[Dixielandjazz] Harold Ashby Obit

[Stephen Barbone]

Harold Ashby, the featured tenor sax player for Ellington Band from 1968
to 1975 passed away last week.

Sadly,
Steve Barbone


June 17, 2003 - New York Times

Harold Ashby, Saxophonist With Ellington Band, Is Dead at 78

By PETER KEEPNEWS

Harold Ashby, a saxophonist whose long association with Duke Ellington
began before he joined Ellington's orchestra and continued after
Ellington's death, died on Friday at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in
Manhattan. He was 78.

No cause of death was announced, but he entered the hospital at the end
of May after a heart attack, said Russ Dantzler, a friend.

Mr. Ashby joined the Ellington band in 1968, eight years after he first
worked with Ellington as a freelancer. He remained the band's featured
tenor
saxophonist until 1975, a year after Ellington died and his son, Mercer,
took over.

With his big, gruff sound and extroverted, heart-on-sleeve approach, Mr.
Ashby was unmistakably in the tradition of Ellington's first great tenor
saxophone soloist, Ben Webster. Webster was in fact more than just an
influence; he was Mr. Ashby's mentor. The older saxophonist took Mr.
Ashby under his wing in Kansas City, Mo., in the late 1940's, and
introduced him to Ellington in New York City a decade later. "Ben looked
out for me," he told The Amsterdam News in 2000.

Born in Kansas City on March 27, 1925, Harold Ashby began his career
there in the late 1940's. He then moved to Chicago, where he became a
staple of the thriving local blues scene in the 1950's, working with
Otis Rush, Willie Dixon, Jimmy Witherspoon and many others.

In 1957 he moved to New York, where he freelanced with various
bandleaders, including Count Basie and Mercer Ellington. He first worked
with Duke
Ellington in the summer of 1960, substituting for two nights for Paul
Gonsalves.

In an interview in 2002 for The Kansas City Star, Mr. Ashby recalled
that his association with Ellington began early on a Monday morning,
when his phone rang shortly after he had returned home from a job. At
first he thought the call was a prank and hung up, but Ellington called
back to offer work, starting that morning.

"That first job, there were no rehearsals," Mr. Ashby continued. "The
singer sang something, then somebody said, `Play some.' So I went on and
played a solo."

Mr. Ashby worked intermittently with Ellington over the next several
years and finally became a full-time member of the ensemble in 1968,
replacing the
saxophonist and clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton.

After leaving the Ellington orchestra in 1975, he returned to
freelancing and frequently performed in New York and Europe with his own
quartet. From 1988 to 1999, he recorded several albums of relaxed
small-group swing as a leader for various labels. Mr. Ashby maintained
his Ellington connection to the end: he toured Europe with an Ellington
alumni band in 1978, and his albums and nightclub sets always included
at least one song written by or associated with Ellington.

He left no immediate survivors.