King Kolax born 6 November 1912

King Kolax (born William Little, November 6, 1912 – December 18, 1991) was an American jazz trumpeter and bandleader. 

Captain Walter Dyett

William Little was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1912; he misleadingly claimed he was born in 1918 in later years. While young his family moved to Chicago where he attended Douglas Elementary School and Wendell Phillips High School, studying under the redoubtable bandmaster Captain Walter Dyett. He completed a degree at the Chicago Conservatory of Music in the early 1930s and played in dance bands in Chicago during the decade. One of the first bands he played in as a professional was a Swing aggregation led by Les Wilcox in 1936. 

By early 1937 the Les Wilcox band had morphed into the Ruth Ellington band playing at the Creole Palace, San Diego, California. Sometime later, after returning to Chicago, Kolax had taken over leadership himself and was also a regular participant in jam sessions and dances held on Thursday evenings at Warwick Hall under Union sponsorship. In 1938  the band sported some colorful titles, including the Jazz Madmaniacs. Kolax and his ensemble toured the U.S. and continued playing regularly at venues such as the Savoy Theater and the 65 Club. The band evolved somewhat, as Kolax continued to work steadily through all of 1939, when Charlie Parker played in his band. 

During 1940 and 1941, King Kolax worked a number of Sunday dances at the Savoy Ballroom (47th and South Parkway). On Sunday January 12, 1941, his 15 piece band shared the bill with Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra. It appears the band then went on its second tour of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina, played the Savoy Ballroom in New York City again, and was on its way back to Chicago when it landed in Indianapolis for 10 nights at the Sunset Terrace. 

Kolax's band at the Grand Terrace in 1942 retained most of the personnel from the April 1941 engagement at the Sunset Terrace. During February that year, King Kolax and his Orchestra participated in a battle of the bands at the Savoy Ballroom, but by July, Kolax seems to have disbanded his outfit and joined the Ernie Fields Orchestra. This band toured the Midwest until the fall when Kolax was once again touring with his own band The N.B.C. Orchestra ending in a revue called "Vampin' Babies" at the Seitz State Theater. 

                                  

By 1943 Kolax formed yet another band and again toured the American south. He continued touring throughout the country and on military bases within the U.S. through 1946. In May 1946, his group broke up and Kolax joined Billy Eckstine's big band with which he made his first recordings. Eckstine's band ended before the end of the year, so Kolax organized another band late in 1946, which lasted until May 1947; John Coltrane was a member of this ensemble. After the demise of his band, Kolax returned to Chicago to play in small groups. 

In 1948 he played in Sonny Parker's band same year and recorded for the Opera label as a leader and singer. He had a steady job at the Ritz Lounge in 1949 and played in J. T. Brown's band in 1951. Establishing a new band of his own, he recorded for J.O.B. in a session that featured his blues singing. In 1952, he backed Joe Williams on his singles for Checker. While playing at the Paris Club in 1953, Kolax recorded with Danny Overbea, also for Checker. That same year, Kolax and orchestra backed The Flamingos on Chance. He also led orchestras behind Mabel Scott and Rudy Greene. He recorded again for Vee-Jay at the end of 1954 and in September 1955. 

L-R: Lupita Peruyero, Joe Louis, Norman Schlossberg, Sarah Vaughan
King Kodax and Mitzi Mars. 1952.

Kolax made regular engagements at hotels and ballrooms throughout the 1950s in Chicago and elsewhere; he had a working relationship with Sun Ra, who wrote arrangements for him. 

Kolax with Al Hibbler

In the second half of the decade Kolax recorded with Earl Pugh, Brooks & Brown, Clyde Williams, and Harvey Ellington; in the early 1960s records followed with Wilbur White, The Chanteurs, Jerry Butler, McKinley Mitchell, Otis Rush, and The Vondells. 

Kolax became an A&R representative for Marvello Records, owned by the Chicago businessman James P. Johnson, between 1961 and 1965. Sporadic recording followed later in the 1960s both as a leader and behind Willie Mabon, Brother Jack McDuff, Gene Ammons, and Roosevelt Sykes, whose August 1970 recording session was Kolax's last. 

Kolax had a position in the Chicago Federation of Musicians, and union rules prevented him from performing and holding office simultaneously. He retired around 1981 and died December 18, 1991 (aged 79) in Chicago ten years later after suffering from Alzheimer's disease for an extended period. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & Robert Campbell’s King Kolax discography)

Here’s great gem from a 1970 TV broadcast from WTTW - Chicago PBS. This is the only known TV appearance of Gene "Jug" Ammons. This broadcast was produced by National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Dan Morgenstern, and was discovered among over 60 boxes of Morgenstern’s memorabilia at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. George Freeman is on guitar with King Kolax on trumpet, Wallace Burton on piano, Chester Williamson on bass, and Bob Guthrie on drums. 

Elke Sommer born 5 November 1940

Elke Sommer (5 November 1940) is a German actress who also performed as a singer, recording and releasing several albums. This gorgeous Teutonic temptress was one of Hollywood's most captivating imports of the 1960s. Blonde and beautiful with her trademark pouty lips, high cheekbones and sky-high bouffant hairdos, proved irresistible to American audiences, whether adorned in lace or leather, or donning lingerie or lederhosen. 

She was born in Berlin-Spandau on November 5, 1940 with the unlikely name of Else Schletz-Ho to a Lutheran minister and his wife. The family was forced to evacuate to Erlangen, during World War II in 1942, a small university town in the southern region of Germany. It was here that her parents first introduced her to water colors and her lifelong passion for painting was ignited. Her father's death in 1955, when she was only 14, interrupted her education and she relocated to Great Britain, where she learned English and made ends meet as an au pair. She eventually attended college back in Germany and entertained plans to become a diplomatic translator but, instead, decided to try modeling. 

After winning a beauty title ("Miss Viareggio Turistica") while on vacation in Italy, she caught the attention of renowned film actor/director Vittorio De Sica and began performing on screen in 1959.  Also that year, she changed her surname from Schletz to Sommer. Elke began making a name for herself in German films, as well, and gradually upgraded her status to European sex symbol and moved to Hollywood in the early 1960s. Sommer became one of the more popular pin-up girls of the time, posing for pictorials in the September 1964 and December 1967 issues of Playboy magazine. 

                                     

Sommer became one of the top film actresses of the 1960s. She made 99 film and television appearances from 1959 to 2005, including The Prize (1963) with Paul Newman, A Shot in the Dark (1964) with Peter Sellers, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966) with Bob Hope, the Bulldog Drummond extravaganza Deadlier Than the Male (1966), The Wrecking Crew (1968) with Dean Martin, and The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz (1968); in each of these films she was the leading lady. 

In 1964, she won a Golden Globe award as Most Promising Newcomer Actress for The Prize, a film in which she co-starred with Paul Newman and Edward G. Robinson. A frequent guest on television, Sommer sang and participated in comedy sketches on episodes of The Dean Martin Show and on Bob Hope specials, made 10 appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and was a panelist on the Hollywood Squares game show many times between 1973 and 1980, when Peter Marshall was its host. 

Sommer's films during the 1970s included the thriller Zeppelin, in which she co-starred with Michael York, and a 1974 remake of Agatha Christie's murder mystery Ten Little Indians. In 1972, she starred in two Italian horror films directed by Mario Bava: Baron Blood and Lisa and the Devil. The latter was re-edited (with 1975 footage inserted) to make a different film titled House of Exorcism. Sommer went back to Italy to act in additional scenes for Lisa and the Devil, which its producer inserted into the film to convert it to House of Exorcism against the wishes of the director. 

In 1975, Peter Rogers cast her in the British comedy Carry On Behind as the Russian Professor Vrooshka. She became the Carry On films' joint highest-paid performer, at £30,000; this was an honour that she shared with Phil Silvers (who starred in Follow That Camel). Most of her movie work during the decade came in European films. After the 1979 comedy The Prisoner of Zenda, which reunited her with Sellers, the actress did virtually no more acting in Hollywood films, concentrating more on her artwork. 

In the 1980s, Sommer hosted a syndicated programme titled The Exciting World of Speed and Beauty. Sommer was embroiled in a long-running feud with Zsa Zsa Gabor that began in 1984 when both appeared on Circus of the Stars. This had escalated into a multimillion-dollar libel suit by 1993, resulting in Sommer being awarded $3.3 million in damages from Gabor and her husband, Frederick von Anhalt, for defaming her in interviews published in a pair of German publications in 1990. She has been married since 1993 to hotelier Wolf Walther. 

After the 1990s, Sommer concentrated more on painting than on acting. As an actress, she had worked in half a dozen countries learning the languages (she speaks seven languages) and storing images which she has expressed on canvas. Her artwork shows a strong influence from Marc Chagall. In 2001, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars was dedicated to her. As of May 2017, Sommer was living in Los Angeles, California.  

(Edited from Wikipedia & IMDb)

  

Lillian Offitt born 4 November 1938

Lillian Offitt (November 4, 1938 – February 27, 2020) was an American blues and R&B singer. 

She was born Lillian Etta Offitt in Gallatin, Tennessee. Whist attending  Tennessee State University she visited the offices of Nashboro Records in the hope of making a gospel record. Owner Ernie Young suggested she record secular music instead, and her first record, "Miss You So", was issued on its subsidiary Excello label in 1957. It started out as a good seller rising to #8 on the Billboard R&B chart. In June Offitt went to Chicago and made some personal appearances in support of her record which shows up as a top seller in that city. 

                                  

In August in Gary, Indiana, a big show honoring Vivian Carter on her eighth anniversary at radio station WWCA included Lillian Offitt performing live. Also on the bill were Magic Sam, The Spaniels, Dale Hawkins, The Dells, and many others. During Labor Day week in Chicago, Lillian appeared with Al Benson at the Regal Theater along with Red Prysock, Sil Austin, Amos Milburn, Ivory Joe Hunter, and The Spaniels. In September Lillian signed on for a five week tour through the south and southwest along with Lowell Fulson, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and Ernie Freeman. The tour would kick off in Oklahoma City. 

Al Benson

Late in the year Lillian Offitt moved to Chicago where she had a steady number of club dates and soon recorded her second side for Excello Records. “Just Lonesome! That's All” b/w “Darling I'll Forgive You”. Through the early months of 1958 Offitt tried to repeat the success of “Miss You So” and in the spring Excello released “Darling Please Don't Change” b/w “Can't Go On” . This record too failed to break into the top sellers and failed to get considerable airplay and soon Excello dropped her from the label’s roster. 

Earl Hooker

In 1959 she began an extended stay as vocalist with Earl Hooker and his combo. Through Hooker, she met Mel London, owner of Chief Records. She was signed to record for the local Chief Records label in Chicago. “The Man Won't Work” b/w “Will My Man Be Home Tonight”. Lillian Offitt continued to perform and record with Earl Hooker into the sixties “Oh Mama” b/w “My Man Is A Lover” was issued by Chief Records. In late 1960 her last effort for Chief was “Troubles” b/w “Shine On”. 

She appeared at such Chicago clubs as Roberts Show Lounge and the Shangri-La. She left music to start a family, preventing her from joining the 1964 American Folk Blues Festival tour, her place taken by Sugar Pie DeSanto. She was last sighted in 1974 as part of the Streakers Rated-X Revue in St. Joseph, Michigan. 

Offitt (now known as Lillian Williams) continued to live in Racine, Wisconsin, working outside the music business and raising her family. She died on February 27, 2020, aged 81. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, All Music & Doo Wop Heaven)

Bert Jansch born 3 November 1943

Herbert Jansch (3 November 1943 – 5 October 2011) was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s as an acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter. He recorded more than 28 albums and toured extensively from the 1960s to the 21st century. 

Jansch, whose forebears had come from Germany in the 19th century, was born in Glasgow but the family moved to Edinburgh, where he attended Ainslie Park secondary school. He worked, briefly, as a nurseryman, spending his early wages on a guitar. He sought lessons at the Howff folk club, wishing to emulate the guitar style of the American Big Bill Broonzy. Soon, Jansch had become resident unofficial caretaker at the Howff, spending much of his time developing his playing skills, with the Scottish singer Archie Fisher as a significant influence. 

In the early 1960s, Jansch graduated from playing for his own pleasure to performing for an audience. He was one of the first guitarists to understand and then interpret and popularise Davy Graham's guitar solo Anji. At the time, his personal, self-composed songs contrasted with the usual traditional or political repertoire of folk singers. After busking in Europe in 1964, he moved to London, where his instrumental and songwriting skills were recognised by the producer Bill Leader, who recorded his eponymous first album, released on the Transatlantic label in 1965. 

Recorded on a single microphone and a borrowed guitar at Jansch's apartment, his first album immediately established him as a major force in British folk. Consisting almost entirely of original compositions, the brooding, plaintive songs showcased his dexterous fingerpicking. "Needle of Death," inspired by the heroin-related death of a friend, may still be his most famous composition.. His second record, It Don't Bother Me, followed the same year. 

He vagabonded around the U.K. and Europe for a while before basing himself in London in the early '60s. He made an impact on the city's folk community not only with his guitar skills, but with his original songwriting, singing his own compositions at a time when Dylan was just beginning to make that practice widespread in folk circles. Friend and fellow folksinger Anne Briggs helped Jansch get a contract with Transatlantic, a small British folky label.

                                 

Jansch graduated to a real studio for his second album, It Don't Bother Me. This LP featured some contributions from guitarist John Renbourn, and the pair would record a joint effort in the mid-'60s as well, Bert and John. Soon Jansch and Renbourn would be playing together as part of a five-member group, Pentangle, one of the greatest folk acts of the '60s. Pentangle, also featuring vocalist Jacqui McShee and the rhythm section of Danny Thompson and Terry Cox, was very much a group effort. Of all the group members, however, Jansch was probably the most important, writing the best original material, singing occasional lead vocals, and recording some enthralling guitar tandems with Renbourn. 

Jansch's increasing involvement (and eventual commercial success) with Pentangle did not mean an end to his solo career, although Pentangle got first priority in the late '60s and early '70s. Nicola, from 1967, was a pretty good attempt to commercialize his sound somewhat with poppier material and some fuller studio arrangements. Released in 1969, Birthday Blues was an effort more consistent with his early folk recordings, and included instrumental support by some members of Pentangle. Rosemary Lane (1971) is acclaimed by Jansch fans as one of his finest works. 

Jansch found the touring with Pentangle too much, and he forced the band to split in early 1973. He retreated to his farm in Wales, but he needed musical challenges, and also to relearn his craft as a solo performer. By the time his album LA Turnaround was released in 1974, he had separated from his second wife, Heather, and moved back to London. At this point, his heavy drinking was taking its toll on his performances and reliability. 

Pentangle re-formed in 1982, but within a couple of years Renbourn, Thompson and Cox had left. Replacements were found, but the nostalgia surrounding the part-time band had a detrimental effect on Jansch's already diminishing solo career. In 1987 Jansch became seriously ill and he gave up alcohol. In 1995 he left Pentangle, which then re-formed as Jacqui McShee's Pentangle. His back catalogue emerged on CD, and a new generation of musicians discovered his work. 

In 2001 Jansch received a lifetime achievement award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and, in 2007, so did Pentangle. Jansch had heart surgery in 2005, and a further operation for lung cancer led to the cancellation of his 2009 tour of the US. But in the summer of 2010, he joined Young on his Twisted Road tour of the US. He was also reunited with the other original members of Pentangle at Glastonbury and the Cambridge folk festival. He had recently been forced to cancel several planned solo concerts because of his failing health. 

Jansch lost a long battle with cancer at the Marie Curie Hospice in north London on October 5, 2011, less than two months after his final live performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London. He was 67 years old. 

(Edited from AllMusic, The Guardian & Progarchives)

 

Herb Geller born 2 October 1928

Herbert Arnold Geller (November 2, 1928 – December 19, 2013) was an American jazz saxophonist, composer and arranger. He was born in Los Angeles, California, United States. He had a career of two halves. Initially, he was prominent among the musicians who created the west-coast jazz style, picking up combo gigs and recording dates with the best players in California. Later, after the death of his first wife, he relocated to Europe and established himself as a salaried artist in a subsidised orchestra, lauded by the authorities in his adopted home city of Hamburg as both a teacher and a performer. 

Herb Geller was born in Los Angeles. His tailor father had settled there after leaving Russia and met Geller's mother, who played the piano for silent movies, at a Jewish singles dance. A local friend who owned a music store suggested their son should learn an instrument so, aged eight, Geller was given an alto saxophone and a weekly lesson. "My musical talents came from my mother," he said. 

By the time he got to Dorsey high school in Los Angeles, he was proficient enough to join the school swing band alongside fellow saxophonists Eric Dolphy and Vi Redd, both destined to achieve jazz celebrity. It was with these friends that Geller first heard the great alto-saxophonist Benny Carter at a band show at the Orpheum theatre; he returned several times to marvel at Carter's fluidity and decided he wanted to play like him. 

After a short vacation gig with the violinist Joe Venuti, exciting enough in its way, Geller heard Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie at Billy Berg's in Los Angeles in February 1945. He began to bone up on Parker's style and to take every kind of road job he could, performing in a succession of short‑lived professional bands and playing in every jam session that came his way. Determined to get to New York, always the key destination for aspiring jazz musicians, Geller joined the pianist Jack Fina who had bookings there. 

Briefly back in LA, he met the brilliant pianist Lorraine Walsh. They married in 1952 in New York, where they had settled. Geller took engagements with the top orchestras of the day including those of Claude Thornhill and Billy May. When May's band made for LA, Geller and Lorraine went along, quickly establishing themselves on the then rampant west-coast recording scene. They ran their own quartet, worked with the satirist Lenny Bruce, played gigs in strip clubs by night and made recordings by day with artists of the highest calibre, including, in Geller's case, Clifford Brown, Dinah Washington and Shorty Rogers. 

                            

In 1958, shortly after the birth of their daughter, Lisa, Lorraine died suddenly aged 30 after suffering from a pulmonary infection while Geller was on the road with Benny Goodman. Eventually, Geller placed his daughter with his sister and resumed his road life, rejoining Goodman. Geller was, in his own words, "emotionally distraught" and disoriented, until his fellow saxophonist Stan Getz suggested he make for Europe. After starting out in Lisbon and Paris, Geller moved in 1962 to Berlin, where he joined the jazz orchestra of the radio station Sender Freies Berlin, staying three years before relocating to Hamburg where he became a staff member of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk orchestra as a composer, performer and arranger. This gilded period – paid vacations, free healthcare and all – brought him extraordinary success and financial security. 

It was during this time that he met his second wife, Christine. His base in Hamburg was an ideal launching pad for festival appearances with celebrated European orchestras often including fellow Americans, and it was a superior location itself for session work, Geller having added a roster of extra woodwind instruments to his usual alto and soprano saxophones. 

After his retirement from the NDR in 1994, Geller taught at local universities and began to appear regularly in the UK, touring as a soloist and releasing a series of fine albums for the Scottish-based Hep label. He was an irresistibly creative player, able to find new things to say on old songs, fusing something of Carter's liquidity with the boppish fire of Parker "the greatest musician in the world," he thought, evidently relishing the chance to play. "I consider jazz to be fun music," he said. 

In 1996, the Senate of the Government of Hamburg gave him the title of "Professor". He taught at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg until his retirement. He continued teaching jazz improvisation and composition, occasionally doing seminars at various national and international institutes. He wrote a method of improvisation called "crossover" for Schott and Sons. 

Geller performed regularly in Germany and abroad as a soloist at festivals and clubs in various formations including some big bands as well.. He was very proud of his friendship with Benny Carter, his adolescent hero, with whom he recorded and performed. Geller participated at the Hollywood Bowl celebrations for Carter's ninetieth birthday in 1997. In 2008, he was featured on the Berlin Jazz Orchestra, music DVD Strangers In Night - The Music Of Bert Kaempfert which was released in 2012. It was the same year of his last recording that he made at a live concert in Hamburg, in June. 

Geller died of pneumonia in a hospital in Hamburg, Germany, aged 85, on December 19, 2013. He had been undergoing treatment the past 12 months for a form of lymphoma. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. 

(Edited from Peter Vacher article @ The Guardian, Wikipedia & Jazz Profiles)

 

 

Art Stamper born 1 October 1933

 

Art Stamper (October 1, 1933 – November 1, 2005) was an American country, bluegrass fiddler. Art and his music was so well known and so loved in Kentucky music circles that part of State Route 550, in Knott County is named after him, and he is in a mural on the side of the Appalachian Artisan Center in his hometown of Hindman.

He was born Arthur Stamper in Knott County, Kentucky. Art, like his father Hiram before him who was an accomplished musician in his own right, was mostly known for his "Old Timey" or "Appalachian Fiddler" style of play. But he also was an important part of the development of the Bluegrass style of music. He first started playing the fiddle around age nine.

By the age of 16 he had already played with professionals such as Jim McReynolds, Buster Pack and the Sauceman Brothers. In 1950, he went to Cincinnati and played the bars there off and on for two years. After that, he worked for the Stanley Brothers and fiddled on some of their Rich-R-Tone recordings. In 1956, he moved to Dayton and began playing with the Osborne Brothers and Red Allen. Stamper played fiddle on their first MGM recording session, which included some twin fiddling with Tommy Jackson.

                               Ralph Stanley, Jim Williams, Art Stamper and Carter Stanley

For much of his life, after serving in the Army during the Korean conflict, and using the GI Bill to learn to be a hairdresser, he worked at his own shop in Louisville called "The Way of Art." It is said that there were some fine days there, when musicians would all come in and take turns getting a haircut while the others played their music, and Art himself would play between haircuts.

He was very well liked and respected in the music community, also working with such greats as Bill Monroe and Jim & Jesse He also did studio work with George Jones, Emmy Lou Harris, Dwight Yokum, Patty Loveless, Vince Gill & many more throughout his long, energetic career. In the 1980s, Art was a member of the Goins Brothers Band. After retirement from a hairdressing career in Louisville, Stamper played with Larry Sparks and recorded several popular fiddle albums featuring bluegrass and old-time styles.

                   Here’s “Red Apple Rag”  from above album.

                                   

All the same, a look back at his career does reveal that he was somewhat swept away by the tides of technical one-upmanship that temporarily flooded the bluegrass scene as it moved into the progressive or new-grass stage. His recordings from this period are still loaded with feeling, however, especially when he matches licks with banjo master J.D. Crowe on the superb 1982 County release The Lost Fiddler. Art traveled a lot from show to show and teaching others; a demanding requirement of most musicians that few of the rest of us can truly appreciate. He had a regular residency at the Blackwell Farm Fiddle Camp in Niangua, MO.  

His wife Kay, who liked the old-style music, had come to America from Japan in 1981. She was in Arkansas in 1983 and decided to go over to a Bluegrass concert there. One of the players was Art Stamper. They met and were together from that time until his death. Since the '80s, he has also been active as a teacher, including a In 1987 art toured Europe with Bill Clifton and Red Rector and a recording of their concert in Holland was issued in 2023. 

He was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2000 and began undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments at the Veterans Hospital in Louisville, KY, and the following year underwent surgery on his throat which involved a tracheostomy. The bluegrass community poured out for a subsequent benefit concert, the lineup of the artists on the roster like flashing one's eyes across the spines of the albums on a bluegrass collector's shelf. His health problems coincided with yet another bloom in his career, as the new millennium also marked the release of one his most praised albums to date, Goodbye Girls, I'm Going to Boston, the title-track a programming favorite on several prominent radio shows devoted to this genre. 

Art Stamper's last concert with Ralph Stanley 2005

He was  still able to keep up a schedule of concert appearances from time to time, including bluegrass festivals, as well as reunions of surviving members of the Clinch Mountain Boys, one of strawboss Stanley's main backup aggregations. On January 8, 2005, Stanley was playing with his band in Shepherdsville. Art was very ill, but wanted to go to the show to say goodbye to them. And so he and his wife Kay went, even though it was in stormy weather. Kay told Ralph that Art was there and he asked Art to play. Kay says that he did a great job. Art died from his illness two weeks later on November 1, 2005.  After a funeral in Bullitt County, Art was buried in Knott County in the Stamper family cemetery. 

His memory is enshrined in the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, recognized by that international museum as a "First Generation Pioneer of Bluegrass." Three time recipient of the International Bluegrass Music Association "Old Time Fiddler of the Year" award, and the "Distinguished Achievement Award" in 2004 at the International Bluegrass Festival. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, Bullitt County History.org & AllMusic) 

Here’s a video of Art Stamper at Clifftop 2003 taken by Tadashi Maeda.  The other fiddler is Mark Simos, the banjo player is Brendan Doyle.