Gerald Wilson obit

Gerald Wilson dies at 96; multifaceted jazz musician

 

He was not on the list.

Watching Gerald Wilson, who has died aged 96, direct an orchestra was an experience in itself. He was balletic, his shock of white hair a trademark, darting this way and that, as he cued sections and controlled dynamics. "I choreograph the music as I conduct. I point it out, everything you're here to listen to," he explained. In a long life that embraced virtually every aspect of African-American music experience, Wilson was active as a jazz trumpeter and an arranger before forming a number of big bands, eventually concentrating on composition and blossoming as an educator. It is no exaggeration to say that he was a jazz phenomenon, a beacon for aspiring musicians and an innovator, ever open to new possibilities.

Wilson was from Shelby, Mississippi, where his father, a blacksmith, played the clarinet and trombone, and his mother taught music. Wilson's sister was an excellent classical pianist and his elder brother also played "nice jazz on the piano", he told the journalist Kirk Silsbee. Already adept at the piano and entranced by the bands that passed through Shelby on their way to and from New Orleans, his head turned by the music of Duke Ellington, the young Wilson opted for the trumpet.

He moved to Detroit when he was 16 and gained entry to the prestigious Cass Technical high school, where the tenor saxophonist Wardell Gray was one of his classmates. Wilson soon began working in local bands, gradually making his way through their ranks until, aged 20, he joined the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, then at its peak as one of the best-paid and most successful black bands in America. It was with Lunceford's encouragement that Wilson emerged as a soloist and began to compose. His Yard Dog Mazurka proved to be a hit and provided the template for Stan Kenton's huge success with Intermission Riff, which used Wilson's harmonic sequence, although he received no credit for it.

In 1942, Wilson moved to Los Angeles and stayed for good, working as a trumpeter with the crack orchestras of Benny Carter and Les Hite, before a stint with the US navy. Here again he fell on his feet as he joined the all-black Great Lakes naval band, staffed by musicians including the trumpeter Clark Terry and the saxophonist Willie Smith. "All I had to do was write music and play in the band. It was a time to hone your craft," he told Silsbee.

Once back in LA, Wilson formed the first of his big bands, to tour with the ex-Ellington singer Herb Jeffries. When Jeffries pulled out at the last minute, Wilson took the band on the road and made good, playing the best houses and theatres on the black circuit, often with the top stars of the day, and recording for labels including Excelsior and Black and White. Tuned in to the possibilities of bebop, Wilson was always proud that his band recorded Groovin' High in 1945, before its composer Dizzy Gillespie's own big-band version. Surprisingly, he later walked away from this success, saying that he had got to the top too soon and needed to study more. "There was still so much more to learn," he explained.

By 1948, Wilson was back in the fray, travelling with Count Basie as arranger and occasional player, also accepting short-term assignments to orchestrate pieces for Ellington, before joining Gill- espie in 1949 as trumpeter and writer. He then became an arranger-for-hire, supplying charts to other big bands and providing musical settings for pop albums featuring Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Julie London and Bobby Darin. He also assisted Ellington with the score for Otto Preminger's 1959 movie Anatomy of a Murder and was the musical director for the comedian Redd Foxx's popular ABC-TV variety show.

Of more moment perhaps to his jazz audience, Wilson began a fruitful association with the Pacific Jazz label in LA in the early 1960s, putting together all-star big bands and creating a series of powerful albums that stand among his finest achievements. These deployed Wilson's innovatory and unique approach to harmony: "I write whole ensembles with eight-part harmony. I call it 'the Diminished Triangle'. That's my legacy. I'm the first one to use it," he told me in 2005, adding, "I've given to jazz the best I have."

Wilson also composed extended works for concert ensembles and, inspired by his Mexican-American wife Josefina, wrote music dedicated to the Mexican bullfighters he had befriended. He toured with his occasional big band in both the US and Europe, appearing in London to conduct the BBC Big Band in 2005. He continued to produce a stream of brilliant new compositions, hosted his own radio show and, from 1970, taught a jazz history course, latterly at the University of California, Los Angeles, where his classes often attracted 400 students. His final hurrah with the Mack Avenue label resulted in a series of richly orchestrated album suites dedicated to New York, Chicago, Detroit and Monterey.

He arranged music for Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Julie London, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Carter, Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, and Nancy Wilson.

Wilson was born in Shelby, Mississippi, and at the age of 16 moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he graduated from Cass Technical High School (one of his classmates was saxophonist Wardell Gray). He joined the Jimmie Lunceford orchestra in 1939, replacing its trumpeter and arranger, Sy Oliver. While with Lunceford, Wilson contributed songs to the band, including "Hi Spook" and "Yard-dog Mazurka", the first influenced by Ellington's recording of "Caravan" and the latter an influence on Stan Kenton's "Intermission Riff".

During World War II, Wilson also performed for a brief time with the U.S. Navy, with Clark Terry, Willie Smith and Jimmy Nottingham. Around 2005, many of the members of the band reunited as The Great Lakes Experience Big Band" with Wilson conducting and Ernie Andrews making a guest appearance at the invitation of Clark Terry. Wilson also played and arranged for the bands of Benny Carter, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie.

Wilson is survived by Josefina, his daughters, Jeri and Nancy Jo, his son, Anthony, who is a jazz guitarist, and four grandchildren.

 Gerald Stanley Wilson, composer, bandleader and jazz trumpeter, born 4 September 1918; died 8 September 2014.