[Trombone-l] Sad news

[dslide13@aol.com]

J Mac, RIP

David Gibson
trombonist/educator
www.jazzbone.org




 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


 March 31, 2006

 Jazz Saxophonist Jackie McLean Dies at 73

 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS



 Filed at 11:11 p.m. ET



  HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Jazz saxophonist Jackie McLean, a performer 
and teacher who played with

  legendary musicians including Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, died 
Friday. He was 73.



  McLean, a contemporary of some of the 20th century's most famed jazz 
musicians, died at his

  Hartford home after a long illness, family members told The Hartford 
Courant.



  McLean was founder and artistic director of the Jackie McLean 
Institute of Jazz at the University

 of Hartford's Hartt School.



  He and his wife, actress Dollie McLean, also founded the Artists 
Collective, a community center

  and fine arts school primarily for troubled youth in inner city 
Hartford.



  University President Walter Harrison said that despite his many 
musical accomplishments, McLean

  was a modest man whose connections with his students lasted for 
decades after they left his

 classroom.



  ''He fully understood the way that jazz as an art should be passed 
down to students,'' Harrison

  said. ''He saw his role as bringing jazz from the 1950s and '60s and 
handing it down to artists

 of today.''



  McLean, a native of Harlem in New York City, grew up in a musical 
family, his father playing

  guitar in Tiny Bradshaw's band. McLean took up the soprano saxophone 
as a teen and quickly

  switched to the alto saxophone, inspired by his godfather's 
performances in a church choir, he

 told WBGO-FM in Newark, N.J., in an interview in 2004.



  McLean went on to play with his friend Rollins under the tutelage of 
pianist Bud Powell, and was

 19 when he first recorded with Miles Davis.



  He drew wide attention with his 1959 debut on Blue Note Records, 
''Jackie's Bag,'' one of dozens

 of albums he recorded in the hard-bop and free jazz styles.



  He also played with Charles Mingus and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, 
experiences that he credited

  with helping him find his own style as he tried to emulate the famed 
Charlie ''Bird'' Parker.



  ''I never really sounded like Bird, but that was my mission,'' McLean 
said in the radio

  interview. ''I didn't care if people said that I copied him; I loved 
Bird's playing so much. But

  Mingus was the one that really pushed me away from the idea and forced 
me into thinking about

 having an individual sound and concept.''



  After Blue Note terminated his recording contract in 1968, McLean 
began teaching at the

  University of Hartford. McLean taught jazz, African-American music, 
and African-American history

  and culture. He received an American Jazz Masters fellowship from the 
National Endowment for the

 Arts in 2001, and toured the world as an educator and performer.



  McLean, a heroin addict during his early career, also lectured on drug 
addiction research.