Loading details…
Artist
Benny Golson
12+ albums
jazzsaxophoneHard Bopbenny golsonbebop
about
Benny Golson (born in Philadelphia on 25 January 1929; died 2 September 2024) was an American bebop/hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and arranger remembered for his many compositions that have become jazz standards including "I Remember Clifford", "Blues March", "Stablemates", "Whisper Not", "Along Came Betty", and "Killer Joe". In 2009, Golson was inducted into the International Academy of Jazz Hall of Fame and he was a recipient of a Grammy Trustees Award in 2021. While in high school in Philadelphia, Golson played with several other promising young musicians, including John Coltrane, Red Garland, Jimmy Heath, Percy Heath, Philly Joe Jones, and Red Rodney. After graduating from Howard University, Golson joined Bull Moose Jackson's rhythm and blues band; Tadd Dameron, whom Golson came to consider the most important influence on his writing, was Jackson's pianist at the time. From 1953 to 1959 Golson played with Dameron's band and then with the bands of Lionel Hampton, Johnny Hodges, Earl Bostic, Dizzy Gillespie, and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers with whom he recorded the classic Moanin' in 1958. Golson was working with the Lionel Hampton band at the Apollo Theater in Harlem in 1956 when he learned that Clifford Brown, a noted and well-liked jazz trumpeter who had done a stint with him in Hampton's band, had died in a car accident. Golson was so moved by the event that he composed the threnody "I Remember Clifford", as a tribute to a fellow musician and fr
