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Curtis Fuller, a Powerful Voice on Jazz Trombone, Dies at 88 - The New York Times

 

​We all have songs we can point to that shaped our taste in music.  One of mine is Coltrane's Blue Train.

At the time (1958) he was playing in the Thelonius Monk Quartet at the Five Spot on 8th Street.​ Recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's Studio on Prospect Avenue in Hackensack, NJ, it features Coltrane (tenor sax), Lee Morgan (trumpet), Curtis Fuller (trombone), Paul Chambers (bass), and Philly Joe Jones (drums).

We have now lost the only survivor of that momentous quintet. - GWC

Curtis Fuller, a Powerful Voice on Jazz Trombone, Dies at 88 - The New York Times

By Giovanni Russonello

May 14, 2021

Curtis Fuller, a trombonist and composer whose expansive sound and powerful sense of swing made him a driving force in postwar jazz, died on May 8 at a nursing home in Detroit. He was 88.His daughter Mary Fuller confirmed the death but did not specify the cause.
Mr. Fuller arrived in New York in the spring of 1957 and almost immediately became the leading trombonist of the hard-bop movement, which emphasized jazz’s roots in blues and gospel while delivering crisp and hummable melodies.

By the end of the year, he had recorded no fewer than eight albums as a leader or co-leader for the independent labels Blue Note, Prestige and Savoy.

That same year he also appeared on the saxophonist John Coltrane’s “Blue Train,” among the most storied albums in jazz, on which Mr. Fuller unfurls a number of timeless solos. On the title track, now a jazz standard, his trombone plays a central role in carrying the bold, declarative melody. Fuller’s five-chorus solo on “Blue Train” begins by playing off the last few notes of the trumpeter Lee Morgan’s improvisation, as if curiously picking up an object a friend had just put down. He then moves through a spontaneous repertoire of syncopated phrases and deftly wrought curlicues by playing off the last few notes of the trumpeter Lee Morgan’s improvisation, as if curiously picking up an object a friend had just put down. He then moves through a spontaneous repertoire of syncopated phrases and deftly wrought curlicues.