Jackie McLean RIP

March 31, 2006
Jazz Saxophonist Jackie McLean Dies at 73
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:11 p.m. ET

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Jazz saxophonist Jackie McLean, a performer
and teacher who played with legendary musicians including Miles
Davis and Sonny Rollins, died Friday. He was 73.

McLean, a contemporary of some of the 20th century's most famed jazz
musicians, died at his Hartford home after a long illness, family
members told The Hartford Courant.

McLean was founder and artistic director of the Jackie McLean
Institute of Jazz at the University of Hartford's Hartt School.

He and his wife, actress Dollie McLean, also founded the Artists
Collective, a community center and fine arts school primarily for
troubled youth in inner city Hartford.

University President Walter Harrison said that despite his many
musical accomplishments, McLean was a modest man whose connections
with his students lasted for decades after they left his classroom.

''He fully understood the way that jazz as an art should be passed
down to students,'' Harrison said. ''He saw his role as bringing
jazz from the 1950s and '60s and handing it down to artists of
today.''

McLean, a native of Harlem in New York City, grew up in a musical
family, his father playing guitar in Tiny Bradshaw's band. McLean
took up the soprano saxophone as a teen and quickly switched to the
alto saxophone, inspired by his godfather's performances in a church
choir, he told WBGO-FM in Newark, N.J., in an interview in 2004.

McLean went on to play with his friend Rollins under the tutelage of
pianist Bud Powell, and was 19 when he first recorded with Miles
Davis.

He drew wide attention with his 1959 debut on Blue Note
Records, ''Jackie's Bag,'' one of dozens of albums he recorded in
the hard-bop and free jazz styles.

He also played with Charles Mingus and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers,
experiences that he credited with helping him find his own style as
he tried to emulate the famed Charlie ''Bird'' Parker.

''I never really sounded like Bird, but that was my mission,''
McLean said in the radio interview. ''I didn't care if people said
that I copied him; I loved Bird's playing so much. But Mingus was
the one that really pushed me away from the idea and forced me into
thinking about having an individual sound and concept.''

After Blue Note terminated his recording contract in 1968, McLean
began teaching at the University of Hartford. McLean taught jazz,
African-American music, and African-American history and culture. He
received an American Jazz Masters fellowship from the National
Endowment for the Arts in 2001, and toured the world as an educator
and performer.

McLean, a heroin addict during his early career, also lectured on
drug addiction research.