Brownie McGhee born 30 November 1915

Walter Brown "Brownie" McGhee (November 30, 1915 – February 16, 1996) was an American folk and Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaboration with the harmonica player Sonny Terry. 

McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. At about the age of four he contracted polio, which incapacitated his right leg. His brother Granville "Stick" McGhee, who also later became a musician and composed the famous song "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-o-Dee," was nicknamed for pushing young Brownie around in a cart. Their father, George McGhee, was a factory worker, known around University Avenue for playing guitar and singing. Brownie's uncle made him a guitar from a tin marshmallow box and a piece of board. 

McGhee spent much of his youth immersed in music, singing with a local harmony group, the Golden Voices Gospel Quartet, and teaching himself to play guitar. He also played the five-string banjo and ukulele and studied piano. Surgery funded by the March of Dimes enabled McGhee to walk. At the age of 22, McGhee became a traveling musician, working in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and befriending Blind Boy Fuller, whose guitar playing influenced him greatly. After Fuller's death in 1941, J. B. Long of Columbia Records promoted McGhee as "Blind Boy Fuller No. 2". 

McGhee first recorded in August 1940 in Chicago for Columbia's subsidiary Okeh Records. His his début track was ‘Pickin’ My Tomatoes’. He made one gospel session in 1941 billed as Brother George and his Sanctified Singers and he was recorded for the Library of Congress in 1942. His real success came after he moved to New York in 1942, when he teamed up with Sonny Terry, whom he had known since 1939, when Terry was Fuller's harmonica player. The pairing was an overnight success. They recorded and toured together until around 1980. As a duo, Terry and McGhee did most of their work from 1958 until 1980, spending 11 months of each year touring and recording dozens of albums. 

                                   

Despite their later fame as "pure" folk artists playing for white audiences, in the 1940s Terry and McGhee had attempted to be successful recording artists, fronting a jump blues combo with honking saxophone and rolling piano, variously calling themselves "Brownie McGhee and his Jook House Rockers" or "Sonny Terry and his Buckshot Five", often with Champion Jack Dupree and Big Chief Ellis. With and without Sonny, Brownie recorded for Folkways from the mid-1940s till the late 1950s (though moonlighting under pseudonyms for many other labels) and the two became an omnipresent part of the folk revival and blues revival scene in New York City (McGhee had even played on the soundtrack of Elia Kazan’s 1957 film A Face in the Crowd, and both would do more filmwork later). 

They also appeared in the original Broadway productions of Finian's Rainbow and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. During the blues revival of the 1960s, Terry and McGhee were popular on the concert and music festival circuits, occasionally adding new material but usually remaining faithful to their roots and playing to the tastes of their audiences. 

Late in his life, McGhee appeared in small roles in films and on television. He and Terry appeared in the 1979 Steve Martin comedy The Jerk. In 1987, McGhee gave a small but memorable performance as the ill-fated blues singer Toots Sweet in the supernatural thriller movie Angel Heart. In his review of Angel Heart, the critic Roger Ebert singled out McGhee for praise, declaring that he delivered a "performance that proves saxophonist Dexter Gordon isn't the only old musician who can act." 

McGhee appeared in the television series Family Ties, in a 1988 episode entitled "The Blues, Brother", in which he played the fictional blues musician Eddie Dupre. He also appeared in the television series Matlock, in a 1989 episode entitled "The Blues Singer", playing a friend of an old blues musician (Joe Seneca) who is accused of murder. In the episode, McGhee, Seneca and star Andy Griffith perform a duet of "The Midnight Special". 

Happy Traum, a former guitar student of McGhee's, edited a blues guitar instruction guide and songbook, Guitar Styles of Brownie McGhee, published in 1971, in which McGhee, between lessons, talked about his life and the blues. The autobiographical section features McGhee talking about growing up, his musical beginnings, and a history of the blues from the 1930s onward.  

The wheels finally came off the partnership of McGhee and Terry during the mid-'70s. Toward the end, they preferred not to share a stage with one another (Terry would play with another guitarist, then McGhee would do a solo), let alone communicate, but they  were both recipients of a 1982 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. That year's fellowships were the first bestowed by the NEA. 

One of McGhee's final concert appearances came at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival; his voice was a tad less robust than usual, but no less moving, and his rich, full-bodied acoustic guitar work cut through the cool evening air with alacrity.  He long outlived his ex-partner and died of stomach cancer in Oakland, California on February 16, 1996, aged 80. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & AllMusic)

 

Lucille Hegamin born 29 November 1894

Lucille Nelson Hegamin (November 29, 1894 – March 1, 1970) was an American singer and entertainer and an early African-American blues recording artist. 

Lucille Nelson was born in Macon, Georgia, the daughter of John and Minnie Nelson. From an early age she sang in local church choirs and theatre programs. By the age of 15 she was touring the US South with the Leonard Harper Minstrel Stock Company. In 1914 she settled in Chicago, Illinois, where, often billed as "The Georgia Peach", she worked with Tony Jackson and Jelly Roll Morton before marrying the pianist-composer Bill Hegamin. She later told a biographer, "I was a cabaret artist in those days, and never had to play theatres, and I sang everything from blues to popular songs, in a jazz style. I think I can say without bragging that I made the 'St. Louis Blues' popular in Chicago; this was one of my feature numbers." 

The Hegamins moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1918, then to New York City the following year. Bill Hegamin led the band accompanying his wife, the Blue Flame Syncopators; Jimmy Wade was a member of this ensemble.

The Blue Flame Syncopators 1921

In November 1920, Hegamin became the second African-American blues singer to record, after Mamie Smith. Hegamin made a series of recordings for Arto Records and then Paramount in 1922. One of her biggest hits was "Arkansas Blues", recorded for Arto and released on many other labels, including Black Swan. She recorded one of Tom Delaney's earliest compositions, "Jazz Me Blues", in 1921, and it went on to become a jazz standard. She subsequently played theatre dates but did not tour extensively. 

                                  

Lucille Hegamin lived at the Shuffle Inn in Harlem from November 1921 to January 1922. On January 20, 1922, she competed in a blues singing contest with Daisy Martin, Alice Leslie Carter and Trixie Smith at the Fifteenth Infantry's First Band Concert and Dance in New York City. Hegamin placed second to Smith in the contest, which was held at the Manhattan Casino. Then from February to May of that year she toured with the African-American musical revue Shuffle Along and this was the second of three companies. In the first company Florence Mills had the same role with the same musical revue. 

From 1922 through late 1926 she recorded over forty sides for Cameo Records; in this association she was billed as "The Cameo Girl". After her marriage to Bill Hegamin ended in 1923, her most frequent accompanist was the pianist J. Cyrill Fullerton. In 1926, she recorded with Clarence Williams's band for the Columbia label. She sang with a band that was led by George "Doc" Hyder in 1927 for a show in Philadelphia. Further into the decade she performed in further revues with Hyder that were staged in Harlem theaters. In 1929 she performed on the radio program Negro Achievement Hour, on WABC, in New York. 

She performed in Williams's Revue at the Lincoln Theater in New York and then in various revues in New York and Atlantic City, New Jersey, through 1934. In 1932 she recorded two sides for Okeh Records. About 1934, she retired from music as a profession and worked as a nurse. She came out of retirement in 1961 to record four songs, accompanied by a band led by Willie "The Lion" Smith, on the album Songs We Taught Your Mother, for Bluesville Records. 

In 1962 she recorded Basket of Blues for Spivey Records. She performed at a benefit concert for Mamie Smith at the Celebrity Club in New York City in 1964. Thereafter she remained inactive due to ill health and died on March 1, 1970, in Harlem Hospital, in New York City, and was interred in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, in Brooklyn, New York. 

Hegamin's stylistic influences included Annette Hanshaw and Ruth Etting. According to Derrick Stewart-Baxter, "Lucille's clear, rich voice, with its perfect diction, and its jazz feeling, was well in the vaudeville tradition, and her repertoire was wide." Like Mamie Smith, Hegamin sang classic female blues in a lighter style, more influenced by pop tunes, than the rougher rural-style blues singers such as Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, who became more popular a few years later.

(Edited from Wikipedia)

R.B. Greaves born 28 November 1943

Ronald Bertram Aloysius Greaves III (28 November 1943 – 27 September 2012) was an American singer who had chart success in 1969 with the pop single "Take a Letter Maria". A number two hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, this single sold one million copies, and it earned gold record certification from the Recording Industry Association of America. Greaves also reached the Top 40 in early 1970 with "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me". 

Ronald Bertram Aloysius Greaves III, born in British Guiana, South America at the US Air Force Base at Atkinson Field (now Timehri). A nephew of Sam Cooke, he is of African American and Seminole Indian decent and grew up on a Seminole reservation in California. He moved to England in 1963. Greaves had built a career both in the Caribbean and in the UK, where he performed under the name Sonny Childe with his group the TNTs and recorded a few singles between 1965 -1968. (Without Childe/Greaves, The TNT became the backing band for P.P. Arnold, probably best known for her versions of “The First Cut is the Deepest” and “Angel of the Morning.”) 

Greaves debut recording, his self penned  "Take a Letter Maria", was released under the name R.B. Greaves in 1969. Produced by Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, the song was recorded in August 1969 at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama with backing from the legendary Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. It was an out-of-the-box hit in the U.S. for the Atco label, rising to No. 2 in just six weeks, only to be denied the top spot by The 5th Dimension’s “Wedding Bell Blues.” His self-titled album peaked at No. 85 in 1970. 

The song is the story of a man who learns of his wife's infidelity and dictates a letter of separation to Maria, his secretary, who the last verse suggests may become his new love. The song has a distinct Latin flavor, complete with a mariachi-style horn section. It received gold record certification from the RIAA on 11 December 1969. By 1970, sales of this song totaled 2.5 million. 

                                  

In the early 1970s, Greaves spent a lot of time in Southern California, and was often accompanied at live shows and on recordings by his longtime friends Phillip John Diaz, a guitarist, and Michael “Papabax” Baxter, a songwriter and keyboardist.

 Greaves recorded a series of cover versions as follow-ups, including Burt Bacharach's and Hal David's "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" (1970) plus  "Fire and Rain" (1970), "Whiter Shade of Pale" (1970), "Margie, Who's Watching the Baby" (1972) and "Naked Eyes" (1983). Greaves left the Atlantic /Atco label in the 1970s in favour of Sunflower Records, and then signed to Bareback Records. His only chart release for the latter label in 1977 was "Margie, Who's Watching the Baby", but it didn't revive his career. He ended up moving to Los Angeles and began to work in the technology industry. 

Greaves died from prostate cancer at his home in Granada Hills, California, on 27 September 2012 at the age of 68. He is buried in New Haven, Connecticut. He was married three times: 1969- 1970 to Claire Francis, 1971-1973 to Sandra Golden and from 1975 to actress Maura Dhu Studi who he divorced pre 1990. While his career may not have reached the same heights as some of his contemporaries, his music continues to be celebrated by fans of soul music. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, Old Time Muisc.com & NBC News)

Bootsie Barnes born 27 November 1937

Robert "Bootsie" Barnes (November 27, 1937 – April 22, 2020) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and a modern Philadelphia jazz icon. Through the power of his example, the depth of his clout and the sheer persistence of his presence, he held down the deeply swinging center of the city’s jazz community for over a six decade career. During that time, he maintained a steadfast commitment to the bebop language and a no-nonsense connection to his audience. 

Robert Manuel Barnes was born in Pennsylvania Hospital and grew up in the Richard Allen Homes, a North Philadelphia housing project. His father, Wilbur Jones, was a trumpeter who had played in big bands led by Bill Doggett and Frank Fairfax. His mother, Esther Barnes, did housekeeping work. Bootsie was the youngest of four boys; his nickname was bestowed, teasingly, by his brothers. In addition to his father, he had an early musical role model in his mother’s older brother, Jimmy Hamilton, a clarinetist and saxophonist with a prestigious chair in the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Still, up through his teenage years Barnes aspired to play drums; he recalled being let in the stage door of the Earle Theatre, where he was given a pair of sticks by Ellington’s drummer, Sonny Greer. 

Barnes played drums in the band at Ben Franklin High, switching to saxophone only at age 19, after his grandmother gave him an instrument. He started on alto, inspired by Jackie McLean, and took up the tenor initially because it could lead to more gigs. But the register and heft of the larger instrument proved ideal.  From the 1960s on, he played constantly in Philly, notably with an honor roll of organists, including Jack McDuff, Jimmy Smith, Shirley Scott and Don Patterson. He played in the house band at the Uptown Theatre; at institutions like Pep’s Musical Bar; and in an array of spots otherwise not known for their jazz bookings. 

“Sometimes on the weekends we’d have three or four gigs,” recalls pianist Uri Caine, who started playing with Barnes in the mid-‘70s, at age 18. “We’d start in the afternoon in one place, go somewhere else and play until 4 in the morning.” Caine, who kept this pace with Barnes for about six years, describes a musician who had friends in every corner of the city. “For me it was a beautiful learning experience, because I got to play a lot, which was amazing. And with musicians like Philly Joe Jones, Bobby Durham, Mickey Roker — those were his drummers. My whole orientation was changed by being with him.” 

                         Here’s “You’ve Changed” from above album.

                                  

In the 1980s, Barnes toured with Sonny Stitt. He continued to play in his home town and recorded his album "You Leave Me Breathless!" in 1995. For a good stretch in the mid-1990s, Barnes held court every week at Ortlieb’s Jazzhaus, a beloved, smoke-filled joint in the Northern Liberties neighborhood. Ortlieb’s used to call it the ‘Tuesday night prayer meeting.’ Pianist Orrin Evans, who was 13 when he first played with Barnes said “ That’s what it was. You stepped into that church, and you’d better know your scriptures.” “That was the school of higher learning,” says Mike Boone, who played bass in his quartet alongside pianist Sid Simmons and drummer Byron Landham. “With all due respect to any college or university, for Philadelphia, that was the place.” In 2001, Bootsie played at the Newport Jazz Festival. 

In an article for Patch, Kim Tucker wrote, "Barnes has toured the world performing the music he loves, jazz in places like St. Croix US Virgin Islands, to Europe and back home to Philadelphia. From the "Chitlin Circuit" to the infamous New Jersey clubs: Dreamland, Cotton Club, Loretta's High Hat, Club Harlem, Barnes has taken the stage at Philly's Blue Note, Just Jazz, Red Carpet, The Showboat and Pep's too." 

Bootsie toured Europe as well as the United States and Canada, leaving a lasting impression on audiences all over the world. He headlined venues from New York’s famed Birdland to the very prestigious Le Grand Hotel in Paris. He  won numerous Jazz awards, such as the Marjorie Dockery Volunteer Award from the Urban League Guild of Philadelphia and New York’s Greater Jamaica Development Corporation Award, and is often listed within the Top Ten Jazz Picks. 

Bootsie Barnes & Larry McKenna

In recent years, Barnes forged a fruitful collaboration with his fellow Philly tenor Larry McKenna; their joint album, The More I See You, earned favorable coverage on its release in 2018. Among Barnes’ other albums Hello, in 2003. But in some ways his most emblematic album is his first, at least in terms of the attitude. A quartet date released in 1984, it’s titled Been Here All Along. 

He died from COVID-19 after being three weeks at the Lankenau Medical Center in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, on April 22, 2020, during the pandemic. He was 82.

(Edited from obit from Nate Chinen @ WBGO,Wikipedia & All About Jazz) 

 

Alice Clark born 1947

Alice Clark (c. 1947– April 2004) was an American soul singer, who had little commercial success but whose recordings became highly regarded. 

Little is known publicly of her life outside her brief music career between 1968 and 1972. She grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. Acording to Billy Vera, who wrote and produced her first record, "I got the impression her life wasn't that great. She... had kids and belonged to a religious order that forbade either bathing or washing hair, I don't recall exactly which..." 

Her first record, pairing two Vera songs, "You Got a Deal" and "Say You'll Never (Never Leave Me)", was recorded in 1968 at the Jubilee Records studio with musicians including Vera and Butch Mann (guitars), Jimmy Tyrell (bass), Earl Williams (drums), Money Johnson (trumpet) and others. Produced by Vera, it was released on the Rainy Day label owned by Chip Taylor and Al Gorgoni. Later the same year, Clark recorded "You Hit Me (Right Where It Hurt Me)" and "Heaven's Will (Must Be Obeyed)", both arranged by Richard Tee and produced by George Kerr. Released on Warner Bros.-Seven Arts Records, "You Hit Me" – co-written by Sylvia Moy and first recorded by Kim Weston at Motown – was not a hit at the time. 

                                  

In 1972, Bob Shad of Mainstream Records signed Clark to record an LP with arranger Ernie Wilkins. Produced by Shad, the album, Alice Clark, was recorded at the Record Plant in New York and included three songs written by Bobby Hebb, as well as Jimmy Webb's "I Keep It Hid" – also issued as a single – Juanita Fleming's "Never Did I Stop Loving You", and John Bromley and Petula Clark's "Looking at Life". The session musicians on the album included guitarist Cornell Dupree, keyboardist Paul Griffin, and drummer Bernard Purdie. Again, the records were unsuccessful, and Clark made no more recordings. 

Clark left the music business after her eponymous album fizzled, likely because she had left everything on the table. She must have believed that if the music on this album didn't connect with the market, nothing she recorded ever would. In the hands of a more commercially minded soul producer, she might have fared better. She returned to family life in Bedford-Stuyvesant. She died from cancer in 2004, aged 57. 

In Britain, "You Hit Me (Right Where It Hurt Me)" became a staple of the Northern soul scene in the early 1970s, valued both for its rarity and its quality as "a classic piece of uptown soul". Her album also became highly valued and collectable, later claimed as "delivered with understated passion and appealing vulnerability", "astonishing","sublime", "perhaps one of the finest soul albums ever recorded" and "the Holy Grail of modern soul", in which "every single element - the singer, the songs, the musicians, the production - are simply superb...[and] the whole is even greater than the sum of the parts." 

Mystery surrounds Alice Clark’s life after she turned her back on music. She seems almost to have vanished into thin air. That’s a great shame. Especially given the resurgence in interest in her music and Ace Records recent release of The Complete Studio Recordings 1968-1972. Belatedly, Alice Clark’s music is finding the wider audience that it so richly deserves.   

(Edited from Wikipedia & Dereks Music Blog)

Derroll Adams born 25 November 1925

Derroll Adams (November 27, 1925 – February 6, 2000) was an American folk musician. Ask the average folk enthusiast who Derroll Adams is, and chances are you'll get a vague glimmer of recognition, followed by a shrug of puzzlement. Few figures have effected as much of an impact on other musicians, while falling by the wayside before the public. 

Born Derroll Lewis Thompson in Portland, Oregon, he was the son of a vaudeville juggler and master storyteller. At age 16, just about the time that the Second World War was breaking out, Adams joined the Army, but was discharged within a few months when his age was discovered. He later served in the United States Coast Guard, after which he attended art school -- it was during this time that Adams chanced to see a concert by Josh White, which set him on the road to becoming a musician. 

His subsequent hearing of records by Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and Cisco Houston only reinforced his love of folk music, and in a surprisingly short time, he'd become proficient on the guitar and a near-virtuoso on the banjo. He played for audiences as part of former Vice President Henry Wallace's 1948 presidential campaign. During the 1950s, Adams hooked up with the folk singer Odetta in an organization known as "World Folk Artists," and began building an audience; by the end of the decade, his banjo playing was being used on some film soundtracks. 

                                  

In 1957, Adams had his first successful song, "Portland Town," an account of birth, life, and death that became his magnum opus, covered widely over the years by other folk singers. Around the same time, he met up with Ramblin' Jack Elliott, who, with his wife, invited Adams to come to England with them. Over the next few years, the three played numerous folk clubs in England, while Adams resided for a time with songwriter Lionel Bart and also performed on the European continent. Adams and Elliott also made recordings together for Topic Records, which was then England's leading folk label. In 1966, while traveling through Europe, they cut an album together in Milan, Italy. By this time, Adams was a fixture on the European folk scene, his rough-hewn voice and distinctive banjo style drawing a serious following, especially among the new generation of folk performers coming up behind him. 

Ramblin' Jack Elliott & Derroll

All wasn't well, however, as Adams became increasingly disenchanted with the widening audience for folk music. Where the clubs in the early '60s had been attended by serious listeners with an honest interest, by 1966 he found himself playing more often to rowdy, drunken listeners who cared little for what he was actually doing. He became known for incidents in which he would smash his guitar and leave the stage. Finally, he met a woman from Belgium who became his fourth wife, and he left the music business to help run her decorating business. 

His influence lingered, however. In 1967, even as Adams was temporarily retired, he became the subject of perhaps the best song that Donovan Leitch (aka Donovan) has ever written, "Epistle to Derroll." Appearing on the Gift From a Flower to a Garden album, the words and music reflected the debt that Leitch owed Adams as a musician and songwriter -- the entire song, and specifically the line "bring me word of the banjo man with the tattoo on his hand," may be the most poignant and haunting in Donovan's entire song output. 

Both his wife's business and the accompanying marriage failed, however, and Adams resumed his performing career in Europe's folk clubs, his name still widely known on his adopted continent. He proved a fairly controversial figure, however, for his rejection of authenticity and his purist approach to folk music; he insisted that old songs could be performed perfectly well in new ways, and he occasionally got drunk and swore on-stage. 

Odetta & Derroll 

Still, he continued playing, and in 1991, the folk community -- including the members of Pentangle, as well as his former partner Elliott and veterans like Happy Traum -- turned out for a concert celebrating Adams' 65th birthday, which was later released on record. When failing health kept him and his most faithful companion, his banjo, away from the stage, Derroll Adams spent his time painting. He drew, wrote poetry and lyrics, composed melodies, fooled around with his banjo, enjoyed classical music, but also listened with enthusiasm to various kinds of new musical styles and sounds. He returned to his old passions with renewed energy: history, philosophy, esotericism, tarot, cabala and I Ching, as well as Chinese and Japanese music. 

Derroll Adams & Arlo Guthrie

“The folk singer of folk singers” received many visitors at the Antwerp retreat. Some of them came to seek the advice of a much-esteemed master. The respect he enjoyed was a source of both surprise and delight to him. He passed away on February 6, 2000 in Antwerp, Belgium. He remains unjustifiably better known in Europe than in the country of his birth. 

(Edited from AllMuisc & derrolladams.org) 

Richard Tee born 24 November 1943

Richard Tee (November 24, 1943 – July 21, 1993) was an American pianist, studio musician, singer and arranger, who worked on hundreds of sessions by every major name in the rock, soul and R&B worlds. He played on such notable hits as "In Your Eyes", "Slip Slidin' Away", "Just the Two of Us", "I'll Be Sweeter Tomorrow (Than I Was Today)", "Crackerbox Palace", "Tell Her About It", "Don't Give Up" and many others. 

Tee was born Richard Edward Ten Ryk in Brooklyn, New York to Edward James Ten Ryk (1886–1963), who was from Guyana, and Helen G. Ford Skeete Ten Ryk (1902–2000), of New York. Tee spent most of his life in Brooklyn and lived with his mother in a brownstone apartment building. Richard began playing piano at age 3, and his mom started him on classical lessons when he was only 5, which he continued to take for over 12 years. 

Tee graduated from The High School of Music & Art in New York City and attended the Manhattan School of Music. Though better known as a studio and session musician, Tee led a jazz ensemble, the Richard Tee Committee, and was a founding member of the band Stuff. In 1981, he played the piano and Fender Rhodes for Simon and Garfunkel's Concert in Central Park. 

Tee & Steve Gadd

Tee played with a diverse range of artists during his career, including Paul Simon, Carly Simon, The Bee Gees, Barbra Streisand, Roberta Flack, Aretha Franklin, Diane Schuur, Donny Hathaway, Peter Allen, George Harrison, Diana Ross, Duane Allman, Quincy Jones, Bill Withers, Art Garfunkel, Nina Simone, Juice Newton, Billy Joel, Etta James, Grover Washington Jr., Eric Clapton, Kenny Loggins, Patti Austin, David Ruffin, Lou Rawls, Ron Carter, Peter Gabriel, George Benson, Joe Cocker, Chuck Mangione, Pino Daniele, Tim Finn, Peabo Bryson, Mariah Carey, Chaka Khan, Phoebe Snow, Doc Severinsen, Leo Sayer, Herbie Mann and countless others. He also contributed to numerous gold and platinum albums during his long career and joined Stuff led by bassist Gordon Edwards. Other members of the band included guitarist Cornell Dupree, drummer Chris Parker, and later guitarist Eric Gale and drummer Steve Gadd. 

                                   

Tee was the arranger on the O'Jays 1968 single, "I'll Be Sweeter Tomorrow" bw "I Dig Your Act" that was released on Bell 691. Along with Hugh McCracken, Eric Gale, and Steve Gadd, Tee played on Van McCoy's 1976 album, The Real McCoy. The album received a good review with the picks being "Love at First Sight", "Night Walk", "Theme from Star Trek", and "African Symphony". 

In June 1980, the band Stuff, made up of Tee, Gordon Edwards, Cornell Dupree, Eric Gale, and Steve Gadd, performed at the Berkeley Jazz Festival which was held over a four day period. On the week ending July 12, 1980, Tee's album Natural Ingredients entered the Cash Box Jazz Top 40 Albums chart at no. 31. At week three on July 26, it got to no. 20. It held that position for another week. It spent a total of nine weeks in the chart. 

Tee used a diverse range of keyboards during his recording and touring career, notably the Hammond organ, piano, Hohner clavinet and synthesizers. His trademark sound, however, was his unique method of playing a Fender Rhodes electric piano and feeding the signal through an Electro-Harmonix Small Stone effect pedal phase shifter. 

After a 16-year relationship with Eleana Steinberg Tee of Greenwich, Connecticut, the couple were married in Woodstock, New York, by New York State Supreme Court Justice Bruce Wright. The couple moved to the Chelsea Hotel in 1988, and later to Cold Spring, New York. 

In 1993, Tee had begun extensive treatment for his prostate cancer following his diagnosis during his tour with Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saints tour. A special tribute event was set up for him and was to take place on June 6, 1993 at Club Tatou located on 233 North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills. Those set to attend included Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, and Chevy Chase. Proceeds from the event were to go to Humantics Foundation for Richard Tee. 

Tee died on July 21, 1993, in Calvary Hospital (Bronx) aged 49, after suffering from prostate cancer. In addition to his wife he was survived by his mother Helen Ten Ryk of Brooklyn, six sons, and two stepdaughters. He is buried in the Artist Cemetery in Woodstock, New York. 

(Edited from Wikipedia)