Benny Golson born 25 January 1929

Benny Golson (January 25, 1929 – September 21, 2024) was an American bebop/hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and arranger. He came to prominence with the big bands of Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie, more as a writer than a performer, before launching his solo career. 

Benjamin Golson grew up in Philadelphia where, as a teenager, he played with several other promising young musicians, including John Coltrane, Red Garland, Jimmy Heath, Percy Heath, Philly Joe Jones, and Red Rodney. 

After graduating from Howard University, which had a conservative music program that insisted on Golson playing clarinet, he left in 1951 to play in guitarist Tiny Grimes’ group. Next he joined Bull Moose Jackson’s R&B band where he became friends with his idol, Tadd Dameron, whom Golson came to consider the most important influence on his writing, was Jackson's pianist at the time. From 1953 Golson played with Dameron's band. 

It was while he was working with the Lionel Hampton band at the Apollo Theater in Harlem in 1956 that he learned that Clifford Brown, a noted and well-liked jazz trumpeter who had done a stint with him in Dameron's band, had died in a car accident. Golson was so moved by the event that he composed the threnody "I Remember Clifford", as a tribute to a fellow musician and friend. In addition, many of Golson's other compositions have become jazz standards. Songs such as "Stablemates", "Killer Joe", "Whisper Not", "Along Came Betty", and "Are You Real?", have been performed and recorded numerous times by many musicians. 

                              

Golson also worked with the bands of Johnny Hodges, Earl Bostic and Dizzy Gillespie. From 1959 to 1962, Golson co-led the Jazztet with Art Farmer. Golson then immersed himself in studying composition and orchestrating and went to Hollywood in 1967 where he wrote commercials for products and companies from Borateem to Texaco, scored TV shows such as M*A*S*H, Mission Impossible, and The Partridge Family, and composed or arranged for musicians as diverse as Mama Cass and Itzhak Perlman. He also formulated and conducted arrangements to various recordings, such as Eric Is Here, a 1967 album by Eric Burdon, which features five of Golson's arrangements, conducted by Golson. 

As Golson was in demand as an arranger for film and television, he was less active as a performer, but during the mid-1970s, Golson returned to jazz playing and recording. In 1982, Golson re-organized the Jazztet with Art Farmer.Touring in Japan, Europe, and the United States, Golson impressed listeners with a sound that had harder edges as compared with his previous efforts. From the 1980s onward, Golson divided his time between the United States and Europe, and many of his recordings were first released on Japanese labels. 

Golson has been honoured with over a dozen doctorates, toured on behalf of the State Department, and has had his commissioned concerto for bass and chamber orchestra, “Two Faces,” performed at Lincoln Center. His compositions such as “Killer Joe,” “Stablemates,” and “Whisper Not” have become part of the jazz canon along with “I Remember Clifford” which was choreographed by Twyla Tharp and performed by her ballet company in 1995. He received a Guggenheim Grant in 1995, was given an American Jazz Masters Award by the NEA in 1996, and honoured at Lincoln Center in 2001 with a concert, “The Magic of Benny Golson.” 

Golson made a cameo appearance in the 2004 movie The Terminal, related to his appearance in "A Great Day in Harlem", a group photograph of prominent jazz musicians. Golson's song "Something in B Flat" (from the album Benny Golson's New York Scene) can be heard during the film and in a later scene, Golson's band performs "Killer Joe". 

In October 2007, Golson received the Mellon Living Legend Legacy Award, presented by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation at a ceremony at the Kennedy Center. Additionally, during the same month, he won the University of Pittsburgh International Academy of Jazz Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award at the university's 37th Annual Jazz Concert in the Carnegie Music Hall. In November 2009, Golson was inducted into the International Academy of Jazz Hall of Fame, during a performance at the University of Pittsburgh's annual jazz seminar and concert. On March 14, 2021, at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, The Recording Academy selected Arkadia Records recording artist Benny Golson with its 2021 Special Merit Award, The Lifetime Achievement Award. 

He has recorded over 30 albums for many recording companies in the United States and Europe under his own name and innumerable ones with other major artists. A prodigious writer, Golson has written well over 300 compositions. As a live performer he consistently knocked audiences off their feet, Benny Golson gave hundreds of performances in USA, Europe, South America, Far East and Japan for decades. 

Golson died at his home in Manhattan, New York, on September 21, 2024, at the age of 95

(Edited from Wikipedia & allAbout Jazz)