Del.icio.usKenny Dorham
Dorham was one of the most active bebop trumpeters. He played in the Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Eckstine orchestras, Kenny Clarke's Be Bop Boys, the Lionel Hampton and Mercer Ellington orchestras, the Charlie Parker quintet, and the original Jazz Messengers. He also backed Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins, and replaced the recently deceased Clifford Brown in the Max Roach Quintet. A curiosity from this period is a 1958 session featuring Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane, artists with a style quite different from Dorham's. In addition to sideman work, he led his own groups, including the Jazz Prophets (formed shortly after Art Blakey took over the Jazz Messengers name). The Jazz Prophets can be heard on the 1956 Blue Note live album Round About Midnight at the Cafe Bohemia.
In 1963 Dorham added the 26-year-old tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson to his group, which later recorded Una Mas (the group also featured a young Tony Williams). The friendship between the two musicians led to a number of other albums, such as Henderson's Our Thing and In'n'Out. Dorham recorded frequently throughout the sixties for Blue Note and Prestige Records, as leader and as sideman for Henderson, Jackie McLean, Cedar Walton, Andrew Hill, Milt Jackson and others.
During his final years Dorham suffered from kidney disease, of which he died.
He composed the jazz standard "Blue Bossa," which appears on Joe Henderson's album "Page One."
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