Curiosidades

Friends with John Coltrane.

Jazz composer.

Trumpeter Eddie Henderson, a member of one of his bands, told: "His signature sound was undeniable: he could play one note and you knew it was Benny Golson. That's the mark of a true artist.".

He received a 1994 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2007 Mellon Living Legend Legacy Award.

The Howard University Jazz Studies program created a prestigious award in his honor called the "Benny Golson Jazz Master Award" in 1996. Many distinguished jazz artists have received this award.

Golson was working with the Lionel Hampton band at the Apollo Theater in Harlem in 1956 when he learned that Clifford Brown, a noted and well-liked jazz trumpeter who had done a stint with him in Dameron's band, had died in a car accident. Golson was so moved by the event that he composed the threnody "I Remember Clifford", as a tribute to a fellow musician and friend.

Golson was known for co-founding and co-leading The Jazztet with trumpeter Art Farmer in 1959.

He is regarded as "one of the most significant contributors" to the development of hard bop jazz, and was a recipient of a Grammy Trustees Award in 2021.

From 1953 to 1959, Golson played with Dameron's band and then with the bands of Lionel Hampton, Johnny Hodges, Earl Bostic, Dizzy Gillespie, and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, with whom he recorded the classic Moanin' in 1958.

A documentary film, Benny Golson: Going Beyond the Horizon, is forthcoming.

Golson played an integral role in the transition from bebop to hard bop through his short but vital tenure with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and with his own influential Jazztet, co-led by trumpeter Art Farmer. Few jazz musicians can claim as many bona fide standards to their credit: bedrock compositions like "Whisper Not," "Stablemates," "I Remember Clifford," "Along Came Betty," "Killer Joe," and "Blues March.".

He came to prominence with the big bands of Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie, more as a writer than a performer, before launching his solo career.

Along with Sonny Rollins, Golson was one of the last two surviving musicians captured in Art Kane's famed 1958 photograph known as "A Great Day in Harlem.".

While a student at Benjamin Franklin High School in Philadelphia, he played with several other promising young musicians, including John Coltrane, Red Garland, Jimmy Heath, Percy Heath, Philly Joe Jones, and Red Rodney. He later attended Howard University.

Golson began learning the piano at age nine, then switched to the saxophone when he was 14.

Benny Golson was an American bebop/hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and arranger.

From the late 1960s through the 1970s Golson was in demand as an arranger for film and television and thus was less active as a performer, but he and Farmer re-formed the Jazztet in 1982.

After graduating from Howard University, Golson joined Bull Moose Jackson's rhythm and blues band; Tadd Dameron, whom Golson came to consider the most important influence on his writing, was Jackson's pianist at the time.

While a student at Benjamin Franklin High School, the budding saxophonist came of age alongside an unusually brilliant cadre of musical friends. His peer group included Jimmy and Percy Heath, Red Garland, Philly Joe Jones, Ray Bryant, and his closest friend, John Coltrane.

In an interview with "Awake!" on October 08, 1980, Golson said that since the late 1960s he had become a member of the religious organization Jehovah's Witnesses.

Parents are: Bennie Golson, and Celadia Golson.

Survived by his wife Bobbie Hurd, one daughter Brielle, two sons, Odis, and Reginald, his son, Robert predeceased him, and several grandchildren.