[Dixielandjazz] RIP Jazz Musician Buddy Colette

[Norman Vickers]

To: Musicians and Jazzfans list & DJML

From: Norman Vickers, Jazz Society of Pensacola

 

Jazz musician Buddy Collette dies.  Thanks to "Mr. Jazz of New Orleans"
Michael Gourrier, listmate, New Orleans native now
residing/working/broadcasting  in Richmond, VA.  Thanks, Mike.

 

This from LA Times:

 

latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-buddy-collette-20100921,0,4622077.story


latimes.com


Buddy Collette dies at 89; L.A. jazz saxophone player, bandleader


Collette helped merge the black and white musicians' unions in L.A. and
mentored many African American musicians. He was active in preserving and
promoting L.A. jazz history.


By Don Heckman, Special to The Times

September 21, 2010


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Buddy Collette, a Grammy-nominated jazz saxophonist, flautist, bandleader
and educator who played important roles in Los Angeles jazz as a musician
and an advocate for the rights of African American musicians, has died. He
was 89.

Collette died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after
suffering shortness of breath a day earlier, according to his daughter
Cheryl Collette-White.

Collette's virtuosic skills on saxophones, flute and clarinet allowed him to
move easily from studio work in films, television and recording to small
jazz groups and big bands. He was, in addition, one of the activists
instrumental in the 1953 merging of the then all-African American musicians
union Local 767 and the all-white Local 47.

"I knew that was something that had to be done," Collette told writer Bill
Kohlhaase for a Times story in 2000. "I had been in the service, where our
band was integrated. My high school had been fully integrated. I really
didn't know anything about racism, but I knew it wasn't right. Musicians
should be judged on how they play, not the color of their skin."

Collette had already crossed the color bar before that in 1949 and 1950 by
performing as the only African American musician in the orchestra for
Groucho Marx's "You Bet Your Life" radio and television shows.

"We integrated the Academy Awards too," Collette said. "It was 1963, when
Sidney Poitier won. We were going to picket that thing. But I was in the
band, with saxophonist Bill Green and harpist Toni Robinson-Bogart."

Along the way, Collette, not satisfied with having established his own
career in the studios, continually laid the foundation for other African
American players.

"One of the things we jazz musicians are proud of is the fact that music to
us has no color, no religious, no sexual, no other kinds of barriers," says
composer/bandleader John Clayton, "but it wasn't that way in the studios of
Los Angeles. And the thing about Buddy was that when he got his foot in the
door, he kept opening it up for other musicians. That's the kind of person
he was."

Collette came to national jazz prominence in 1955 as a founding member of
drummer Chico Hamilton's influential quintet. The combination of Collette's
woodwinds and, especially, his flute playing with the cello of Fred Katz and
guitar of Jim Hall created a timbre that remains one of the jazz world's
most uniquely appealing sounds.

Although West Coast musicians with Collette's skills commonly moved to New
York in search of wider visibility, Collette chose to remain in Los Angeles,
where he worked for more than four decades as a first-call saxophone and
woodwind specialist. Performing and recording with Frank Sinatra, Nat "King"
Cole, Nelson Riddle, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Charlie
Parker, Sarah Vaughan and dozens of others, his resume encompasses a virtual
history of jazz and traditional pop music in the second half of the 20th
century.

"If one has to choose a local hero whose story is emblematic of the West
Coast musical heritage with all its underrated brilliance, originality and
traditions," novelist and journalist Emory Holmes II wrote in The Times in
2000, "one could hardly do better than the amazing true life of Buddy
Collette."

As an educator, Collette served on the faculties of Loyola Marymount
University, Cal Poly Pomona, Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Dominguez
Hills. His students included Eric Dolphy, Frank Morgan, Charles Lloyd and
James Newton among others.

Collette's many non-performing activities included urging the development of
the UCLA Oral History project,
<http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php%3Fisbn=9780520220980;> "Central Avenue
Sounds" the co-founding of JazzAmerica, <http://www.jazzamerica.org/>  a
nonprofit organization working to provide education to gifted high school
musicians; and the direction and production of a series of 1999 concerts
celebrating Duke Ellington's 100th birthday.

"Buddy was totally about sharing and helping other people," said Michael
O'Daniel, who worked with Collette on the concert series "Jazz at the Music
Center" and in the co-founding of American Jazz Masters Day. "That's the way
he was raised and it was his philosophy throughout life. He was always
extending a helping hand, regardless of whether it was a well-known musician
or someone who was just starting out."

In 1998, a stroke brought Collette's playing career to an end. But he
continued to be an inspiration to young musicians and a vital participant in
the city's jazz world.

William Marcel Collette was born Aug. 6, 1921, in Los Angeles. His father,
Willie Collette, a pianist, was from Knoxville, Tenn., and his mother,
Goldie Marie, a singer, was from Kansas City. Collette was raised in Watts,
and was a childhood friend and contemporary of former L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley
and close musical associate of bassist/composer Charles Mingus, whom
Collette persuaded, at the age of 13, to switch from cello to bass.

While still in his teens, Collette was an active participant in the rich
musical environment taking place around Central Avenue during the pre- World
War II years. After serving in the U.S. Navy during the war, he begin his
long career as a mainstay of the Southland music scene.

In 1998, Mayor Richard J. Riordan designated Collette "A Living Los Angeles
Cultural Treasure." Collette's autobiography, "Jazz Generations: A Life in
American Music and Society," written with Steven Iosardi, was published in
2000.

Collette is survived by daughters Cheryl, Veda and Crystal, son Zan, eight
grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

news.obits at latimes.com

 

Allow me another personal anecdote.  I was in LA for a convention of the
American Federation of Jazz Societies.  Jazz writer/historian Floyd Levin
was in charge of local arrangements.  Eastwood's film about Charlie Parker,
"Bird" had been filmed but not yet released.  Floyd arranged for
representatives of Eastwood's studio to come tell us details of the filming.
Lenny Niehaus was in charge of the music.

They had taken Parker's recordings, stripped away the other instruments (
don't ask me how they did that-still a mystery to me).  Then assembled
current musicians to play the parts, so you had original Parker with current
instrumentalists.  Trumpeter Red Rodney was on an original Parker recording,
so he got to play his own part again 25 years later.

 

Then, of course, they needed additional music for the film, so Buddy
Collette played the music simulating a Charlie Parker style.

Buddy Collette also spoke about his part in performing Parker's music.  He
also played  giving musical illustrations in his talk.    There were also
video clips of some of the movie  Collette was a warm, personable speaker. 

It was only in reading this obituary that I came to realize what an
effective person he had been in the Civil Rights area, getting people to do
the right thing.

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