Legendary jazz saxophonist Phil Woods dies; featured on Billy Joel hit
He was not on the list.
Phil Woods, a leading alto saxophonist in mainstream jazz
for more than 60 years whose piercing solos could also be heard on hit records
by Billy Joel and Paul Simon, has died. He was 83.
Woods died Tuesday in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, said Philip
Bensing, owner of the Bensing-Thomas Funeral Home.
Woods gave his last concert on Sept. 4 in Pittsburgh, using
oxygen to complete a performance of the classic album “Charlie Parker With
Strings” with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
reported. That night he announced he had emphysema and was retiring.
Woods grew up in the Swing Era where his early influences
included alto saxophonists Benny Carter and Johnny Hodges. He made his name as
a fiery disciple of bebop pioneer Charlie “Bird” Parker, earning the nickname
“the new Bird” after Parker’s untimely death in 1955. He was married to
Parker’s widow, Chan, for 17 years.
Woods released more than 50 albums as a leader and many more
as a sideman with such jazz luminaries as Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk,
Bill Evans and Clark Terry. He won four Grammys.
But Woods was perhaps best known outside the jazz world for
his alto sax solo at the end of Joel’s 1977 hit recording “Just the Way You
Are.” He also performed on recordings by Paul Simon (“Have a Good Time”) and
Steely Dan (“Doctor Wu”).
Philip Wells Woods was born on Nov. 2, 1931 in Springfield,
Mass. After inheriting an alto sax from his uncle, he began taking lessons at
the age of 12. As a teenager in 1945, he heard Parker’s bebop recordings with
trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.
“It was some truly new music and just completely freaked me
out,” Woods recalled in a 1992 AP interview.
After graduating high school, he moved to New York where he
studied classical music by day at Juilliard and jazz in the clubs at night.
In the mid-1950s, Woods began leading his own combos. He got
his big break when Quincy Jones asked him to join a 1956 State
Department-sponsored world tour with Gillespie’s big band.
“There was a very specific reason Phil played on nearly
every album I’ve made since 1956, because he not only was the best jazz alto
sax player there was, he was a truly beautiful person,” Jones said in a
statement released Tuesday.
Woods toured Europe with Jones’ big band in 1959, and three
years later took part in Benny Goodman’s historic tour of Russia.
Back in the United States, Woods found fewer chances to play
pure jazz and grew disenchanted with studio work. In 1968, he moved to Europe
where he formed his more adventurous European Rhythm Machine which incorporated
some electronic and free-jazz elements.
In the mid ’70s, Woods and his wife and manager, Jill
Goodwin, settled in Delaware Water Gap in eastern Pennsylvania, where he
co-founded the long-running Celebration of the Arts festival.
Woods was voted the top alto sax player nearly 30 times in
Downbeat magazine’s annual readers’ poll starting in 1975. His quintet — which
included brother-in-law drummer Bill Goodwin, bassist Steve Gilmore, and other
musicians such as trumpeter Brian Lynch and pianist Bill Charlap — was named
the top small combo several times.
Woods, who was also a prolific composer and arranger, was
named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2007. Upon receiving the
nation’s highest jazz honor, Woods said, “Jazz will never perish, it’s forever
music, and I like to think that my music is somewhere in there and will last,
maybe not forever, but may influence others.”
