He played with Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. He was the voice of hard bop in the fifties and early sixties on the Blue Note label.
Jackie McLean is dead at 73.
Jackie McLean was a pioneer -- a great jazz musician who played with legends (he was a legend) -- who overcame drug addiction to become a leader and a teacher -- an inspiration to hundreds of young musicians.
Jazz alto saxophonist Jackie McLean dies at 73
AP - HARTFORD, Connecticut --Jazz alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, a performer and educator 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 in Hartford's inner city primarily serving troubled youth.
University of Hartford President Walter Harrison said Dollie McLean called him Friday with news of her husband's death.
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."
If you do not know who Jackie McLean was all you need to do is get his Jackie's Bag CD. One listen is all you will need to understand the man's greatness.
McLean was never a commercial success like Miles Davis, but he recorded some of the most essential music this country ever produced. He worked with masters such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins; he was a member of some of jazz's most important groups, Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers and the Charles Mingus Workshop, for instance.
RIP Jackie McLean, you will be remembered and missed.