award for best blues album of 1983 the following year. She shared the stage with B.B. King at the Montreaux Jazz Festival on July 22, 1982, in a performance that was filmed and later broadcast.
Sippie with Bonnie Rait
In 1983-84 she traveled to Germany to tour, returning to that country again in the spring of 1986. Despite her failing health, her concerts were highly acclaimed. Fortunately for her fans, many of these performances were recorded with the German boogie-woogie pianist Axel Zwingenberger which would become Wallace's lasting legacy to the blues. In March 1986, following a concert at the Burghausen Jazz Festival in Germany, Wallace suffered a severe stroke and was hospitalized. She returned to the United States and died in the Sinai Hospital in Detroit on November 1, 1986, her 88th birthday.
She was buried at Trinity Cemetery, in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan. In 1993 she was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.
(Edited from Wikipedia, All About Jazz & Encyclopedia.com)
Booker Ervin (October 31, 1930 – August 31, 1970) was a powerful, blues‑driven American tenor saxophonist best known for his work with Charles Mingus and his influential series of Prestige albums in the 1960s.
Booker Telleferro Ervin II was born in Denison, Texas, United States. He came to the tenor saxophone late and by an unlikely road: his father, who had played trombone with Buddy Tate, taught him that horn first, and Ervin only took up the tenor saxophone in the U.S. Air Force, teaching himself while stationed in Okinawa, Japan. After completing his military service in 1953, he pursued formal training at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. After studying music in Boston for two years, he moved to Tulsa in 1954, he played with the band of Ernie Fields. After stays in Denver and Pittsburgh, Ervin moved to New York City in spring 1958, initially working a day job and playing jam sessions at night. What came out of that horn was one of the most distinctive sounds in jazz — a tenor that didn’t just sing but cried, smeared and testified, Texas blues and gospel carried in every bent note.
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus heard it before almost anyone, and from late 1958 Ervin was the bassist’s tenor of choice through his greatest run of albums. On Mingus Ah Um his mournful solo carries “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” Mingus’s elegy for Lester Young; a year later, on Blues & Roots, his preaching chorus on “Moanin'” became the sound that record is remembered by. Mingus was the most demanding bandleader in jazz, and no saxophonist was trusted with more of his music. Ervin worked with Mingus regularly until 1960, rejoining various outfits led by the bassist at various times up to autumn 1964, when he departed for Europe. During the mid-1960s, Ervin led his own quartet, recording for Prestige Records with, among others, ex-Mingus associate pianist Jaki Byard, along with bassist Richard Davis and Alan Dawson on drums.
Ervin later recorded for Blue Note Records and played with pianist Randy Weston, with whom he recorded between 1963 and 1966. Weston said: "Booker Ervin, for me, was on the same level as John Coltrane. He was a completely original saxophonist. He was a master." Ervin’s own records turned his nickname into a bibliography.
The band called him “Book” — Randy Weston remembered the chant of “Cook, Book, cook” — and the leader albums followed the pun: The Book Cooks in 1960, a two-tenor debut alongside Zoot Sims, then the Prestige run with pianist Jaki Byard, bassist Richard Davis and drummer Alan Dawson. Its peak came on December 3, 1963, at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Englewood Cliffs: The Freedom Book, five long, searching performances that stretch hard bop toward freedom without ever letting go of the blues. The Song Book, The Blues Book and The Space Book completed the set within the year.
Between October 1964 to summer 1966, Ervin worked and lived in Europe, playing gigs in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands. Basing himself in Barcelona, Spain, he featured regularly at the city's Jamboree Club. He recorded and broadcast while overseas, making albums with his own quartet, Dexter Gordon and Catalan vocalist Núria Feliu, featuring on various radio programmes and appearing at several jazz festivals, including a guest slot at the 1965 Berlin Jazz Festival, during which he performed a 25-minute improvisation. This performance was issued as "Blues For You" on the album Lament For Booker Ervin (Enja Records) in 1977.
Following his return to the United States in summer 1966, Ervin led his own groups in jazz clubs throughout the country, and appeared at both the Newport Jazz Festival (1967) and the Monterey Jazz Festival (1966) performing with Randy Weston; a recording of their performance was issued on CD in 1994. In 1968, Ervin again appeared at clubs and festivals in Scandinavia, broadcasting with the Danish Radio Big Band. He recorded again for Prestige, but in late 1966 was signed to West Coast label, Pacific Jazz, for whom he taped two albums, Structurally Sound and Booker 'n' Brass (1967), before switching to Blue Note.
Ervin recorded two Blue Note albums under his own name, In Between and Tex Book Tenor, the latter going unissued during his lifetime, initially being released in the 1970s as part of a double album shared with recordings (on which Ervin features) made under the leadership of Horace Parlan (Back from the Gig). Ervin's final recorded appearance occurred in January 1969, when he guested on a further Prestige album headed by teenage multi-instrumentalist Eric Kloss.
Ervin died of kidney disease in New York City in 1970, aged 39. Most biographical accounts of Ervin's death give an incorrect date. His gravestone in The National Cemetery, East Farmingdale, New York, clearly shows the date as August 31, 1970.
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