Benny Golson was a tenor saxophonist and composer whose work helped define the sound of hard bop and whose compositions have since become standards in the world of jazz.
- Died: September 21, 2024 (Who else died on September 21?)
- Details of death: Died in Manhattan, New York at the age of 95.
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Benny Golson’s legacy
When Golson was a student at Benjamin Franklin High School in Philadelphia, he was part of a rising crop of musical greatness coming from the campus, a list including John Coltrane (1926–1967), Red Garland (1923–1984), and others. He attended Howard University, and by the mid-1950s was playing with Lionel Hampton (1908–2002) – whose band’s sax player inspired Golson’s initial interest in that instrument – and future legends like Dizzy Gillespie (1917–1993) and Art Blakey (1919–1990). He quickly began writing his own music.
Golson was a composer whose songs have since become part of the jazz canon. Works like “Whisper Not,” “I Remember Clifford,” “Stablemates,” “Blues March,” and “Killer Joe” have been widely performed and recorded over decades. Legends like Coltrane, Count Basie (1904–1984), Miles Davis (1926–1991), Sammy Davis Jr. (1925–1990), Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996), and Diana Ross have all performed his work. Between 1957 and 2015, he recorded dozens of albums as a bandleader and countless more as a sideman for some of jazz music’s greatest artists.
In the 1960s and ‘70s, Golson spent much of his career composing for film and television, including shows like “M*A*S*H,” “Mission: Impossible,” “The Partridge Family,” and “The Six Million Dollar Man.”
Golson won BMI TV Music Awards in 1997 and 1998. He earned the Mellon Living Legend Legacy Award and received the NEA Jazz Masters Award of the National Endowment for the Arts. He was inducted into the International Academy of Jazz Hall of Fame in 2009. The Howard University Jazz Studies program’s Benny Golson Jazz Master Award was named in his honor.
Tributes to Benny Golson
Full obituary: The Washington Post
