Cecil Payne

The world lost Cecil Payne today. He didn't quite make it to his eighty-fifth birthday. Born on December 14, 1922, Payne was thought by many of his peers to be the greatest baritone saxophonist of the first bop generation. He anchored Dizzy Gillespie's seminal big band from 1946 to 1949 and went on to play with dozens of leaders including James Moody, Duke Jordan, Kenny Dorham, Randy Weston, John Coltrane, Woody Herman, Tadd Dameron, Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie and Lionel Hampton.

Payne.jpg
Cecil Payne

Payne never got the recognition his talent should have brought him. The kindest and most considerate of men, his personality was reflected in the gentle tone with which he played even the most involved lines. Early in this century, beginning to lose his eyesight and not wishing to be a bother, he disappeared into the life of a virtual hermit in his Brooklyn home, eating little and growing weak. Concerned friends eventually arranged for meals to be taken to him and when he got his strength back saw that he had transportation to engagements with close colleagues and younger musicians. He continued playing until he went into a nursing home about a year ago. For a combination obituary and tribute go here.

This page has a selection of many of Cecil Payne's CDs. The first album under his own name, Patterns Of Jazz (1956) is there, without a picture of the cover. Don't overlook it. Savoy has evidently let that classic 1956 album with Kenny Dorham and Duke Jordan go out of print. It has an unforgettable version of Randy Weston's "Saucer Eyes." It is available from various web sites and auctions for as much as seventy-eight dollars. That makes this twenty-seven-dollar offering a bargain.

November 27, 2007 4:09 PM | | Comments (0)

Categories:

Leave a comment

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Rifftides published on November 27, 2007 4:09 PM.

Correspondence: About The Bebop Reunion was the previous entry in this blog.

Jelly, Jelly is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

AJ Ads

Introducing
AJ Arts Blog Ads

Now you can reach the most discerning arts blog readers on the internet. Target individual blogs or topics in the ArtsJournal ad network.

Advertise Here

AJ Blogs

AJBlogCentral | rss

culture
About Last Night
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
blog riley
rock culture approximately
CultureGulf
Rebuilding Gulf Culture after Katrina
Dewey21C
Richard Kessler on arts education
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Flyover
Art from the American Outback
Life's a Pitch
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
Mind the Gap
No genre is the new genre
Performance Monkey
David Jays on theatre and dance
Plain English
Paul Levy measures the Angles
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude

dance
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...

jazz
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

media
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...

classical music
The Future of Classical Music?
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
On the Record
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Overflow
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Slipped Disc
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds

publishing
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on Books
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera

theatre
Drama Queen
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
lies like truth
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world

visual
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Modern Art Notes
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.