Cecil Payne R.I.P

[Big Al]

Caught that post earlier this a.m., Clem--I figured Brooklyn would be calling for Mr. Payne. Very nice tribute. I'll have to track down/check out that Strata East album.

Bummed about this, even if he did live a long life and all that--going to spin the records with Weston this p.m.

Man, if ever an artist deserved an hour of NIGHT LIGHTS, it's Cecil Payne!

[ghost of miles]

Caught that post earlier this a.m., Clem--I figured Brooklyn would be calling for Mr. Payne. Very nice tribute. I'll have to track down/check out that Strata East album.

Bummed about this, even if he did live a long life and all that--going to spin the records with Weston this p.m.

Man, if ever an artist deserved an hour of NIGHT LIGHTS, it's Cecil Payne!

Yeah, I know--he's on "The Connection" show (that version of the score--non-Freddie-Redd--that he did with Kenny Drew for Charlie Parker Records), but he really does serve a fullblown program. We work pretty far ahead, but maybe I can put something together over the weekend and post it online as a kind of supplemental program.

I'm sure there'll be quite a few jazz radio tributes in the next several days.

[ValerieB]

i was crying at work when i read this news yesterday but he had a good life and gave and received a lot of love. and given what i knew his health to be for at least the last decade or more, i guess he was fortunate to be with us for this long. i only met him on a couple of occasions but his sweetness always impressed me, as well as his huge talent.

may the "powers that be" continue to bless Cecil and bless Wendy and the Foundation as well! if all goes as i hope it will, he will have tons of his friends greeting him!

[sidewinder]

Very sad news but he seems to have lived a good life and the nice comments in this thread about him are impressive. Only sorry I never heard him play live, although like CT I came close. By strange chance I was just viewing a video of him with Nick Brignola and Ronnie Cuber just a couple of days ago.

[Peter Friedman]

Just put on the Fresh Sound re-issue of 2 Cecil Payne sessions (Performing Charlie Parker Music / The Connection) on one CD.

R.I.P. Cecil

[EKE BBB]

From today's Independent:

CECIL PAYNE

For a pioneer, Cecil Payne was a shy and retiring man. He was the first to play Bebop on the baritone saxophone during the Forties, and he didn’t see the need to change his style much in the next 60 years. His shyness and reluctance to trouble anyone led to him becoming a recluse trying to survive on the cheapest tinned food when he was almost blinded by glaucoma some years ago.

Payne became famous as a member of the Dizzy Gillespie big band during its glory years from 1946 to 1949 when it included John Lewis, Ray Brown and Milt Jackson in its ranks. He was the featured soloist on two of the band’s classic records, “Ow” and “Stay On It” in 1947.

His family was musical and he first learned clarinet and guitar, later studying alto saxophone with Pete Brown, a little remembered giant of jazz.

“Count Basie was the reason I started playing saxophone in the first place. After seeing Lester Young play tenor with Basie, that was it for me.”

Little did Payne think that, in 1970, he too would join the Basie band.

He studied at Brooklyn High School with the drummer Max Roach and the pianist Randy Weston, who became lifelong friends. Payne went into the US Army from 1943 to 1946 and then, like Roach and Weston, went back home to live with his parents in Brooklyn. Roach and Payne used to play in jam sessions at Monroe’s Uptown House, a New York nightclub on 52nd Street where many young musicians including Charlie Parker were playing the revolutionary music that was to lead to Bebop. Payne was still playing alto when Roach got him his first recording in a quintet led by the trombonist Jay Jay Johnson in 1946.

Knowing that alto saxophonists usually doubled on baritone, Payne’s father invested in a bigger horn for him and when the trumpeter Roy Eldridge was looking for a baritone player Payne told him that he had one at home and got the job playing in the Eldridge band at the Spotlite Club.

“On the last night of the gig,” Payne remembered, “Dizzy Gillespie came to see Roy. He heard me play and asked me to come down to the Savoy where he was playing. I did, and I’ve been playing baritone ever since.”

Over the next three years Gillespie created definitive big band Bebop both in concert and the RCA Victor recording studio. Some of the concerts were recorded and the fiery turmoil that radiates from them sounds fresh to this day.

“It was a band,” said Payne, “where if you made a mistake reading your music you felt bad immediately.”

Leaving Gillespie in 1949 Payne worked for the bandleader Tadd Dameron in another of the Bebop hothouses. He played in the bands of Illinois Jacquet and James Moody up until 1954 but then quit music for a day job. He returned in 1957 to tour in Europe with the drummer Art Taylor and then joined Randy Weston’s group staying from 1958 until 1960.

In 1961 he joined the musical cast of “The Connection”, the remarkable off-Broadway play about drug addiction that had the musicians performing as actors and instrumentalists and which also starred Martin Sheen.

“He was a great actor,” said Payne. “A real studious man, very intense. He’d knock the scenery down half the time, he was so realistic.”

In the Sixties Payne left music again to take up an unlikely job for such a self-effacing man.

“That was a rough time for the Beboppers,” he said. “There was no work. So I got into real estate, but I discovered that I wasn’t a good salesman at all. I couldn’t sell anything.”

He swiftly returned to music playing first with Machito’s Latin band but then getting a break in 1967 when Joe Temperley recommended him to take Joe’s place in the Woody Herman band. He stayed with Herman for a year before working briefly with Maynard Ferguson, Slide Hampton and the Beach Boys.

“I went on the road with the Beach Boys,” said Payne. He travelled in the dilapidated bus used to transport the backing musicians.

“One day they looked at me and said ‘Are you Cecil Payne, the great Bebop baritone player?’ When I told them yes they put my horn on the bus and had me riding along with them in their Lincoln Continentals.”

Payne appeared at many Newport Jazz Festivals between 1969 and 1985 and at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966 with Randy Weston’s band.

Count Basie called him in 1970.

“I was originally subbing for the regular baritone player who wanted to take off to be home with his family for Christmas. I was only supposed to be there for two weeks and they offered me good pay. But what they didn’t know was that I would have worked for nothing just to play with Count Basie.”

Basie’s original player had an accident during the holiday and so Payne stayed for six months.

In 1974 he joined the New York Jazz Repertory Company and toured Europe in a jazz show called “The Musical Life Of Charlie Parker”.

Touring Europe again in July 1979 with trombonist Jimmy Cleveland he recorded an album in London for the Spotlite label using the rhythm section of the Humphrey Lyttelton band.

Payne joined Dameronia, dedicated to the music of Tadd Dameron, in the early Eighties and then rejoined Illinois Jacquet , featuring in the documentary film Texas Tenor: The Illinois Jacquet Story (1991).

Although his playing strength declined a little, Payne kept working, often playing Bebop with his own quartet and, during the Nineties, making several albums under his own name. In 1996 he was in the band the Bebop Generation with pianist Richard Wyands and Dizzy Reece.

When his wife died and he began to lose his sight he retrenched, gave up working and dropped from the scene. He was rediscovered after some years by a charity, The Jazz Foundation. At first he refused their help, saying he didn’t want to be a nuisance, but eventually accepted their ‘Meals on Wheels’ scheme and someone to clean up his badly neglected apartment.

His health improved with the nourishment and he began playing again, working with his own quartet made up of young musicians. A few years ago he played at a benefit concert at the Apollo Theatre in New York for the Jazz Foundation where he met a lot of the musicians, including Quincy Jones, Clark Terry and many others with whom he’d worked in earlier days.

From 2000 on he played in local nursing homes to entertain the residents in the part of New York where he lived but finally a year ago had to enter one himself.

Steve Voce

Cecil McKenzie Payne, baritone saxophonist and bandleader: born New York 14 December 1922; married, wife deceased; died New York 27 November 2007.

[catesta]

R.I.P., Cecil.

[LarryCurleyMoe]

Sad news...Cecil was HIP! "Bird Gets The Worm" and his work with Kenny Dorham, and the recent stuff on Delmark among my favorite....R.I.P.

[Patrick]

Just happened to be listening to Randy Weston's With These Hands... when I clicked on this thread. RIP brother Cecil.

[mjzee]

R.I.P. Another one gone.

[Kyo]

Just put on the Fresh Sound re-issue of 2 Cecil Payne sessions (Performing Charlie Parker Music / The Connection) on one CD.

Is it worth getting?

[CJ Shearn]

RIP Cecil, I have only really heard him on the JOS, but he plays burning, ripping bop lines on "Blues No 4" definitely. Think I will pull that out now. Great player

[Peter Friedman]

Just put on the Fresh Sound re-issue of 2 Cecil Payne sessions (Performing Charlie Parker Music / The Connection) on one CD.

Is it worth getting?

I think so. If you like Cecil Payne, Bennie Green(tb), Clark Terry, Duke Jordan,Ron Carter and Charlie Persip you will enjoy this one.

[Kyo]

Thanks, I'll see if I can find a copy.

[brownie]

Obit in The New York Times today.

CECIL PAYNE, BARITONE SAXOPHONIST, DIES AT 84

By PETER KEEPNEWS

Published: December 6, 2007

Cecil Payne, who in the 1940s was one of the first baritone saxophonists to master the intricacies of modern jazz and who for more than half a century was a leading exponent of his instrument, died Nov. 27 in Stratford, N.J. He was 84.

The cause was prostate cancer, said Wendy Oxenhorn, director of the Jazz Foundation of America, which provides support to musicians in need and had been helping Mr. Payne.

Mr. Payne spent virtually his entire career out of the spotlight: he never led a band of his own, recorded only a few albums as a leader and played an instrument that rarely takes center stage in jazz. But he was highly regarded by his fellow musicians, especially those he worked for — a list that included Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Woody Herman, Randy Weston and many others — and by the critics.

The beginning of Mr. Payne’s career coincided with the birth of bebop. With its complex harmonies, tricky rhythms and blistering tempos, the new music posed challenges to all musicians, but some instruments were better suited to its demands than others. While the often cumbersome baritone saxophone was not an ideal vehicle for modern jazz, Mr. Payne’s highly fluid and melodic approach effected a seamless marriage between instrument and idiom.

One of his first high-profile jobs, shortly after he was discharged from the Army in 1946, was with Gillespie’s big band, an ultramodern ensemble that played a famously demanding repertory. He remained with Gillespie’s band for three years and was prominently featured on some of the band’s best-known recordings. Few if any baritone saxophonists recorded as many memorable solos in the early days of bebop.

Cecil McKenzie Payne was born in Brooklyn on Dec. 14, 1922. As a teenager he studied alto saxophone, and his earliest recordings were made on that instrument. By the time he joined Gillespie, after a brief stint with Gillespie’s fellow trumpeter Roy Eldridge, the baritone had become his primary horn.

After leaving Gillespie in 1949, Mr. Payne worked with various other bandleaders, notably the tenor saxophonist Illinois Jacquet. But by the mid-1950s he was essentially a freelance sideman, and he remained one for the rest of his life.

In his later years he battled glaucoma and other health problems, but he continued performing and recorded several albums for the Chicago-based Delmark label. Encouraged by a group of younger musicians who worked with him, and given financial and medical help by the Jazz Foundation, he was a frequent attraction at the Upper West Side nightclub Smoke and, more recently, at the Kitano Hotel at Park Avenue and 38th Street.

Survivors include his sister, Cavril Payne, a singer.

[king ubu]

Thanks for posting the obit, brownie.

Here's a reminder to everyone to grab a copy of Dizzy Reece's fine album "Asia Minor" (OJC Ltd. Edition - though to be OOP but currently part of the Concord sale again - likely the last chance to get the original CD at a sane prize...). The band includes a young Joe Farrell and obviously Cecil Payne on baritone sax! This album might be better than all of Reece's Blue Note albums, but of course it's much less hyped up... (don't get me wrong, I like the Blue Notes a lot!)

[Chalupa]

Obit from today's Philly Inky.....

Cecil M. Payne, 84, baritone saxophonist

By Sally A. Downey

Inquirer Staff Writer

Cecil M. Payne, 84, of Somerdale, a baritone saxophonist who played with many of the top names in jazz, died Nov. 27 of sepsis at Kennedy Memorial Hospitals-University Medical Center/Stratford.

Mr. Payne learned to play the alto sax, guitar and clarinet while growing up in Brooklyn. "You don't start out with the baritone when you're a little kid," he told a reporter in 1992. "It's too big."

During World War II, he served in the Army in the States. After his discharge, Mr. Payne heard that Roy Eldridge was seeking a sax player for his big band. When he found out that Eldridge already had two alto men but needed someone to play baritone, Mr. Payne borrowed an instrument.

"It had a couple of leaks in it, and I really had to blow hard," Mr. Payne later told a reporter. "That's the way a baritone should be played in this band," Eldridge told him.

A few weeks later, Dizzy Gillespie offered Mr. Payne a job in what was one of the most progressive big bands of the era. He played on groundbreaking recordings with Gillespie and helped define bop baritone sax. After three years, he went freelance and performed with jazz innovators including Tadd Dameron, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet and Randy Weston.

For a time Mr. Payne was a salesman at a Brooklyn real estate company owned by his father, Oliver, his great-niece Nia Mathis said. But he couldn't give up music, she said.

His melodic bebop, an Inquirer critic wrote, was pleasingly evident in his 1995 album Cerupa. In 1999, another Inquirer critic reviewed the album Payne's Window. "His exuberant approach continues unhampered," the critic wrote. "Payne isn't about to come up with something newfangled, but it's hard to argue with his view."

Serious vision problems, caused by glaucoma, slowed him down after his wife, Ruth, died in 1992, his great-niece said.

"I never had to deal with a kitchen before. It's a dangerous place, what with knives and forks and can openers and hot stoves," he told a reporter.

Friends arranged for him to get Meals on Wheels and drove him to gigs in Washington, New York and Philadelphia, where he played at the Blue Moon Jazz Cafe, Ortlieb's Jazzhaus and other venues. Mr. Payne also performed at the annual Great Night in Harlem concert to benefit the Jazz Foundation of America. He was still playing in clubs and entertaining patients in nursing homes in the Somerdale area until three or four years ago, Mathis said.

Mr. Payne is survived by a sister, jazz singer Cavril Payne Williams; a cousin, jazz trumpeter Marcus Belgrave; his great-niece; and two great-nephews.

A funeral will be at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow at Wooster Funeral Home, 51 Park Blvd., Clementon. Friends may call from 7 to 9 tonight and from 9:30 a.m. tomorrow. Burial will be in Brigadier General William C. Doyle Veterans Cemetery, Wrightstown.

edit: I didn't realize that he was related to Marcus Belgrave.

Edited December 7, 2007 by J.H. Deeley

[Michael Weiss]

Kind of embarrassing that it took the Times 9 days after his death for the obit. I was wondering if it was going to come out at all.

[ValerieB]

Kind of embarrassing that it took the Times 9 days after his death for the obit. I was wondering if it was going to come out at all.

the l.a. times has a small obit just published today!

[mjzee]

Has anyone heard this? Just noticed it on the Vintage Vanguard site:

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Has anyone heard this? Just noticed it on the Vintage Vanguard site:

I believe that is on CD as "Jazz á la Bohemia" on the OJC label. The cover now looks like this:

[Swinging Swede]

The Riverside cover is the original. The Jazzland was a later reissue.

By the way, what's with "Club Bohemia"? I thought it was "Cafe Bohemia".

[clifford_thornton]

Cafe Wha?

[ValerieB]

Cafe Wha?

i used to work there in the Village in the '60s with Cosby and the cats!!

[clifford_thornton]

Glad somebody around here gets my jokes!