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Saxophonist, arranger and composer, Benny Golson is known for having created several jazz standards. Born in Philadelphia on January 25, 1929, he took piano lessons at the age of nine and switched to the saxophone at fourteen. He rubbed shoulders with several musicians in high school including John Coltrane and accompanied the rhythm'n'blues singer Bull Moose Jackson, then the pianist Tadd Dameron in 1953 and other names of the jazz scene like Clifford Brown, Johnny Hodges and Lionel Hampton, for whom he arranged several scores. Hired in the Dizzy Gillespie orchestra, he then joined Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers of which he became the musical director and created The Jazztet in 1959 with the trumpeter Art Farmer. The sextet recorded several albums with different partners until 1962. In the meantime, the saxophonist created his own sextet for the album The Modern Touch (1958), then Benny Golson & the Philadelphians. He recorded a series of albums as a leader at the same time and turned to arranging and composing for other musicians, working in particular for television with the series M*A*S*H, The Partridge Family, Ironside or Mission: Impossible. Returning under his name at the end of the 1970s, he reformed The Jazztet in 1982 and collaborated with Curtis Fuller or Cedar Walton and Pharoah Sanders. In 1989, he reconnected with Art Blakey in a large orchestra of stars and reformed a quartet, then a quintet including Terence Blanchard the following year. A further series of albums as a leader followed, including a tribute to Clifford Brown (1998) and Terminal 1 (2004), after his appearance in Steven Spielberg's film The Terminal. After New Time, New 'Tet in 2009, several years passed until his final studio album Horizon Ahead (2016). In various formations, he composed major standards such as "I Remember Clifford", "Killer Joe", "Blues March", "Stablemates", "Whisper Not", "Along Came Betty" and others. On September 21, 2024, Benny Golson died in New York at the age of 95.
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