James Spaulding

James Spaulding ( born July 30, 1937 in Indianapolis ) is an American jazz alto saxophonist and flautist and composer -.

Life and work

Spaulding grew up in Indianapolis, where he received his first instruction from his father, a jazz guitarist and bandleader. After three years of military service, he went to Chicago in 1957 (as he said in an interview to meet his idol, the tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin ), where he studied at the Cosmopolitan School of Music. He recorded with Sun Ra and his Arkestra and toured with him; Spaulding was involved in four albums 1958/59, including at Jazz in Silhouette ( 1959).

Spaulding went after a short stay in Indianapolis 1962 Freddie Hubbard to New York and took with him several Blue Note albums ( Hub Tones 1962 Breaking Point 1964, The Night of the Cookers, 1965). At the same time, he also played with Randy Weston, with whom he went on a concert tour through Europe. Then he once again toured in Europe with Max Roach and took a lot for Blue Note as a sideman on how McCoy Tyner ( Tender Moments ), Wayne Shorter ( The Soothsayer and The All Seeing Eye, 1965), Bobby Hutcherson ( Components, in 1965 and Patterns, 1968), which also took into account a composition by Spaulding, " a Time to Go " on Patterns; still he was with Grant Green (Solid, 1964) and Duke Pearson ( Wahoo, 1964) in the studio. Spaulding also be heard on the album Karma by Pharoah Sanders and also worked with Leon Thomas.

In the 1970s he taught (flute and improvisation ) at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina. In the 1980s, he took on their own plates, partly on their own label Speetones and Muse ( " Brilliant Corners " 1988). In 1991 he took his composition " Songs of Courage" on ( with Choir, written already partially in the 1960s on the occasion of the assassination of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King). In the same year he participated in the album David Murray Big Band Conducted by Lawrence " Butch" Morris. He was also a long time member of the World Saxophone Quartet, founded in 1977 by David Murray, with whom he had his longest total cooperation.

In 1996 he made his album The Smile of the Snake for the High Note label where Richard Wyands, Ron McClure and Tony Reedus participated; In 1999, he took on Escapade, with John Hicks, Ray Drummond and Kenny Washington.