R.I.P. Arthur Blythe

The wonderful saxophonist and composer Arthur Blythe has died.  

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I've loved this album, Lenox Avenue Breakdown (Columbia, 1979), since I found a used copy of it in Maine when I was in college sixteen years ago. Instead of a bass,  Blythe opts for a tuba (and this and several seubsequent albums), and, along with drumming by Jack DeJohnette and guitar by James "Blood" Ulmer, he grooves like nobody else I've heard. The first time I heard the opening track, I remember thinking, I had no idea jazz could be this fun , and I still think that whenever I hear it. 

Blythe has a buzzy tone, an ear for both the experimental and mainstream ends of the jazz spectrum, and a penchant for assembling unlikely groups of instruments--tuba, cello--that somehow work seamlessly. His (mostly out of print) Columbia albums from the 80s--including a standards set and an album of Monk tunes--are mostly classics (except for a couple of later pop-tinged albums that must have been an attempt to pay the bills).  They're well worth hunting down.  

He seemed to hang with the AACM crowd early on and found great accessible settings for their frenetic playing. Ethan Iverson, in a tribute, says he never quite became "a lifelong believer" (though he seems pretty sold on Blythe nonetheless), but I am. I never got to see him--it sounds like he was suffering from Parkinson's in his later years--but his albums were never far from my speakers. 

 Wait! I did see him: with Joey Baron's Down Home group with Bill Frisell and Ron Carter. 

Here's  a lengthy obit from the San Diego Union-Tribune. 

Craig Teicher