Bob Florence was an award winning pianist and arranger whose interest in the piano started when he began taking lessons at the age of five. He also led his own Los Angeles-based big band, Limited Edition, for some 50 years. Throughout his career, he received sixteen nominations, winning one for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance in 2000. He also won two Emmys for his work as Music Director on Julie Andrews In Concert and Linda Lavin’sLinda In Wonderland. Florence passed away in his home just days before his 76th birthday.
Frank Sinatra was an American singer and actor who first came to the public’s attention in the 1940s when he sang with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey. He struck out on his own in the early ’50s and signed to Capitol Records. In 1954, his popularity skyrocketed when he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in From Here To Eternity. He later started his own label, Reprise Records, where he continued to release records that helped define a genre. He continued to record and perform into the ’90s. Sinatra epitomized “cool” throughout his career and to this day is still one of the most iconic names in history. With a career loaded with awards and accolades, perhaps none compared to the night in 1995 when the Empire State Building was illuminated in blue to celebrate his 80th birthday. Frank Sinatra passed away on May 14, 1998 after suffering a heart attack. The lights of the Las Vegas strip were dimmed the next night in his honor.
Charles “Buddy” Montgomery
January 30, 1930 – May 14, 2009
Buddy Montgomery was a jazz pianist and vibraphonist as well as the younger brother of Wes Montgomery and Monk Montgomery with whom he recorded with at the Montgomery Brothers. Montgomery began playing the piano in his teens and was soon touring as part of Big Joe Turner’s band. He also played with Miles Davis. Montgomery passed away of heart failure at the age of 79.
Sidney Bechet was one of jazz’s greatest soloists. He began playing as a young teen in New Orleans, and by the time he was 20, he was traveling the world and making his mark on both the saxophone and clarinet. He was a prolific composer as well. Bechet’s life was not without controversy as evident by the pistol duel he once instigated in Paris. Bechet evidently had a notoriously bad temper. He was jailed and later deported. Bechet died on his 62nd birthday, May 14, 1959.
Trumpet player Chet Baker began to get noticed in the early ’50s first while playing with Charlie Parker, and then soon after, Gerry Mulligan. More than just a jazz player, Baker was a crooner, and a handsome one at that. If jazz had a James Dean, it was Chet Baker. His name is synonymous with the cool jazz of the ’50s and ’60s. But the ’60s were actually unkind to Baker as he battled a major heroin addiction for which he served a one-year term in an Italian prison. He was even kicked out of West Germany and England and then deported from Germany. Back in the US, Baker landed in the San Francisco area where he again found himself serving a small jail term for prescription fraud. And it was around this time that Baker was severely beaten after a gig in what may have been a botched drug deal, the result of which forced him to learn how to play wearing dentures. There is some speculation however, that his heavy drug use actually destroyed his teeth. Baker did his best to make a living well into the early ’80s by the time Elvis Costello selected him to play the trumpet on his 1983 song, “Shipbuilding.” The song (and album Punch The Clock) was a hit in the US and abroad, thereby turning a new generation of fans on to Baker. But the momentum that was building came to a crashing halt when Baker was found dead outside his second-story window at a hotel in Amsterdam. Although his death was officially ruled an accidental fall, the fact there were drugs in his system and no witnesses only fueled the rumors (none proven) that he either committed suicide or was murdered. He was 58.