A. Razor: BUDDY COLLETTE GETS HIS REST | In Memoriam Buddy Collette (August 6, 1921 – September 19, 2010)
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The Death of Jazz Great Buddy Collette | Los Angeles Times, September 21, 2010
Jazz Icon Buddy Collette: Playing It Again
Listen to Buddy Collete talk about cultural diversity in L.A. and how it influenced his playing | NPR Jazz Profiles
Official Buddy Collette Website
Mingus: Collette’s L.A. friend from childhood | Courtesy images
Buddy Collette Gets His Rest
shining shoes on 95th and Compton
Mingus had the bigger shine box
swinging jazz for cents to barely make a dollar
that splits into trio into quartet into sextet
into all night jazz jam sessions
like when bird got out of Camarillo
Buddy is there with Dexter, Morgan, Red, Gay and Co.
Bird is healthy so he shuts it down
after everyone gets a turn at 5 a.m.
there is a school in session
every night
all night
Buddy moves from
session to session
from sax to flute
to clarinet
and back to sax
from record to record
back to session
ahead to leader
from club to club
steady man
steady man
friends become legends
become ghosts
become memories
as he finally makes his exit at 89
to go be the bandleader
with all the saints as they go marching in
marching into cool west coast jazz
swing so low as they go
as they go man go
these cats no longer know
all those lyrics that they blow and blow
go now, buddy, go
still playing on my radio
don’t you ever go
anywhere
but here
right now
with that sound
that cat left us?
with that sound
it might get quiet
but it never has
to be silent
anywhere
anymore
anytime
go on
A. Razor
© 2010 by A. Razor
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A saxophonist, clarinetist, and bandleader, he was a leading light in the West Coast jazz scene for many years. Born William Marcel Collette to a jazz family, he was raised in Watts where he became a skilled woodwind player from an early age. Leading his first ensemble (which included Charlie Mingus and Britt Woodman) at 12, he was well known locally by his mid-teens. During World War II he served as a US Navy bandleader, then returned home to join the Kings of Swing, again partnering with Mingus and Woodman, and to begin a long career as a premiere sideman. Over the years, he was to collaborate with Frank Sinatra, Nat “King” Cole, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, and numerous others; in the late 1940s and early 1950s Collette was the only black in the orchestra for the “Groucho Marx Show”, then went on to lead a successful fight to merge the black and white locals of the musicians union. In 1955 he was a founding member of drummer Chicho Hamilton’s quintet that was to produce a number of well-received recordings. Continuing his performing career until sidelined by a 1998 stroke, Collette also served as a professor at Loyola Marymount University, Cal State Long Beach, Cal Poly Pomona, and other institutions. In 1998 he was named “A Living Los Angeles Cultural Treasure”, and in 2000 received a Grammy Award nomination for “The Buddy Collette Big Band in Concert”. A participant in the UCLA oral history project “Central Avenue Sounds”, he co-founded “JazzAmerica”, an educational opportunity effort directed at high school students, and in 2000 published his autobiography “Jazz Generations: A Life in American Music and Society”. At his death from an acute respiratory problem much of his large recorded legacy remained in print.
— Bob Hufford
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Courtesy Amazon.com
JAZZ GENERATIONS: A Life in American Music and Society | Buddy Collete with Steven Louis Isoardi
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