Benny Golson Tenor Saxophone January 25, 1929 --

Benny Golson

"In a sense, artists like Benny Golson may represent what modern jazz would have been had the bebop revolution not taken place under the sign of radical innovation."

--David H. Rosenthal

Benny Golson. Tenor saxophonist, composer, and arranger. He studied piano, organ, tenor saxophone, and clarinet as a child, and later attended Howard University (1947-50). In 1951, in Bull Moose Jackson's band, he met Tadd Dameron, whose work was a great influence on Golson's compositional style; two years later he played in a band led by Dameron.

He then performed with Lionel Hampton (1953) and Earl Bostic (1954-56), but began to make a name for himself as a member of Dizzy Gillespie's band (1956-57). By this time he had composed the first of many jazz standards--"Stablemates," "Whisper Not" and "I Remember Clifford"--and had established a solo style that reflected the inspiration of Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins.

While with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1958-59) Golson wrote "Along Came Betty," "Blues March" and "Are You Real?" He then worked as a freelance in New York and studied with the composer Henry Brant.

From 1959 to 1962, with Art Farmer, he was leader of the Jazztet, a group with varying personnel that proved a successful vehicle for Golson's writing; the ensemble was revived (with one of its original members, Curtis Fuller) in 1982 for a tour of Europe and continues to perform and record in the later 1980s.

From the late 1960s Golson worked in films and television, composing music for the major studios, while continuing to write arrangements on a freelance basis. Manuscript scores of his works are in the holdings of the BMI Archives in New York.

--STEVEN STRUNK, The New Grove Dictionary Of Jazz

A selected discography of Benny Golson albums.

• Benny Golson's New York Scene, 1957, Contemporary.
• The Modern Touch, 1957, Riverside.
• The Other Side of Benny Golson, 1958, Riverside.
• Benny Golson & The Philadelphians, 1958, UA.
• Gone With Golson, 1959, Prestige.
• Groovin' With Golson, 1959, Prestige.
• Gettin' With It, 1959, Prestige.
• Meet The Jazztet, 1960, Chess.
• Stardust, 1987, Denon.

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