Word: fatha
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Basie was not the compositional innovator that another of jazz's crowned heads, Duke Ellington, was, nor an instrumental virtuoso on the order of the Earl, "Fatha" Hines. Rather, the Count's talent lay in his knack for organizing the tightest, swingingest bands in the land; populating them with some of the best sidemen ever to grace a dance floor or a recording studio, including Tenor Sax Player Lester Young, Trumpeter Buck Clayton, Drummer Jo Jones and Blues Singer Jimmy Rushing; and later backing the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. Although his elliptically eloquent, spare style...
DIED. Earl Kenneth ("Fatha") Nines, 77, jazz pianist for 50 years and a seminal figure in American popular music, who in the 1920s severed the piano from its ragtime connections and pioneered a distinctive new sound; of a heart attack; in Oakland, Calif. As leader of his own big band for two decades, he nurtured such future jazz stars as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan...