Gah! Dewey Redman, one of my favourite saxophonists, has passed away. Details are sketchy at this point, but apparently it was sudden, and related to liver-failure.

Redman was a life-long friend of Ornette Coleman, having attended school together, and in the 60s eventually followed him into the tempestuous world of post-bop and avante-garde jazz. Redman led his own band in recording some amazing and classic albums (Look for the Black Star, 1966; The Ear of the Behearer, 1973; The Struggle Continues, 1982; and Living on the Edge, 1989) as well as contributing to some of the greatest and most adventurous records cut by other musicians - among them Ornette Coleman's Crisis, Science Fiction, Skies of America, and Broken Shadows (all 1969-72); Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra (1969); and Keith Jarrett's The Survivor's Suite (1976). More recently he made a great album called Momentum Space (1998) with two other of jazz's giant figures, Elvin Jones (long-serving drummer for John Coltrane; Coltrane's Wikipedia entry here) and Cecil Taylor ("still the most adventurous musician in jazz after - at that point - 45 years" - allmusic.com).

I wanted to present a short track featuring Redman in order to somehow eulogise and pay tribute to him. It was virtually impossible to settle on just one that was suitable to use; having said that, though, here's the duet with Elvin Jones from Momentum Space.

Dewey Redman and Elvin Jones - Spoonin' [from Momentum Space] (4.61 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

And here is the closing track from the same album; a short Redman solo entitled Dew.

Dewey Redman - Dew [from Momentum Space] (0.7 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

A rather-useless, database-generated page is here at Impulse!, although it does have pretty album covers down the right side-bar. Somewhat more interesting is Phil Brodie's tribute page to Dewey Redman.

R.I.P.


NP: Dewey Redman, Cecil Taylor and Elvin Jones - Momentum Space (allmusic) of course

Labels: eulogies, music