r.i.p. david "fathead" newman
oh no. david "fathead" newman, dallas-born tenor saxman, has left the planet, aged 75. here he is (on the left) going head-to-head with tina brooks on "birth of a band" with ray charles in brazil, 1963.
posted by stashdauber at 7:36 PM
1 Comments:
Damn. I'm glad to know that his suffering is over, but still shocked that both he and his pal (and fellow Ray Charles horn section man) Leroy Cooper would end up passing within one week of each other.
As I have mentioned before, both Fathead and Leroy's first session was the Zuzu Bollin Dallas date at Sellers Studio that produced Zuzu's definitive "Why Don't You Eat Where You Slept Last Night," which was a head arrangement that they came up with on the spot. When I rediscovered Zuzu and took him back into the studio in '89, (despite very limited resourses), I flew Fathead back in to Dallas from NY to work on the date--with his mentor the late Buster Smith supervising the horn section. To say that they, along with the late Marcel Ivory, all being in the room instilled a sense of confidence of what was going down on tape is a grand understatement. From me and Hash, to Kaz Kazanoff and Duke Robillard and Doyle Bramhall--we all realized we were in the presense of, and in on, something special. As I took Duke back to the airport a couple of days later, he told me that was one of the best times he'd had in the studio, and would be glad to come back down and mix it for nothing--just to make sure that what we had captured did not compromised during that critical step. I took him up on it, and any of you who claim to be music lovers who don't go out of your way to have that in your collection, well, that's on you. (and not because I had a damn thing to do with, but rather what all the others who did).
For one of the better David Fathead Newman interviews, head this way:
http://vermontreview.tripod.com/Interviews/fathead.htm
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