Booker Little

Booker Little, Jr. ( born April 2, 1938 in Memphis ( Tennessee), † October 5, 1961 in New York City ) was an American jazz trumpeter and composer of the hard bop. Little was at the beginning of the 1960s, " one of the most promising innovators of his instrument " and joined " the perfect fluency and the clear warm tone Clifford Brown with a more ardent access and more modern harmonic and melodic ideas" that reported on the hard bop in the direction of free jazz.

Life and work

Little comes from a musical family; his parents played trombone and organ. Thus influenced, he deepened in high school next to the game in a marching band his classical training, and then to study in Chicago with Andy Goodrich at the conservatory. In 1957, he started on the recommendation of Sonny Rollins in the band of Max Roach; occurred with this band in 1958 at the Newport Jazz Festival and was involved in Roach's Freedom Now Suite. In 1959 he went to New York, worked in clubs and with John Coltrane (Africa Brass Session, 1961), Slide Hampton, Teddy Charles and Sonny Stitt.

Already in 1960, showed his recordings with Tommy Flanagan and Wynton Kelly, Scott LaFaro and Roy Haynes ( The Legendary Quartet Album) that he had a "full, mature and at the same time cracking with energy sound " ( Jazz Journal ). 1961 followed legendary live recordings with Eric Dolphy, with whom he played at the Five Spot in a quintet ( with Mal Waldron, Richard Davis, Ed Blackwell ). After a long illness, Booker Little died at only 23 years of uremia.

The trumpeter Booker Little is one of those musicians such as Fats Navarro, Eric Dolphy and Clifford Brown, who died at the beginning of a great musical career. Its composition and trumpet style, initially oriented to Miles Davis and Clifford Brown, is strongly influenced by the musical ideas of Charles Mingus ', Duke Ellington and John Coltrane. He was one of the first trumpeter who used deliberately dissonant and microtonal effects in jazz. Like Dolphy, he tried a " blow up the harmony from within." Trumpeter Dave Douglas as have deliberately resorted to these achievements.

Discography

As Leader

As a sideman