Louis Bellson,world famous jazz drummer, has died at the age of 84 in Los Angeles.
He was a great jazz musician, composer, arranger, bandleader, and long-time educator.
Louis Bellson won the 1940 Slingerland National Gene Krupa drum contest at the age of 17, cutting out 40,000 drummers and launching a career that began with the Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, and Harry James big bands.
I remember him from the early ’50s with Duke Ellington, when he wrote and performed a monumental drum solo piece Skin Deep. It was one of the reasons I learnt drums as a teenager (but you blame it all on him). He left the Ellington band to work as musical director for Pearl Bailey. They married in 1953. The marriage lasted until Bailey’s death in 1990.
No comments:
Post a Comment