2021b - Jazz musicians felled by coronavirus -- Chapter 5 (updated 12-30-21)

Here is part five of our chronological listing of jazz-related COVID-19 deaths from the novel coronavirus, updated as we receive them. This segment begins with deaths in July 2021. Chapter 4 lists deaths in the first half of the year.  Parts one, two and three contain 2020's 63 known losses.Our profound sympathies to their families, friends and fans as we remember their musical legacies.

• 
  South African singer-songwriter Steve Kekana died July 1 in a Johannesburg hospital. He was 62. After losing his eyesight at age 5, Kekana developed his love for singing while attending a school for the blind. He recorded more than 40 albums in Mbaqanga, jazz and R&B styles between 1977 and 2018.
• Indonesian jazz guitarist and educator Beben Jazz died July 5 in Bekasi, West Java. He was 54. Beben Supendi Mulyana, aka Beben Jazz, also sang and played trumpet. He was a founder of Jakarta’s Kemayoran Jazz Community.
• Singer and songwriter Tsepo Tshola died July 15 at a hospital in Teyateyaneng in his native Lesotho, a mountain kingdom that is surrounded by South Africa. He was 67. Also known as the “Village Pope,” Tshola came to prominence with the jazz group Sankomota, which he co-founded and co-led with the late Frank Leepa in the late 1970s. He launched his solo career in 2002. He performed for more than 40 years, primarily in Lesotho, South Africa and Europe.
• South African pianist and educator Andre Petersen died July 22 age 43. He was the only African musician out of 68 pianists to compete in 2011's Concours de Piano-Jazz Martial Solal Competition in Paris. Johannesburg-based Petersen’s international recording and performance credits include working with Stefon Harris, Reggie Washington, Dave Liebman, Marcus Strickland, the Stockholm Jazz Orchestra and Norwegian avant-garde band Soyr. 
• Paris-born guitarist, singer and producer Jacob Desvarieux died July 30 in Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadaloupe. He was 66. Desvarieux co-founded the  zouk band Kassav’, which played a mix of jazz, Caribbean folk, rumba, soukous, discos and funk that was popular in the 1980s in the Caribbean, Europe and Africa. The band performed at several international jazz festivals. 
• Polynesian-born jazz guitarist Daniel Temaeva Benoit died August 9 at age 69 in Tahiti. Starting in the 1980s, self-taught musician Benoit and his lifelong friend Michel Poroi performed frequently in island venues.
• Washington DC-based drummer and bandleader Howard “KingFish” Franklin Jr., died August 18. He was 51. The hard-swinging drummer was given the nickname “KingFish” by his late mentor, Calvin Jones. Singer-pianist Shirley Horn’s drummer, Steve Williams, called him “Fishstix.” Over the years, he worked with a wide variety of jazz greats. 
• Multi-instrumentalist Isaac Mkukupa, considered to be the father of jazz in Malawi, died August 22 in Nottingham, England. He was 78. He moved from Africa to the UK in 2009. In a career stretching back to at least the early 1970s, Mkukupa played bass, guitar, trombone and trumpet. 
• Nashville session drummer and educator Kenny Malone died August 26 at age 83. While best known for his extensive work with top country and folk artists since the 1970s, Malone’s work brought him into every acoustic genre. He recorded with Ray Charles and Bela Fleck, among others. He was an instructor at the Nashville Jazz Workshop. During his 14 years in the US Navy, he played in the Navy Band in Washington DC and headed the percussion department at the School of Music for the Navy, Army and Marines. 
• Cuban pianist, composer, singer and bandleader Adalberto Álvarez died September 1 at age 72 at the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine in Havana. Nicknamed “El Caballero del Son,” Álvarez was one of the most important figures in Cuban music in recent decades. He led the “Son 14” orchestra for five years before founding “Adalberto Álvarez y su son,” a group with which he made his mark on Cuban and Latin music, in 1984 He recorded about 20 albums. 
• Sousaphonist Bennie Pete, leader and founding member of the Hot 8 Brass Band, died September 6 in New Orleans. He was 42. 
• Cuban singer Ela Calvo died September 7 at age 89. She was known as “The Lady of the Cuban song.” She was a star of Havana’s Tropicana cabaret, where she shared the stage with Luis Carbonell, Elena Burke and the Los Meme Quartet. Her career, which began in the late 1950s, included work on radio, television and nightclubs. She recorded with Andrés Echevarría’s jazz orchestra. 
• Banjoist, guitarist and bandleader Ken Salvo died September 15 in Venice FL at age 74. A Dixieland jazz specialist, Salvo was a member of Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks for more than a decade. The band won a Grammy for their work on the soundtrack of the hit HBO show Boardwalk Empire. After moving to Florida several years ago, he formed his own trad outfit, Ken Salvo’s N’awlins Jazz Band, and played in other ensembles.  
• Singer and actress Julia Nixon died September 29 in a Raleigh NC hospital. She was 66. She performed at Washington DC-area clubs and in musical theater for 40 years, blending jazz, gospel and R&B with ease at Mr. Henry’s Supper Club, Blues Alley and other venues.  In 1983, Nixon succeeded Jennifer Holliday in the lead role in the Broadway musical “Dreamgirls." 
• Conguero Tony Menjivar died October 5 in San Francisco. He was 62. He was a fixture in the band MALO, which blended Latino, rock, jazz and blues into its sound. Menjivar also worked in other jazz and Latin jazz contexts over the years, including appearances with the Latin Kings All-Stars and singer Jamie Davis. He also co-founded a Christian Latin rock band named Bueno! 
• French bassist Claude Mouton died October 9 in Ile de France. He was 66. After studying with Jean-François Jenny Clarke, he worked with Jackie McLean, Mal Waldron, Michel Grallier and René Urtreger. He was a sideman on several manouche (gypsy jazz) albums, including Raphaël Faÿs' Swing Guitar tribute to Django Reinhardt. 
• Tony Falco, proprietor of the Hudson Valley NY jazz club The Falcon, died October 28 after a six-month battle with COVID-19 complications. He was 65. At Falco's insistence, the club never charged a cover. In the early 2000s, Falco presented salon-like concerts in a space behind his home in Marlboro, 70 miles north of New York City. In 2005, he bought a 19^th century former button factory, transforming it into a two-stage venue with rotating art exhibits, the Avalon Archives Museum of Rock & Roll, two restaurants, and a network of trails and decks overlooking Marlboro Falls.   
• Singer Kurt Reichenbach died November 4 in Los Angeles. He was 68. He also was an actor and graphic designer. He was the son of jazz drummer Bill Reichenbach Sr. He was the brother of trombonist Bill Reichenbach Jr., who often accompanied him in concert and on recordings.

• 

  Barry Harris, 2001
  

  Broadcaster, photographer and jazz historian Dennis Owsley died November 26. He was 78. Owsley hosted a weekly jazz show on St. Louis Public Radio for more than three decades, retiring in 2019. A 1986 radio documentary led to his book “City of Gabriels — The Jazz History of St. Louis 1895-1973.” He died at Banner Boswell Medical Center in Sun City AZ.
  
• Pianist, composer and educator Barry Harris died December 8 at Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen, N.J. He was 91. Harris' codification of the fundamentals of bebop in the 1950s were the backbone of his teaching. His weekly jazz workshops were a fixture in New York City beginning in the 1970s, including a five-year run from 1982-87 at the Jazz Cultural Theater, which he co-founded. The Detroit native was named an NEA Jazz Master in 1989. 
• Steel pans innovator, drummer and composer Anthony “Muff-Man” Williams died December 21 in Port-au-Prince, Trinidad. He was 90. He was the bandleader, pan-tuner and arranger of the Pan Am North Stars, and was considered one of the most important figures in the development of the modern steel orchestra. He also toured with boogie-woogie and ragtime pianist Winifred Atwell. 
• Italian acoustic guitarist and educator Paolo Giordano died December 29 in Pescara, his hometown. He was 59.The innovative player was the first musician in ltaly to experiment with tapping and advanced percussive techniques on the acoustic guitar. He performed and/or recorded with a variety of players over the years, including singer Patti Cathcart of Tuck and Patti, bassist Michael Manring, percussionists Alex Acuña and Michael Spiro, and guitarists Frank Gambale and Ralph Towner.

Here are links to the chronology: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4.

A sad milestone....

Today brought news of at least the 100th jazz-related death from COVID-19 since the pandemic began. 

Singer and songwriter Tsepo Tshola died today (July 15) at a hospital in Teyateyaneng in his native Lesotho, a mountain kingdom that is surrounded by South Africa. He was 67. He performed for more than 40 years, primarily in Lesotho, South Africa and Europe. 

 I have a few more details in Chapter 4 of my COVID log.  

Tshola's was the 100th such death that I have been able  to document. I fear there may have been more, because not all obits or death notices list a cause.

Here are links to the chronology: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5.

The winding road back to jazz normalcy (updated Aug 17)

The journey back to jazz festivals performed to live audiences has many different approaches. No matter which on-ramp you choose, normalcy, as we know it after the extended pandemic pause, appears to be a year away.

Let’s look at some of the ways that festivals organizations, working with government health officials, are bringing their events back this season. Most have reduced capacity, fewer stages, fewer artists, and shorter hours than in the past. Social distancing and other good-health protocols are the norm in most cases.

2021 - Jazz Musicians Felled By Coronavirus, Chapter 4 (updated 5-2-2022)

Here is part four of our chronological listing of jazz-related COVID-19 deaths from the novel coronavirus, updated as we receive them. Our profound sympathies to their families, friends and fans as we remember their musical legacies. Parts one, two and three contain 2020's 63 known losses.

• 
  Violinist, singer, arranger and educator Zoran Džorlev died January 2, 2021 in Skopje, Macedonia. He was 53. His music ranged from folk and pop to classical and jazz.
• Latin Grammy-winning bandoneon player and composer Raul Jaurena died January 5. He was 79. He was a master of the button squeezebox that is the quintessential tango instrument. His music was a hybrid of the traditional tango of South America and tango nuevo. He moved from Uruguay to the United States in the 1980s, settling in the New York City area.
• Trombonist, singer, bandleader and writer Burt Wilson died January 6 at age 87. Wilson started Sacramento’s Silver Dollar Jazz Band in 1949. The band helped incubate the area’s trad jazz scene, which led to formation of the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society and the Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilee. Wilson also was a political activist, playwright, and former advertising executive. He moved from his native Sacramento to upstate New York in 2015. He died in a nursing home near Binghamton NY.

  

  Burt Wilson
  

• British pianist, singer and vintage jazz expert Keith Nichols died January 21 in a London hospital. He was 75. He contracted COVID-19 after going into the hospital for unrelated issues.
• Salt Lake City pianist, composer, singer and educator Courtney Isaiah Smith died January 25. He was 37. The prolific northern Utah musician’s career bridged the jazz, gospel and soul genres. He led his own quintet, worked in other bands and taught jazz piano at Utah State University, The University of Utah, Weber State and Westminster College.
• African guitarist, singer and songwriter Wambali Mkandawire died January 31 in Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawii. The jazz and afro-beat musician was 70.
• Czech composer, bandleader, multi-instrumentalist and singer Ladislav Štaidl died January 31 in a Prague hospital. He was 75. Štaidl wrote the music for 80 television and feature films, and composed some 200 songs. 
• Pianist, composer and educator Uli Rennert died February 5 at age 60. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Rennert had lived in Graz, Austria since 1987, and became an Austrian citizen in 1993. He taught at the Jazz Institute at the Arts University of Graz and was also an artist in residence at Basel University in Switzerland. 
• Trumpeter and bandleader Pauly Cohen died February 10 at home in Tamarac FL. He was 98,. Cohen played lead trumpet with the Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey and Count Basie orchestras. He led his own 18-piece big band in south Florida into his nineties.
• Austrian concert promoter, tour manager and DJ Erich Zawinul died February 12 in a Vienna hospital at age 55. He was the son of late jazz keyboardist and bandleader Joe Zawinul. He brought a wide range of jazz, pop, rock and country stars to perform in Austria over the years. 
• Saxophonist Richie Perez, a Bakersfield CA jazz fixture for 70 years, died February 16. He was 86. The Texas-born musician moved with his family to California at age 9. At 15, he auditioned for blues legend Muddy Waters in a Bakersfield motel room for a show that night at Rainbow Garden — and he got the gig. His parents wouldn’t let him go on the road after that singular performance.
• New Jersey-based saxophonist Sal Spicola died on February 22. He was 72. He started playing saxophone professionally at age 15 for Chuck Berry, and by 19 he was touring with Lionel Hampton’s band. He was an alumnus of the Boston Pops, Woody Herman’s Thundering Herd, and the Mike Treni Big Band. He made multiple Broadway shows and tours, including “Cats,” “Me and My Girl,” ”Miss Saigon” and “Starlight Express.”
• New York drummer, pianist, composer and educator Chuck Fertal died February 25 at age 72. He contracted COVID-19 while staying in a New York hospital with his wife as she battled cancer. Chuck worked with a wide range of jazz artists, including Mal Waldron, George Cables, Dorothy Donegan, Sonny Stitt, Steve Cohn, Sonny Fortune and Sir Charles Thompson. His recordings include Michael Moss’ Helix and the New York Free Quartet’s Free Play, Dreamtime and In Between Gigs … Can You Dig? 
  
• English singer, pianist and writer Jean Darke died March 4 at age 88. She was the driving force behind Oxford’s Jazz at St Giles concert series, which has raised more than ₤40,000 (approximately $55,000) for charity since she founded it 10 years ago. She also wrote about music for the Oxford Mail and The Oxford Times. Darke contracted Covid-19 in October. She recovered but the virus led to further complications. 
• Serbian pianist and composer Sanja Ilić died March 7 in Belgrade, 20 days shy of his 70^th birthday. Ilić was keyboardist in the Yugoslav band San in the early 1970s. He founded his world music group Balkanika in 1998. The band’s style combined elements of world, folk and medieval music with the strong rhythms of the Balkans into ethno jazz.
• Singer and pianist Jo Thompson died March 9 in Montclair NJ at age 92. The Detroit native performed well into her 80s in a career that brought her to top cabaret rooms, nightclubs and supper clubs across the U.S. and around the world, often breaking racial barriers in the 1950s. She once was described as the "piano-playing Lena Horne." 
• Trumpeter Elton Reyes died March 10 at his Okala FL home, where he had been quarantined with COVID-19. He was 43. Over his more than 20-year career, Reyes played lead trumpet in a variety of jazz groups in Central Florida. They included the Dan McMillion Jazz Orchestra, Phoenix Jazz Orchestra, the Space Coast Jazz Orchestra, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and the Maynard Ferguson Tribute Band. He also played in salsa bands. 
• Pianist, composer and bandleader Florentín Giménez died March 11 at age 95 in his native Paraguay. He learned to play the piano and joined Ramón Reyes’ Orchestra in 1945 at age 20. He stayed until 1947, when the Paraguayan Civil War forced him to flee to Argentina. He returned to Paraguay after the war and formed his first orchestra, “Ritmos de América” (America’s Rhythms). In 1950, he formed the 14-member orchestra “Florentín Giménez y su típica Moderna.” Because of his protests against the government, Giménez was labeled a communist and arrested in 1953. He was jailed for several months.  
• Italian singer, guitarist, bandleader, composer and actor Raoul Casadei died March 13 at Bufalini Hospital in Cesena, where he had been hospitalized since March 2. He was 83.
• Saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist and producer Eulalio Cervantes Galarza died March 14 at age 52 in Mexico City. He was a co-founder of the iconic Mexican rock band La Maldita Vecindad. His jazz collaborations included work with pianist Hector Infanzon, and guitarists Bill Laswell and Michael Brook. 
  
• Czech pianist, composer and educator Antonin Bilý died March 17 in a Prague hospital at age 81. He taught at the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory in Prague and was a founding member of Traditional Jazz Studio, a New Orleans-style trad jazz and swing band. 
• Washington DC-based alto saxophonist Aaron Martin Jr. died March 18. He was 73. The free-jazz improviser was a pillar of the DC jazz community.
• Trumpeter Cristián Cuturrufo, one of Chile’s most prominent jazz musicians, died March 19 at the Las Condes Clinic in Santiago. He was 48. He was a passionate promoter of jazz, producing the Las Condes Jazz Festival, which presented its 15^th edition last month. The 2021 edition was presented online because of the pandemic. Cuturrufo also opened two Santiago jazz clubs, The Jazz Corner and Boliche Jazz.
• Drummer and educator Buddy Deppenschmidt died March 20 in a hospice near his Doylestown PA home. He was 85. Deppenschmidt co-conceived and performed on the landmark 1962 Charlie Byrd-Stan Getz album Jazz Samba that started America‘s fascination with the bossa nova. The Grammy-winning record was the only jazz album ever to reach No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart.
• Swedish alto saxophonist, music journalist and playwright Ingmar Glanzelius died March 28 at age 93. He played in a modern jazz quintet that accompanied Stan Getz and Lee Konitz on Sweden tours in the early 1950s. He wrote for Dagens Nyheter, a daily newspaper in Stockholm, until 2004. 
• Brazilian singer, songwriter and politician Agnaldo Timóteo died April 3 in Rio de Janeiro. He was 84. He sang and recorded in the bolero and bossa nova genres, and had several romantic hits in his more than 50 recordings.  
• Alto saxophonist Andy Fusco died April 5 in New York at age 73. His battle with COVID-19 last spring compromised his immune system, leading to serious health problems from which he couldn’t recover. The Buddy Rich Band alumnus (1978-1983) also played in the Village Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and Steve Smith’s Vital Information. He taught and directed the jazz ensemble at Kean University in Union NJ for 25 years.  
• Brazilian trumpeter, composer and educator Manassés Aragão died April 18, his 40^th birthday, in a hospital in Goiânia. He had been a member of Charanga Jazz, Chocolate Groove Band and Banda Pequi, as well as a guest musician with the Goiânia Symphony Orchestra.
• Bassist Joe Long died April 21 at age 88. The New Jersey musician, whose birth name was Joseph Louis LaBracio, played bass guitar and sang background vocals in the Four Seasons from 1965 to 1975. Long then started his own rock band, LaBracio, and later formed the jazz band Jersey Bounce. 
• Actor, singer, guitarist and bandleader Johnny Crawford died April 29 at age 75. He was one of Disney’s original Mousketeers, rose to prominence playing Mark McCain on the ABC-TV western The Rifleman, and was a teen idol pop singer in the 1960s. After a brief stint as the singer with Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, he formed the Johnny Crawford Dance Orchestra, an 11-member vintage dance band, in 1990. It recorded one album, 2008’s Sweepin’ the Clouds Away, and perfomed for more than 25 years. 
• Indian jurist and jazz lover Soli Sorabjee died April 30 at age 91 in a New Delhi hospital. The judge, constitutional law expert, free speech and human rights advocate, and two-time attorney general of India, was a clarinetist and the first president of the Jazz India association. 
• Arthur Pomposello, longtime host and cabaret/jazz talent manager at the Oak Room, the posh supper club in Manhattan’s Algonquin Hotel, died May 6. He was 85. He started as a bartender at the Algonquin in 1980. By the mid-to-late ‘80s, he was running the Oak Room. He left in 2002 after a dispute with management.
• Promoter, writer and jazz historian Alexey Batashev died on May 14 at age 86. He wrote the groundbreaking book Soviet Jazz (Moscow, 1971), which S. Frederick Starr adapted and enhanced for the Western market as Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union. Batashev promoted American jazz artists visiting Russia in the 1970s and ‘80s, and Soviet jazz musicians visiting the United States in the late 1980s. He wrote dozens of articles for Jazz.Ru Magazine from its 1998 debut well into the 2000s. 
• Samba icon Nelson Sargento died May 27 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at age 96. The singer, songwriter, actor and writer had been fully vaccinated since late February, but was diagnosed with COVID-19 on May 21 after he was hospitalized in Rio.  
• Drummer Ken Swinkin died May 28 at age 46. The William Paterson College jazz studies graduate was a successful freelance musician who played for U.S. tours of “The Music Man,” “Stand By Your Man: The Tammy Wynette Story,” “A Christmas Carol” and “Miracle on 34th Street.” He also played on a European tour of “Grease.” 
• Namibian singer and songwriter Raymond Pande died June 28 at a hospital in Windhoek. He was 34. Pande was a former member of the Fu Jazz Band. The popular local Afro-jazz group has been credited with helping keep jazz alive in Namibia since 2007.  

Here are links to Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 and Chapter 5.