Aaron Bell dies

[brownie]

In today's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/31/obituari...print&position=

[catesta]

From Newsday.

Aaron Bell, bassist for Duke Ellington, dies at 82

July 31, 2003, 4:26 AM EDT

NEW YORK (AP) _ Aaron Bell, a bassist who played with Duke Ellington and other musical greats, died Monday at a hospital in the Bronx. He was 82.

Bell was Ellington's bassist from 1960 to 1962 and later worked with him as an arranger. He also recorded with Buck Clayton, Billie Holiday and Sammy Davis Jr., among others.

Born Samuel Aaron Bell, he grew up in Muskogee, Okla. and served in a Navy band in Indiana during World War II. In 1946, he went to work as a bassist with the Andy Kirk Orchestra, going on to play with the groups of Lucky Millinder, Lester Young and Miles Davis, as well as with his own Aaron Bell Trio.

In 1983, Bell assembled a 14-piece orchestra at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Manhattan to play a piece he had written, "Memorial Suite for Duke," for the anniversary of Ellington's birth.

Bell, who earned a B.A. from Xavier University and a doctorate in education from Teachers College at Columbia University, taught music at Essex County College in Newark and was chairman of the school's performing arts department until he retired in the 1990s.

RIP Aaron Bell.