Richard Harris born 1 October 1930

Richard St John Francis Harris (1 October 1930 – 25 October 2002) was an Irish actor and singer. Having studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, he rose to prominence as an icon of the British New Wave. He received numerous accolades including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor, and a Grammy Award. In 2020 he was listed at number 3 on The Irish Times's list of Ireland's greatest film actors. 

The notion of Richard Harris as a popular singer would have seemed an absurdity to anyone who knew his work in 1967, ten years into his career. In less than a year from that time, however, Harris would be the most popular actor-singer in the history of popular music, with a gold record to his credit and radio play that rivaled the Beatles. 

The son of a miller, Richard Harris was educated at the Sacred Heart Jesuit College, and later studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. His stage debut took place in 1956, and he made his first film appearance in 1958 in Alive and Kicking, a British film. He appeared in key supporting roles in big-budget movies like The Guns of Navarone and Mutiny on the Bounty (where he outshone Marlon Brando's Fletcher Christian), but it was his performance in This Sporting Life (1963) which propelled him to a major international career. 

For most of the mid-'60s, Harris was among the most visible of British (or, more properly, Irish) actors in international cinema, alongside the likes of Michael Caine and Sean Connery, although he seldom played starring roles; Cromwell (1970) was such a rarity, but it was A Man Called Horse that same year that turned him into a popular culture icon, and yielded two sequels over the next 13 years. 

It was his performance as King Arthur in Warner Bros.' 1967 screen version of Lerner & Loewe's musical Camelot that made people begin to think of Harris as a singer. 

As directed by Joshua Logan, the movie was monumentally long and sluggish, but Harris proved an electrifying presence and revealed himself as a better actor-singer than Rex Harrison, who had done the role on Broadway and on the original cast album. To a great extent, Harris talked his songs in a manner similar to Harrison, but he also put a lot of an actor's performance into the material, so that one swore it was an attractive singing voice that one was hearing. The soundtrack album on Warner Bros. remained in print for decades, and was more profitable than the movie itself. 

                                   

A year later, he was approached by his friend, songwriter Jimmy Webb, with a proposed epic-length pop project, and Harris agreed to record it. The recording was eventually placed with Lou Adler's Dunhill label, and the song "MacArthur Park," clocking in at seven-and-a-half minutes, rose to number two on the American charts and shattered AM radio's established prohibition against playing singles of greater than three-and-a-half minute-length. The accompanying album A Tramp Shining was one of the great pop LPs of the '60s, a sophisticated and extraordinarily well-produced concept album (which owed a considerable debt to Sgt. Pepper's) to rival any of Sinatra's efforts in that direction. 

Harris continued working in movies  but he also found himself in demand as a recording artist. He did a second album with Webb writing and producing, The Yard Went on Forever, which may have been an even better collection of material even though it didn't sell nearly as well or yield any hits. His subsequent records included My Boy and The Richard Harris Love Album (which pulled some of the best romantic numbers from his previous records), and well into the early '70s, three years after it had been on the charts, Harris was still prevailed upon to perform "MacArthur Park" during his talk-show appearances. 

Harris' acting career remained strong right into the end of the '70s, including very well-received performances in Juggernaut (1974), Robin and Marion (1976), and The Wild Geese (1978), although these were counterbalanced by starring roles in popular junk movies like Orca (1977), sort of the equivalent of Michael Caine's work in movies like The Island and Blame It on Rio, which made a fortune but made everybody in them look more than a little foolish at the time. 

Harris' health deteriorated during this period, a result of his well-publicized heavy drinking and other fast-lane activities. He withdrew from most public activities during the early '80s, gave up drinking, and spent years recovering his health on a strict dietary regimen -- he also rediscovered religion in the process, and pursued a writing career, publishing poetry and a novel. Harris re-emerged in movies during the early '90s as the star of an acclaimed drama entitled The Field, directed by Jim Sheridan, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Harris was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease in 2002 and died of that ailment the same year on October 25 at University College Hospital in London. 

(Edited from AllMuisc & Wikipedia) 

 

Jill Corey born 30 September 1935

Jill Corey (born Norma Jean Speranza; September 30, 1935 – April 3, 2021) was an American popular standards singer. She was discovered and signed on one day when she was 17. She went on to have her own radio shows and to star in a feature film. 

Italian-American, Corey was born in Avonmore, Pennsylvania, a coal mining community about forty miles east of Pittsburgh. Her father, Bernard Speranza, was a coal miner, and she was the youngest of five children. Her mother died when she was four years old.She was a 1953 graduate of Bell-Avon High School. Corey began singing as an imitator of Carmen Miranda at family gatherings, on amateur shows in grade school, and contralto in the local church choir. At the age of 13, she began to develop her own style. 

She won first prize at a talent contest sponsored by the Lions Club, which entitled her to sing a song on WAVL in Apollo, Pennsylvania. This got her an offer to have her own program. By the age of 14 she was working seven nights a week, earning $5-$6 a night, with a local orchestra led by Johnny Murphy. By the age of 17 she was a local celebrity talent. 

                                   

At the home of the only owner of a tape recorder in town, with trains going by in the background and no accompaniment, she made a tape recording to demonstrate her singing skills to the outside show business world. The tape came to the attention of Mitch Miller, who headed the artists & repertory section at Columbia Records. 

He normally received over 100 record demos a week, and this one, with a 17-year-old girl and its train background, would not have been likely to gain his attention. He telephoned her in Avonmore, and the next morning she flew to New York to be heard by Miller in a more normal studio setting. Miller had Life Magazine send over reporters and photographers, and had her audition with Arthur Godfrey and Dave Garroway. The Life photographers reenacted her signing a contract with Columbia, and all this happened in a single day, with her headed back to Avonmore that night. 

Both Garroway and Godfrey called her, and it was her choice to pick one; she picked Garroway, who took the name Jill Corey out of a telephone book. Within six weeks the Life article, with a cover picture and seven pages, came out. Jill Corey became the youngest star ever at the Copacabana nightclub, where she was hit on by Frank Sinatra, and had numerous hit records. 

Even so, in May 1956, Billboard described Corey as a performer who "hasn't made it big" despite the amount of publicity she received. Corey was a regular on the television variety programs Robert Q's Matinee (1950–1956) The Dave Garroway Show (1953–1954), and the 1958–1959 version of Your Hit Parade. She was co-host of Music on Ice, a variety program on NBC (1960). 

She also worked on television with Ed Sullivan. In 1956 she became a regular on Johnny Carson's CBS-network comedy-variety show from California. In addition, she had her own syndicated radio and television shows, like The Jill Corey Show hosted by the National Guard Bureau, the Jill Corey Sings radio show, and episodes of "Stop the Music" radio show. She also appeared at a Delta Gamma gathering in 1957, where she sang and greeted guests. She is known for her cover of a French song, "Let It Be Me", in 1957 for Columbia Records and her 1956 song, Egghead, which focuses on "failed masculinity" of an egghead. In 1959 she starred in a feature-length musical film for Columbia Pictures, entitled Senior Prom, which was co-produced by Moe Howard of The Three Stooges. 

Jill with Don Hoak

Corey suspended her career to marry Pittsburgh Pirates third baseman Don Hoak on December 28, 1961, in Pittsburgh. They had a daughter, Clare. Hoak died of a heart attack at age 41 after they had been married eight years. She then resumed her career in New York City. An Associated Press article published in February 1973 pointed out the difficulties that Corey faced in attempting a comeback. "Today I don't know how to audition, how to get people interested in booking me," she said. Determined to succeed, she said, "Somehow, I'm going to find a way to tell people I'm back, and that I want to sing." 

She began to star in plays on and off Broadway including Annie Get Your Gun, Sweet Charity, and played to a sold out crowd at Carnegie Hall in 1989. A two-CD compilation of her complete singles was released in June 2015 by Jasmin Records. 

Corey died on April 3, 2021, from septic shock in Shadyside Hospital, Shadyside (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, at age 85. 

(Edited from Wikipedia) 

 

Mike Laure born 29 September 1937

Miguel Laure Rubio (September 29, 1937 – November 19, 2000), popularly known by his stage name Mike Laure (pronounced Mikay Lau-rey) or The King of the Tropics, was a Mexican cumbia musician, singer and orchestra leader. 

Born in El Salto, Jalisco Mike always had a special affection for music, because his whole family played an instrument, although never professionally. When he was 8 years old, he was bought his first guitar and later became a good drummer. He learned to play Hawaiian guitar and bass. He began as a rock & roll musician in the late fifties. In 1957 he formed his group Mike Laure & the Comets, as a tribute to Bill Haley & His Comets, and would perform his songs every weekend in the Beer Garden in Chapala. 

Laure, a singer with a very melodious and rhythmic voice, tried to excel in his native state, Jalisco, without fully succeeding. He changed his name to "Mike" when he performed in Laredo, Texas, as a Cha cha chá singer. After having ventured into Rock and roll and then in Twist, and not having the expected success he decided to change to the tropical rhythm, being the Cumbia. In the city of Jalisco he was discovered by executives of the Musart record company, who helped him find his true musical style; thus he changed his rebellious and rock and roll life for tropical music with which he would triumph. 

                                    

In the early 1960s he experimented with a new tropical rhythm, cumbia, and by the early 1960s he was already known in the industry for fusing tropical rhythms with rock and roll. His first hit was the song "Tiburón a la vista". His song "La banda borracha" topped the music popularity charts in Mexico for a few weeks around 1966, where his pieces "Mazatlán" and "Cero 39" would also appear.  His popularity earned him the nickname "The King of the Tropics". 

Laure combined several of the instruments typical of Afro-Caribbean and Colombian orchestras, to achieve, within his tropical themes an innovative mix. Thus, around 1962 and 1963 he used the accordion and clarinet of the Colombian cumbia, the saxophone very common in various folklore of the as well as the Puerto Rican güiro and the conga of the rumba, guaracha and son, combining it with the rock and roll, the electric guitar as accompaniment and requinto, and acoustic drums. This last instrument was part of the definitive seal of Mexican cumbia, as it was the first time that cumbia was performed, creating the basis of the rhythm with the bass drums, toms and cymbals of the drums, a definitive sign characteristic of the tropical groups of the 70s and later of the 90s in technocumbia. 

The result was a fusion of great popularity in tropical music, although he was not the one who introduced cumbia in Mexico, since some recordings of Cumbia had arrived in the country from Colombia years before, however he was the first musician to record a fusion of cumbia in Mexico with Mexican musicians, with the peculiarity that he would also implicitly become one of the fathers of Mexican cumbia, next to the immortal Carmen Rivero. Most of the songs performed by Laure remained at the top of the charts, but especially during the seventies and eighties there was not a single dance in which hits were played in Mike's voice. 

Laure recorded dozens of albums and maintained a hectic schedule of concerts and television appearances, guided by his good-time spirit. Despite a few more hits during the1970s, Mike Laure's popularity had waned by the 1980s. He was debilitated by a 1990 stroke, though he returned to live performance on a limited basis but his health began to deteriorate  so his wife decided to transfer him to Mexico City where he died on February 29, 2000 at the age of 64.

(Edited from Wikipedia, La Jornada & Estroncio90) 

Ray Warleigh born 28 September 1938

Ray Warleigh (28 September 1938 – 21 September 2015) was an Australian alto saxophonist and flautist. 

Raymond "Ray" Kenneth Warleigh was born in Sydney and migrated to England in 1960, where he quickly established himself as an in-demand session musician. He played and recorded with major figures and bands of the UK jazz and blues scene, including Alexis Korner, Tubby Hayes, Humphrey Lyttelton, Terry Smith, Ronnie Scott, Long John Baldry, John Mayall, Keef Hartley, Allan Holdsworth, Soft Machine, Georgie Fame, Mike Westbrook, Dick Morrissey and Kenny Wheeler, as well as Mike Oldfield, Nick Drake, and Charlie Watts. 

He accompanied visiting artists such as Champion Jack Dupree. According to John Fordham in The Guardian wrote: "Ray Warleigh brought a unique touch to every venture he played on from the 60s on, and had a successful 30-year career that partnered him with Dusty Springfield, Marianne Faithfull, Scott Walker and Stevie Wonder, among others." 

                                     

Warleigh's first album, in 1968, was produced by Scott Walker. During this same period a few years later, in 1971 he appeared on Nick Drake's second album, Bryter Layter, playing a beautifully memorable flute part on the final track "Sunday". His evocative performance, displaying both classical and jazz sensibilities, was in stark contrast to the percussive, unorthodox flute heard on contemporary albums such as Aqualung from the likes of Jethro Tull. 

In 1973 he joined Latin fusion band Paz, led by vibist and composer Dick Crouch. He featured with the band for eight years playing a weekly Sunday residency at the Kensington pub in Holland Park, recording albums including 'Kandeen Love Song', 'Paz Are Back' (Spotlite Records), 'Paz Live at Chichester Festival' (Magnus Records) and 'Look Inside' (Paladin Records). Other members of the band were Dick Crouch leader and vibes, Ed Speight on guitar, Geoff Castle on keyboards, Ron Mathewson on bass guitar, Dave Sheen on drums and Chris Fletcher on percussion. 

Warleigh's last album, 'Rue Victor Massé' (2009), is an improvisation with free-jazz drummer Tony Marsh, has received critical acclaim. According to Jazz Review: "The duo’s synergy and common goals resound mightily here, featuring Warleigh’s lyrically resplendent sax and flute lines, in concert with a crystalline audio sound, the musicians flex some muscle amid buoyant underpinnings." 

In his leisure time Warleigh was an accomplished yachtsman, completing many voyages with his long-standing friend, Dr Gillian Ross, with whom he co-owned several boats, before serious illness struck in 2011. He died of cancer on 21 September 2015.

Don Nix born 27 September 1941

Donald Nix (September 27, 1941 – December 31, 2024) was an American musician, songwriter, and producer. Nix, who was best known for his song "Going Down," was described by AllMusic as "one of the more obscure figures in Southern soul and rock."

The Mar-Keys

William Donald Nix was born into a musical family in Memphis, Tennessee. He attended Messick High School with Donald "Duck" Dunn and Steve Cropper of the famed Stax house band Booker T. & the MG's. After graduation, Nix spent a short stint in the Army before returning to Memphis, where he joined Dunn and Cropper, along with Wayne Jackson, Packy Axton, Terry Johnson, and Smoochy Smith, as a saxophonist in the Mar-Keys. The group scored a smash hit with the instrumental "Last Night" on the Satellite label (later Stax/Volt).After the success of "Last Night" fizzled, Nix returned to Memphis and spent the next several years as a horn for hire, occasionally playing gigs with a re-formed version of the Mar-Keys or backing Stax stars such as William Bell and Carla Thomas. 

He relocated to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s to visit Leon Russell and Carle Radle, friends he'd met through touring. The friendship with Russell, a big producer at the time, landed Nix a position in Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars backing one of Russell's acts, Gary Lewis & the Playboys. Their friendship also provided Nix the opportunity to see how a session was put together, and he began engineering and producing at studios around Memphis such as Stax and Ardent. 

Nix's best known composition, "Going Down," was originally released by the band Moloch on their eponymous album in 1969, and has become a blues-rock standard, having been covered by Freddie King, J.J.Cale the Jeff Beck Group, the Who, and the Rolling Stones. 

                                    

Nix spent the next several years writing and producing for artists such as Freddie King, Albert King, Sid Selvidge, and Charlie Musselwhite. In 1970, he signed a recording deal with Shelter Records (co-owned by his old friend Leon Russell) and released a solo album, In God We Trust and followed it a year later with Living by the Days. Neither album sold very well, and after a few more attempts, Nix returned to recording other artists, producing records for John Mayall and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. In 1971, Nix made the acquaintance of George Harrison, leading to Nix organizing the backup vocalists for the Concert for Bangladesh. 

George Harrison and Tom Nix

After having been absent from record industry throughout most of the '80s, Nix relocated to Nashville and began writing and producing again. He published a book about his experiences titled Road Stories & Recipes, and re-recorded many of his classic tracks with musicians such as Brian May and Steve Cropper for 2002's nostalgic Going Down. He followed this with I Don't Want No Trouble in 2006, and Passing Through -- both on his Section Eight Productions label -- and in 2009, he released Hobos, Heroes and Street Corner Clowns for Concord's revitalized Stax imprint. In 2013, Real Gone Music reissued Living by the Days.

Nix had been suffering from the effects of macular degeneration and had lost his sight in recent years. He died in his sleep at his home in Germantown, Tennessee, on December 31, 2024, at the age of 83. 

(Edited from AllMuisc & Wikipedia)

 

George Gershwin born 26 September 1898

George Gershwin (September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, with most of his popular melodies widely known. Among his best known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928), as well as the opera, Porgy and Bess (1935). 

George & Ira Gershwin

He wrote most of his vocal and theatrical works, including more than a dozen Broadway shows, in collaboration with his elder brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin. George Gershwin composed music for both Broadway and the classical concert hall, as well as popular songs that brought his work to an even wider public. His compositions have been used in numerous films and on television, and many became jazz standards recorded in numerous variations. Countless singers and musicians have recorded Gershwin songs. 

George aged 10

George Gershwin was born Jacob Gershowitz in Brooklyn in 1898, the second of four children from a close-knit immigrant family. His parents were Jews from Odessa (Ukraine). His father, Morris (Moishe) Gershowitz, changed his family name to 'Gershvin' some time after immigrating to the United States from St. Petersburg, Russia in the early 1890s. Gershwin's mother Rosa Bruskin had already immigrated from Russia. She met Gershowitz in New York and they married on July 21, 1895. George changed the spelling of the family name to 'Gershwin' after he became a professional musician; other members of his family followed suit. 

He began his musical career as a song-plugger on Tin Pan Alley, but was soon writing his own pieces. Gershwin’s first published song, “When You Want ‘Em, You Can’t Get ‘Em,” demonstrated innovative new techniques, but only earned him five dollars. Soon after, however, he met a young lyricist named Irving Ceaser. Together they composed a number of songs including “Swanee,” which sold more than a million copies. In the same year as “Swanee,” Gershwin collaborated with Arthur L. Jackson and Buddy De Sylva on his first complete Broadway musical, “La, La Lucille”. Over the course of the next four years, Gershwin wrote forty-five songs; among them were “Somebody Loves Me” and “Stairway to Paradise,” as well as a twenty-five-minute opera, “Blue Monday.” Composed in five days, the piece contained many musical clichés, but it also offered hints of developments to come. 

                                   Here’s Preludes 1,2 & 3

                                   

In 1924, George collaborated with his brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin, on a musical comedy “Lady Be Good”. It included such standards as “Fascinating Rhythm” and “The Man I Love.” It was the beginning of a partnership that would continue for the rest of the composer’s life. Together they wrote many more successful musicals including “Oh Kay!” and “Funny Face”, staring Fred Astaire and his sister Adele. While continuing to compose popular music for the stage, Gershwin began to lead a double life, trying to make his mark as a serious composer. 

When he was 25 years old, his jazz-influenced “Rhapsody in Blue” premiered in New York’s Aeolian Hall at the concert, “An Experiment in Music.” The audience included Jascha Heifitz, Fritz Kreisler, Leopold Stokowski, Serge Rachmaninov, and Igor Stravinsky. Gershwin followed this success with his orchestral work “Piano Concerto in F, Rhapsody No. 2″ and “An American in Paris”. Serious music critics were often at a loss as to where to place Gershwin’s classical music in the standard repertoire. Some dismissed his work as banal and tiresome, but it always found favor with the general public. 

In the early thirties, Gershwin experimented with some new ideas in Broadway musicals. “Strike Up The Band”, “Let ‘Em Eat Cake”, and “Of Thee I Sing”, were innovative works dealing with social issues of the time. “Of Thee I Sing” was a major hit and the first comedy ever to win the Pulitzer Prize. In 1935 he presented a folk opera “Porgy and Bess” in Boston with only moderate success. Now recognized as one of the seminal works of American opera, it included such memorable songs as “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “I Loves You, Porgy,” and “Summertime.”   

In 1937, after many successes on Broadway, the brothers decided go to Hollywood. Again they teamed up with Fred Astaire, who was now paired with Ginger Rogers. They made the musical film, “Shall We Dance”, which included such hits as “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” and “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.” Soon after came “A Damsel in Distress”, in which Astaire appeared with Joan Fontaine. After becoming ill while working on a film, he had plans to return to New York to work on writing serious music. He began to complain of blinding headaches. He planned a string quartet, a ballet and another opera, but these pieces were never written. 

Gershwin performed in a special concert of his music with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under the direction of French maestro Pierre Monteux. Gershwin suffered "musical blackouts" during his final performances. It was in Hollywood, while working on the score of The Goldwyn Follies, that he collapsed. He died on July 11, 1937 at the age of 38 at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital following surgery for the tumor.

(Edited from American Masters, pbs.org & Wikipedia)

 

Jesse Allen born 25 September 1925

Jesse Allen (25, September, 1925 – 14, September, 1976) was an American rhythm & blues guitarist and vocalist. 

Jesse Allen remains one of New Orleans’ “Great Unknowns”, and his entire recording career is believed to be encapsulated in twenty tracks. Yet the quality of these sides is so impressive that you can’t help wondering (a) why he didn’t register hits, and (b) how come he didn’t cut more records. In particular, powerful discs like ‘Rockin’ and Rollin’’ and ‘Love You Baby’ b/w ‘After A While’ have become highly-touted collectors’ items. 

For many years very little was known about Allen - even from where he’d originated - and the various written articles and sleevenotes about him were largely conjecture. But in the Internet era his daughter Joanne contacted the bebopwino.blogspot.com website, after they’d done a track-by-track analysis of a collectors’ LP, and was able to correct several factoids and fill in some of the gaps. 

Jesse Leroy Allen was born in Tallahassee, Florida. He joined the Navy at a young age and developed a love for music and singing. He never learned to read music but was a self taught guitarist, playing by ear and learning licks from fellow musicians as he picked up work in small time clubs and bars starting in Dade and Broward counties, Florida. Over the years his club work would take him and his family to Amarillo, Texas, where he also deejayed on a small local radio. The family then moved to New Mexico and even to White Plains, New York. 

He had a strong singing voice suited to both slow blues and rocking numbers. His first recording session was for Aladdin Records in New Orleans on October 13th, 1951. This was in fact the first New Orleans session held by the LA based label.  “Gonna Move away From Town” and “Rock This Morning” were reviewed in Billboard on the 26th April, 1952. The two other sides recorded at the session, “Shake ‘em up Baby” and “Boogie Woogie Mama,” were not released. “Gonna Move Away From Town b/w Rock This Morning” was not the first Jesse Allen single to be released. On December 8th, 1951 he recorded two sides for the Coral label: “My Suffering” and “Let’s Party” which were released on Coral 65078 at the beginning of February 1952. 

                                   

After Aladdin, Jesse’s next recording session was for Bayou, a subsidiary of Lew Chudd’s Imperial label. Supervised by Dave Bartholomew in New Orleans, the session (probably held in 1952 or early 1953) yielded the single “Dragnet b/w Take It Easy.” In August 1953, Jesse Allen had his first recording session for Imperial. He recorded four duets with Audrey Walker, two of which were released. Although the disc with Audrey Walker failed to sell, Imperial had enough faith in Jesse Allen to call him back to the studio for a solo recording session in early 1954. Backed by a lineup of New Orleans’ finest session musicians, Jesse cut four sides. Neither of Jesse’s releases did okay in the coin boxes or anywhere else. However, despite the lack of sales Imperial persevered with Jesse. He was back in the New Orleans recording studio on September 18th 1954 to cut “Rockin’ and Rollin’” and “I Love You So.” 

Jesse didn’t record again until 1958. This time round he cut two sides for Johnny Vincent’s Vin label, backed again by Lee Allen and Red Tyler on saxes with James Booker on piano and Roland Cook on bass. Jesse’s last recordings were made for the Jimmy Liggins owned Duplex label which released occasional R&B and soul records.. He cut two sides in Fayetteville, Tennessee in 1959. Released on Duplex 9003, “Love You Baby” (aka “Love Me Baby”) and “After A While” were wild blues rockers with screaming vocals and clanging guitar. 

Red Bird Cafe, Tallahassee

He continued to play the bars, clubs and juke joints. He and his family moved around to wherever his music career took him. In the early 1960s he was in Amarillo, Texas, then in 1964 he was back in Tallahassee. In 1965 he was in White Plains, New York before moving to Miami in 1966/7 where he stayed for the rest of his life. He developed heart complications and passed away in Miami on the 14th of September, 1976. Almost up until his death he was still working in clubs in Florida, in Perrine, in Midway (the Club 40) and in Tallahassee (the Red Bird Café). 

However, music was not his most important or most lasting legacy. He is survived by one daughter, eight grandchildren, twenty-three great grandchildren and one great-great granddaughter.

(Edited from Be Bop Wino & Jasmine) (I could not find any other photographs of Jesse via the usual search engines, hence the record scans)