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<DIV>Toots Thielemans</DIV>
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<DIV>Harmonica player who matched his jazz virtuosity with expressiveness and
warmth</DIV>
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<DIV>by John Fordham</DIV>
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<DIV>London Guardian, August 23, 2016</DIV>
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<DIV>A passing glance at the six-decade career of Jean Baptiste “Toots”
Thielemans, who has died aged 94, suggests a quirky contrarian more than a
sophisticated musical virtuoso. Thielemans became famous as a master of two
techniques that have otherwise made hardly a mark on jazz history -- whistling,
and playing the harmonica. The Belgian was no novelty turn, however, but a
remarkable musician who adapted the advanced harmonies, hairtrigger accents and
nimble melodies of the bebop idiom to a 19th-century Austrian instrument
originally intended for the more leisurely rhythms of folk music, and who
matched his jazz virtuosity with considerable emotional expressiveness and
warmth.</DIV>
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<DIV>Thielemans recorded with some of the most popular -- and technically
demanding -- artists in jazz, including the bass-guitar virtuoso Jaco Pastorius,
the piano maestros Oscar Peterson, George Shearing, Fred Hersch and Kenny
Werner, the innovative pop-jazz bandleader Quincy Jones, and the guitar star Pat
Metheny. That richly accordion-toned, wittily pitch-bending and sometimes
ravishingly romantic harmonica sound (he played a custom-built chromatic
instrument that allowed him to roam through three octaves) featured on the
soundtracks of movies including Midnight Cowboy (1969) and The Sugarland Express
(1974) -- and brought a steady stream of studio work, including the Sesame
Street theme tune, high-profile commercials, and appearances on albums by Paul
Simon, Billy Joel and Johnny Mathis, among others.</DIV>
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<DIV>Born in the Marolles district of Brussels, Thielemans played the accordion
from the age of three (eventually as an entertainer in his parents’ cafe) and
the harmonica as a teenager, discovering jazz at 18 after hearing Louis
Armstrong on record. In the early 1940s, inspired by his fellow Belgian Django
Reinhardt, Thielemans also took up the guitar (adopting the nickname “Toots” in
this period), performed with Edith Piaf, toured with the American swing giant
Benny Goodman’s European band in 1950, and then moved to the US to perform with
a Charlie Parker bebop band that included Miles Davis, and become a member of
Shearing’s popular quintet. He led the expressive and intelligent Man Bites
Harmonica! session in 1951, in classy American company that included the
saxophonist Pepper Adams and the pianist Kenny Drew.</DIV>
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<DIV>In this period, Thielemans also shuttled between the US and Sweden, and in
Stockholm in 1961 recorded his much-covered jazz waltz Bluesette -- a lilting,
ostensibly unjazzy, but subtly blues-inflected theme originally delivered by the
composer’s guitar line and pure-toned whistling in unison, a personal sound that
became a brand.</DIV>
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<DIV>Thielemans frequently worked with Jones (then a regular visitor to Sweden)
and in the 1970s issued a stream of inventively contemporary albums including
the dynamic Images with the pianist Joanne Brackeen. He partnered Peterson,
Dizzy Gillespie and the popular Cuban Latin-jazz saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera at
the Montreux jazz festival in the 70s and early 80s, played with the pianist
Bill Evans’s trio on Affinity in 1979 (one of his favourite sessions) and also
made a superb bop-oriented 1980 live album with Peterson’s sidemen Joe Pass and
Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen on guitar and bass.</DIV>
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<DIV>Subsequently, Thielemans led both European and American quartets -- the
latter featuring the elite Evans-inspired piano trio of Fred Hersch, the bassist
Marc Johnson and drummer Joey Baron. That group featured on the Belgian’s 1988
Concord recording Only Trust Your Heart, a jewel of a session contemporary
enough to include Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil and creative enough to impart
characteristic twists to Thelonious Monk’s classic Little Rootie Tootie. In 1992
Thielemans performed on Metheny’s intimate Secret Story, and on The Brasil
Project with Brazilian stars including Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento and
Gilberto Gil.</DIV>
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<DIV>Still possessed of his old wit and lyrical elegance into the 21st century,
Thielemans made a sequence of fine recordings with a sensitive group including
the Dutch bassist Hein Van de Geyn and the pianist Karel Boehlee. In 2009, the
US National Endowment for the Arts made him a Jazz Master. His 90th birthday
guests at Lincoln Center in 2012 included Herbie Hancock and the Brazilian
singer-pianist Eliane Elias, and he continued to play in public until declining
health led to his retirement two years later.</DIV>
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<DIV>__________</DIV>
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<DIV> Toots Thielemans (Jean Baptiste Frederic Isidore Thielemans),
harmonica player, born 29 April 1922; died 22 August 2016. 30</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000"><BR><BR>Bob
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K6YBV<BR><BR>Kids today don't know how easy they have it ... when I was young, I
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