Acclaimed jazz drummer Louis Bellson dies at 84

Dark Knight

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LOS ANGELES – Big band and jazz drummer Louie Bellson, a master musician who performed with such greats as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman and his late wife, Pearl Bailey, has died. He was 84.

Bellson died Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications of Parkinson's disease following a broken hip in November, according to his wife, Francine.

Bellson's career spanned more than six decades, performing on more than 200 albums with jazz greats including Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Oscar Peterson, Woody Herman, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie
and Louis Armstrong.

It was through Ellington that he met Bailey, the great singer and Broadway performer. They married in 1952, and when she died in 1990 at age 72, he told the Philadelphia Daily News that "I just lost my best friend."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090217/ap_en_ot/obit_bellson

I remember seeing him on Carson all the time. As a drummer, I was a huge fan of his. RIP Louis.
 
  • #2
:( He is missed.
I didn't know that he was married to Pearl Bailey.
 

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