Fats Navarro born 24 September 1923

Theodore "Fats" Navarro (September 24, 1923 – July 6, 1950) was an American jazz trumpet player and a pioneer of the bebop style of jazz improvisation in the 1940s. Widely acknowledged as one of the greatest trumpeters of all time, he  had a brief life but his influence cannot be overstated. 

Navarro was born in Key West, Florida and was of Cuban, African, and Chinese descent. He was bilingual, speaking Spanish as his second language, and he was a childhood friend of drummer Al Dreares. Navarro's father, a barber by trade, had some musical knowledge and hired a piano teacher to give Navarro private lessons in his early childhood. Hence, the younger Navarro began to play piano at age six, although he did not become serious about music until he began playing trumpet at the age of thirteen. Additionally, he mastered the tenor saxophone and played both trumpet and tenor saxophone professionally during the earliest years of his career. 

By the time Navarro graduated from Frederick Douglass School in 1941, he wanted to be away from Key West and moved north to Orlando to join Sol Allbright's band. As a member, Navarro was able to tour the Midwest, reaching Cincinnati before he left to take lessons. Now living permanently in the Midwest, Navarro joined Snookum Russell's territory band. He gained valuable experience touring in bands, including Russell's band, where he met and influenced a young J.J. Johnson. Navarro also played in the Andy Kirk, Benny Goodman, and Lionel Hampton big bands. 

Vocalist Billy Eckstine invited the young trumpet player to join his band, which included several prominent musicians in the emerging bebop genre. Although Eckstine's group and other big bands yielded few opportunities for Navarro to demonstrate his improvisational skills, he used the opportunity to gain experience. He befriended other trumpet players including Howard McGhee and his third cousin Charlie Shavers. Navarro made his last recordings with Kirk and Eckstine in January and March 1946, respectively. Regarding Navarro's presence in the big bands of the day, Carmen McRae noted in her book that Navarro "was a big, lovable character, playing the most beautiful horn, forever practicing and forever striving. He and I used to discuss the way the cats were using the stuff [narcotics], and he said he’d never do it.” 

                                                                        

Tiring of life on the road, Navarro settled in New York City in 1946, where his career took off. Navarro participated in small group recording sessions with Kenny Clarke, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet, and Howard McGhee. Clarke's 52nd Street Boys, also known as the Be Bop Boys, recorded at the studio in September 1946 and 1947 and included another young bebop trumpet player, Kenny Dorham, and were joined by Sonny Stitt on alto saxophone and Bud Powell on piano. The September sessions, in which Navarro participated, were among his first opportunities to play bebop in a studio session and the group's work later formed part of the album Fats Bud-Klook-Sonny-Kinney. 

Navarro met and played with Charlie Parker. However, he was in a position to demand a high salary and did not join one of Parker's regular groups. He instead joined pianist Tadd Dameron's group based at the Royal Roost jazz club in New York. Dameron went to great lengths to accommodate Navarro's position in the band, but the trumpeter's continued demands for higher pay ultimately led him to form his own group for studio sessions. Navarro preferred the financial security of being a band member over being a bandleader. 

Navarro won the Metronome Jazz Poll in 1948, enabling him to join the Metronome Jazz All-Stars for a studio session. In addition to regular studio recording, in the late 1940s Navarro began to compose, and many of his tunes were dedicated to Dameron's band, in which he continued to play on occasion. By the late forties, many jazz musicians refused to play in bands with Navarro for fear of being overshadowed by the trumpeter. Although Dizzy Gillespie described Navarro's personality as "sweet," at jam sessions he feuded often with Bud Powell and on one occasion attacked the pianist with his trumpet, but missed. 

L-R Charlie Rouse, Ernie Henry, Tadd Dameron
and Fats 

He once again began touring in 1948, this time with Lionel Hampton's band. While on the group's tour bus on route to Chicago, Navarro fell ill and decided to return to New York. His illness proved to be tuberculosis, but he continued to play despite declining health. His continued narcotics use hastened the progression of the disease. Navarro toured with Jazz at the Philharmonic in early 1949. Navarro died of tuberculosis in New York City on July 6, 1950, and was buried in an unmarked grave, number 414, at the Rose Hill Cemetery in Linden, New Jersey. 

In September 2002, friends and family members dedicated a headstone for Fats Navarro's grave. The event of dedication was sponsored by the Jazz Alliance International while the day of it was proclaimed as Fats Navarro Day by the mayor of Linden. (Edited from Wikipedia)

Les McCann born 23 September 1935

Les McCann (September 23, 1935 – December 29, 2023) was an American jazz pianist and vocalist. He is known for his innovations in soul jazz and his 1969 recording of the protest song "Compared to What". His music has been widely sampled in hip hop. 

Leslie Coleman McCann was born in Lexington, Kentucky. His siblings (a brother and three sisters) all sang in church. His father was a jazz fan and his mother liked to hum opera arias. He began taking piano lessons at six, but after only a few weeks, his teacher unexpectedly died. McCann continued teaching himself the piano while getting formal musical training in elementary and high school. He played tuba in the marching band and drums in the orchestra. 

McCann attended Los Angeles City College, which was highly influential to his musical career. At the age of 17, he joined the U.S. Navy in San Diego and, during his service, won a singing contest that resulted in an appearance on the nationally syndicated Ed Sullivan Show in 1956. After being honorably discharged, he moved to Los Angeles and formed a trio. McCann turned down an invitation to join the Cannonball Adderley Quintet in order to focus on his own music. 

The group's first gig was playing the Purple Onion in 1959 supporting Gene McDaniels, who hired them to back him on tour after that night. After leaving McDaniels' employ, McCann signed a solo deal with Pacific Jazz. In 1960, Les McCann Ltd. Plays the Truth and The Shout appeared. His soulful, funk style on piano was influential on emerging musicians, resonated with veterans, and was popular with live audiences. 

                                     

He recorded a dozen albums for Pacific Jazz between 1960 and 1967, including Les McCann Ltd. in New York with Blue Note stars Stanley Turrentine and Blue Mitchell, and Les McCann Sings with the Gerald Wilson Orchestra. Despite the latter's release in 1961, McCann's singing was only occasional both live and on recordings; he didn't begin using vocals as a key part of his act until the middle of the decade. 

During his time with Pacific Jazz, McCann issued collaborative albums with the Jazz Crusaders, Richard "Groove" Holmes, and several others. 1963's Plays the Shampoo at the Village Gate, netted a number three single with the title track. Though pianist Ramsey Lewis was already recording, McCann's 1963 album influenced the latter's mid-'60s live recordings such as The In Crowd and Dancing in the Street. 

McCann moved over to Limelight in 1965/1967 on the way to Atlantic in 1968. In 1969, Atlantic released Swiss Movement, an album recorded with saxophonist Eddie Harris and trumpeter Benny Bailey earlier at that year's Montreux Jazz Festival. The album contained the song "Compared to What"; both reached the Billboard pop charts. The song, which criticized the Vietnam War, was written by Eugene McDaniels years earlier and recorded and released as a ballad by McCann in 1966 on his album, Les McCann Plays the Hits. Roberta Flack's version appeared as the opening track on her debut album First Take (1969). 

Swiss Movement won airplay internationally and charted. Another volume, Second Movement, appeared to critical acclaim, but didn't sell as well. McCann, primarily a piano player, emphasized his vocals. He became an innovator in soul jazz, merging jazz with funk, soul and world rhythms. His music was influential for its use of electric piano, clavinet and synthesizer.In 1971, McCann and Harris were part of a group of soul, R&B and rock performers–including Wilson Pickett, the Staple Singers, Santana and Ike & Tina Turner–who flew to Accra, Ghana, to perform a 14-hour concert for more than 100,000 Ghanaians. The March 6 concert was recorded for the documentary film Soul to Soul. 

McCann had a stroke in the mid-1990s, but he returned to music in 2002, when Pump it Up was released, and continued to release music until 2018 when his last album as bandleader, 28 Juillet arrived, as did the self-released holiday recording “A Time Les Christmas.” He also exhibited his work as a painter and photographer. McCann died from pneumonia in a Los Angeles hospital on December 29, 2023, at age 88. 

McCann's recordings have been widely sampled in hip hop music, mostly in the 1990s and 2000s, by nearly 300 acts. These include A Tribe Called Quest, Cypress Hill, De La Soul, the Notorious B.I.G., Sean Combs, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Nas, Mary J. Blige, the Pharcyde, Eric B. & Rakim, Mobb Deep, Gang Starr and Raekwon. McCann was inducted into the the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame in 2008.           (Edited from Wikipedia & AllMusic) 

 

U-Roy born 21 September 1942

Ewart Beckford OD (21 September 1942 – 17 February 2021), known by the stage name U-Roy, was a Jamaican vocalist and pioneer of toasting. U-Roy was known for a melodic style of toasting applied with a highly developed sense of timing. 

Of the many innovations Jamaican music has offered to the world over the past 50 years, the lyrical art of “toasting” has had perhaps the most profound and long-lasting impact. A stylised, poetical form of chatting and scatting, it was brought to prominence in the early 1970s by the reggae deejay U-Roy and has fed into many musical forms, from hip-hop to grime. 

U-Roy did not actually invent toasting: that distinction is usually given to his fellow deejay Count Machuki, who began talking over songs at Jamaican sound system dances in the late 50s. But U-Roy took it on by leaps and bounds, and it was he who successfully brought it into the recording studio, popularising the artform first in Jamaica and then around the globe. 

U-Roy was born into a Seventh-Day Adventist family in the Jonestown area of the Jamaican capital, Kingston, and got his nickname from a young family member who found it difficult to pronounce “Ewart”. His musical education centred around the church, but as a teenager at Denham Town high school he was also an admirer of the jive-talking American musician Louis Jordan, and as a young amateur deejay he came under the influence of Machuki. 

He began as a professional deejay in 1961 with the Dickies Dynamic sound system, before moving in 1965 to the rival Sir George the Atomic sound system, and then becoming the No 2 deejay to another pioneering toaster, King Stitt, with Sir Coxsone Dodd. By 1968 he was the main deejay on King Tubby’s Hometown Hi Fi, where Tubby and Reid supplied him with exclusive “dub plate” recordings over which he could toast at dances. 

                                   

It was with Reid that U-Roy recorded the three groundbreaking singles that took the country by storm in 1970. Wake the Town, Rule the Nation and Wear You to the Ball – stood at Nos 1, 2 and 3 in the Jamaican charts for six weeks running. In short order word of his talent spread to the UK, the US and beyond. “It was like a new Jamaica was born,” said Dennis Alcapone, one of the toasters who followed in U-Roy’s wake. “All of a sudden they were treating us deejays like gods.” 

There were many more Jamaican hit singles for U-Roy on Reid’s Treasure Isle label, while his debut album, Version Galore (1971), created a stir not just at home but in the UK, where he was signed up by Virgin. Thereafter he produced a steady stream of critically acclaimed albums during the 70s, most of them, including Dread in a Babylon (1975), Natty Rebel (1976), Rasta Ambassador (1977) and Jah Son of Africa (1978), reflecting his Rastafarian beliefs. 

After a period living in Britain, in 1978 U-Roy set up his own sound system, Stur Gav, in Jamaica, helping to launch a new generation of toasters and fuelling the coming dancehall revolution that saw deejays move into the ascendancy at the expense of roots reggae singers and bands. From there the deejay culture dripped into the various nooks and crannies of contemporary music, most notably in the Bronx area of New York, where the influence of a sizeable expat Jamaican population informed the methods of some of the early rappers and hip-hop pioneers, including the DJ Kool Herc, who later suggested that “the whole chemistry of [hip-hop] came from Jamaica”. 

In the 80s U-Roy relocated to California, and his recorded output began to slow. He made just three LPs in that decade – one of them, Line Up and Come (1986), in collaboration with Tappa Zukie, his fellow deejay. In the 90s he teamed up with the British dub producer Mad Professor for three albums, and he continued to make records on a regular, if sedate, basis well into the new millennium. Well known for his even temper, laid-back disposition and general humility, U-Roy was awarded the Order of Distinction by the Jamaican government in 2007. 

Beckford's death was confirmed on 17 February 2021 when his partner, Marcia Smikle, told the Jamaican newspaper The Gleaner. Trojan Records was also informed about his death. While no cause of death was made public at the time, he suffered from diabetes, hypertension, and problems with his kidneys prior to his death, and had been undergoing surgery at the hospital in Kingston, Jamaica.

(Edited from The Guardian & Wikipedia)

Frank Comstock born 20 September 1922

Frank G. Comstock (September 20, 1922 – May 21, 2013) was an American composer, arranger, conductor, and trombonist. For television, Comstock wrote and arranged music for major situation comedies and variety shows; his theme and incidental music for Rocky and His Friends (1959–1964) are probably his best-remembered works. Additionally, his music for Adam-12 earned him a 1971 Emmy nomination. 

Born in San Diego, California, Comstock had no formal training other than a few trombone lessons, and his junior high school music teacher helped him write his first arrangements for the school dance band. While still in high school, Comstock sold arrangements to local San Diego dance bands. After graduation, Comstock's high school friend, the late trumpeter Uan Rasey, landed a job touring with Sonny Dunham's nationally known dance band. Dunham hired Comstock on Uan's recommendation. When Sonny Dunham's band folded, Dunham's manager recommended Comstock to Benny Carter. Carter, a musician and arranger himself, soon delegated arrangement-related chores to Comstock. 

Les Brown & Doris Day

In 1943, Comstock's reputation led to an arranger position with Les Brown and His Band of Renown, which critics claimed was one of the key causes of the band's success. In 1947, while continuing to arrange for Brown, Comstock began freelancing in the Hollywood studios and for various record labels. Doris Day sang his arrangements with the Brown band, and that resulted in Comstock writing arrangements for her on such films as I'll See You in My Dreams (1951), On Moonlight Bay (1951), By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953), April in Paris (1952), Calamity Jane (1953) and others. Comstock and Day remained friends to the end of his life and, as late as the 1990s, still joked about going back on the road. 

                            Here’s “Patterns” from above LP

                                   

He often went uncredited, as with his arrangement of "I Wanna Be Loved by You" for Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot (1959) or work on The Desert Song (1953), Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and Finian's Rainbow (1968). He did get screen credit for his orchestrations on The Eddie Cantor Story (1953), The Helen Morgan Story (1957), The Music Man (1962), Hello, Dolly! (1969) and other films. 

In the 1950s, Comstock became friendly with producer-star and jazz fan Jack Webb, who hired Comstock to supply the themes and underscore for his TV series The D.A.'s Man (1959), Temple Houston (1963-64), Adam-12 (1968-75) and Escape (1973). His sole Emmy nomination was for scoring the 1970 Adam-12 episode "Elegy for a Pig." In addition, he scored many episodes of Pete Kelly's Blues (1959) and Dragnet (1968-70); the feature film The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961) and the TV-movies The D.A.: Murder One (1969) and The D.A.: Conspiracy to Kill (1971), all Webb productions. He also arranged much of the jukebox music heard during the early seasons of the 1970s hits Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley; and scored the TV-movie The Night That Panicked America (1975). 

His association with Les Brown resulted in his contributions of arrangements to Bob Hope TV specials for 15 years. Over the years, he also arranged songs for variety shows headlined by Judy Garland, Andy Williams and Carol Burnett.In addition to his work in the studios, he was a busy arranger for records, especially in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Comstock's recording credits include eight Hi-Lo's albums in collaboration with vocal arranger Gene Puerling, throughout the 1950s; he also wrote charts for Frankie Laine, Rosemary Clooney and other singers, and contributed arrangements for theme-park rides at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. 

His own albums included A Young Man's Fancy (1954), Patterns (1955), and  a favorite among TV-theme collectors TV Guide Top Television Themes (1959), on which he shared arranging duties with Warren Barker His cult exotica favorite Project Comstock: Music From Outer Space (1962) became a classic and was released on CD in 2004. In 2007, Brian Setzer "rediscovered" Frank Comstock and commissioned new arrangements for his Wolfgang's Big Night Out and Songs from Lonely Avenue CDs. 

He died in Huntington Beach, California, May 21, 2013 (aged 90)

(Edited from Wikipedia  & The Film Music Society) 

Lovie Austin born 19 September 1887

Cora "Lovie" Austin (September 19, 1887 – July 8, 1972) was one of the premier bandleaders in the hot jazz scene in Chicago in the 1920’s. She was the house pianist at Paramount records, where she accompanied the best women singers, as well as leading her own sessions with formidable sidemen of the era. She and Lil Hardin Armstrong are often ranked as two of the best female jazz blues piano players of the period. 

She was born Cora Calhoun in Chattanooga, Tennessee and grew up with eight brothers and sisters. Her early career was in vaudeville where she played piano and performed in variety acts. She was married in 1908 for a short time to a movie house operator in Detroit and then later married a vaudeville performer, Phillip Austin in 1910. She studied music theory at Roger Williams University in Nashville, and Knoxville College in Knoxville, Tennessee, which was uncommon for African American women and jazz musicians alike during the time. Austin could have chosen a respectable career as a music teacher. But, like her contemporary Lil Hardin Armstrong, also a classically trained pianist, Austin opted for the more lucrative world of live entertainment, playing piano and performing in variety acts on the thriving black vaudeville circuit. 

                                   

Tiring of the relentless touring and poor conditions, Austin had settled in Chicago in 1923, a magnet for entertainers and musicians. She lived and worked there for the rest of her life. She led her own band, the Blues Serenaders, which usually included trumpeters Tommy Ladnier, Bob Shoffner, Natty Dominique, or Shirley Clay on cornet, Kid Ory or Albert Wynn on trombone, and Jimmy O'Bryant or Johnny Dodds on clarinet, along with banjo and occasional drums. The Blues Serenaders developed their own unique sound within the jazz genre. Together they recorded 16 sides for Paramount between 1924 and 1926. 

From the 1920s into the late 1940s, Austin recorded with many of the great blues singers, including Chippie Hill, Ida Cox, Edmonia Henderson, Alberta Hunter, and Ma Rainey. Austin's skills as songwriter can be heard in the classic "Down Hearted Blues", a tune she co-wrote with Alberta Hunter. Singer Bessie Smith turned the song into a hit in 1923. Austin worked with many other top jazz musicians of the 1920s, including Louis Armstrong, with whom she worked on the song "Heebie Jeebies". Austin was often seen racing around town in her Stutz Bearcat with leopard skin upholstery, dressed to the teeth. 

When the classic blues craze began to wane in the early 1930s, Austin settled into the position of musical director for the Monogram Theater, at 3453 South State Street in Chicago where all the Theatre Owners’ Booking Association (TOBA) acts played. She worked there for 20 years. During wartime, many jazz musicians had to find other forms of work to support themselves and Austin worked in a war plant during World War II. In a 1950 profile of Lovie published in DownBeat, she lamented that after the death of Paramount’s owner her royalty checks stopped coming, and by 1954, a piece in Hue Magazine titled “What Happened To Lovie Austin?” revealed that after twenty years at the Monogram, she was working as a pianist at Jimmy Payne’s Dancing School where she performed and recorded occasionally. 

Lovie Austin & Alberta Hunter

In 1961 jazz critic Chris Albertson brought Hunter and Austin back into the studio to record “Alberta Hunter with Lovie Austin and her Blues Serenaders”, in which the two performed “Down Hearted Blues” together for the first time since 1922. This album would be Austin’s last recording although she did continue to perform throughout the 1960s, finally retiring in the early 1970s. Austin, unfortunately, would not have a long retirement, for she passed away at the age of 84 years, in Chicago on July 10, 1972, surrounded by scores and staves, of accomplished songs and others barely sketched, of records, books, letters, portraits of loved ones and fragments of the past immortalized on photographs, of immeasurable memorabilia, and of her eternal and precious piano. She was buried in Mount Glenwood Memory Gardens South, Glenwood, Cook County, Illinois. 

In later life, Hunter remembered Austin as “a wonderful woman. She was kindhearted. She tried to help everybody she could.” Mary Lou Williams, who became one of the most influential female jazz musicians and composers of the twentieth century, never forgot her debt to Austin. “She was a fabulous woman and a fabulous musician too,” Williams was quoted as saying in the liner notes for a Stash Records retrospective, reproduced on the Red Hot Jazz website. “I don’t believe there’s a woman around now who could compete with her. She was a greater talent than many of the men.” 

(Edited from encyclopedia.com., All About Jazz, Wikipedia, Historia Hoy & Find a Grave) (Please note I have noticed many photos on the web of Lovie Austin which are actually Alberta Hunter, so beware!) 

Louis Myers born 18th September 2024

Louis Myers (September 18, 1929 - September 05, 1994) was an American blues guitarist, harmonicist, bassist, arranger and singer. Associated with the Chicago blues scene of the 1960's and on, having backed and played with countless Chicago notables. Though he was certainly capable of brilliantly fronting a band Louis Myers will forever be recognized first and foremost as a top-drawer sideman and founding member of the Aces -- the band that backed harmonica wizard Little Walter on his immortal early Checker waxings. 

Born in Byhalia, Mississippi, along with his older brother David they left for Chicago with his family in 1941. Fate saw that the family move next door to blues great Lonnie Johnson, whose complex riffs caught young Louis' ear. Another Myers brother, harp-blowing Bob, hooked Louis up with guitarist Othum Brown for house party gigs. The Myers brothers originally performed as the Little Boys. With the addition of harmonica player Junior Wells, they became the Three Deuces and then the Three Aces. With the enlistment of the drummer Fred Below (pronounced BEE-low) in 1950, they became the Four Aces and finally the Aces. Influenced by jazz, their music led to the rise of the blues shuffle beat and helped launch the drums to a new prominence in blues bands. 

In 1952, Wells quit to join the Muddy Waters band, filling the vacancy created by the recent departure of Little Walter from that group. Walter quickly signed the remaining Aces as his new backing unit, renaming the trio the Jukes to capitalize on his current hit single, "Juke". Myers and the Aces backed Walter on his seminal "Mean Old World," "Sad Hours," "Off the Wall," and "Tell Me Mama" and at New York's famous Apollo Theater before Louis left in 1954 (he and the Aces moonlighted on Wells' indispensable 1953-1954 output for States). 

                                   

The resulting gradual dissolution of the Jukes as Little Walter's band freed the members to reform as a backing band for other Chicago blues musicians. Plenty of sideman work awaited Myers -- he played with Otis Rush, Earl Hooker, and many more. But his own recording career was practically non-existent; after a solitary 1956 single for Abco, "Just Whaling"/"Bluesy," that found Myers blowing harp in Walter-like style. 

In the late 1950s, Dave Myers switched from the guitar to the electric bass, becoming one of the first Chicago bluesmen to adopt this relatively new instrument and helping to popularize it in Chicago blues. During the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s the original Aces periodically reunited for recordings, tours, festivals and visited Europe often as a trusty rhythm section for touring acts. Myers cut a fine set for Advent in 1978, I'm a Southern Man, that showed just how effective he could be as a leader. 

Myers was hampered by the effects of a stroke while recording his last album for Earwig, 1991's Tell My Story Movin'. He courageously completed the disc but was limited to playing harp only. His health soon took a turn for the worse, ending his distinguished musical career when he died on September 05, 1994 in Chicago, Illinois. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic & Discogs) 

 

Curtis Peagler born 17 September 1929

Curtis Peagler (September 17, 1929 — December 19, 1992) was an American jazz saxophonist who was well rooted in the hard swing-oriented sound of the mid west, and played with some of the best in the business. He specialized in straight-ahead jazz and hard bop. 

Peagler was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He played in the blues genre during the first phase of his career. At 13, he started on the C-melody sax and soon joined the Sons of Rhythm on alto. He worked with other territory bands and backed singer Big Maybelle before joining the U.S. Army for two years from 1953 to 1955. After being discharged he attended the Cincinnati Conservatory for two years and played locally. 

In 1960, with the assistance of Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, he started recording for Prestige. Peagler then recorded with Lem Winchester and joined his Modern Jazz Disciples, which specialized in hard bop and recorded for Columbia. The band included a euphonium and normaphone player, William "Hicky" Kelley, an unusual instrument for jazz musicians to play during the era. The Disciples recorded two albums: the self-titled Modern Jazz Disciples (1959) and Right Down Front (1962). Peagler recorded as a member of Lem Winchester's sextet that recorded the album Lem's Beat in 1960, just a year before the vibraphone player died of a gun accident. 

                                     

Peagler moved to Los Angeles in 1962 to freelance and spent 1966-1967 and 1969 with Ray Charles. He did some studio work and toured with Count Basie for seven years (1971-1978). After the Basie years, back on the coast, he resettled in Los Angeles and started his own label Sea Pea Records, doing “For Basie and Duke,” as a leader. He also recorded “I'll Be Around,” as the Curtis Peagler 4, for Pablo Records. While at Pablo he did some fine work on albums by Harry “Sweets” Edison, Big Joe Turner, and the now famous dates where Oscar Peterson and Count Basie teamed up. 

Curtis in the Ray Charles band

Throughout the '80's Peagler was a featured saxophonist with the esteemed Jeannie and Jimmy Cheatham and the Sweet Baby Blues Band, and can be heard on all their Concord records recorded during that time. Jeannie Cheatham recollected that while on a European tour in Nice, France, a man pushed his way through the audience and asked Curtis to autograph a record. Curtis was always gracious and mannerly with folks earning him the nickname “Bourgeois.” “Of course” he said. Then took the obviously old record in his hands and stared at it in  disbelief. “Hey” he exclaimed, “this is the very first record I ever recorded! How did it get to Europe?”

Not waiting for an answer to his question, he launched into a story. “There was this record company in Cincinnati when I was a teenager. I told the owner I could play alto sax, but he wouldn’t listen to me. Told me I could hang around if I painted the outside of the studio. I told him I would.” Curtis closed his eyes, as if he were seeing that paint go onto the walls. “One day while I was painting, and straining to listen to the music inside, the owner came running out. He said one of the sax players hadn’t shown up and would I bring my horn in and play with the group.” We waited in anticipation. anticipation. 

“Well, I took my alto in there and tore it up! I knew this was my big chance.” He stared at the record again. “I was just a kid. I never had a chance to see or hear this record.” Curtis signed the cover. You could tell he was really overcome. He’d had a quadruple bypass operation earlier that year, and we knew this record signing was precious to him, “Every day is my lucky day!” Curtis was always philosophical and humorous. We all laughed. C’est si bon!   

Curtis Peagler was a solid, hard working sax man whose performance and recording resume was quite impressive. He remained in Los Angeles until his death December 19, 1992 following heart surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 55. 

Jazz critic Leonard Feather described Peagler as "an exciting, extrovert saxophonist who lent colour to every band he played in, from Ray Charles in the 1960s to Count Basie in the ‘70s." James Nadal referred to him as "a solid, hard working sax man whose performance and recording resume was quite impressive."

(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic & All About Jazz)