StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Remembering Hamiet Bluiett

The jazz world and the St. Louis area both suffered a big loss last week with the death of Hamiet Bluiett, one of the greatest baritone saxophonists of all time and a co-founder of both the Black Artists Group and the World Saxophone Quartet.

While StLJN's obituary for Bluiett, published last week shortly after his death, covered the broad outline of Bluiett's career, there's much more to say, and media, fans, and fellow musicians have all paid tribute to the saxophonist in recent days.

Here in St. Louis, Bluiett's passing was noted by the St. Louis Post Dispatch, St. Louis Public Radio and the St. Louis American.

Nationally and internationally, coverage included obits and/or tributes from the New York Times, NPR, Jazz Times, London Jazz News, and DownBeat - the latter penned by St. Louis' own Terry Perkins, who's preparing a more extensive article about Bluiett for an upcoming issue of the magazine.

In addition to the piece that aired on NPR, veteran jazz writer and radio host Gene Seymour wrote a tribute to Bluiett specifically for NYC public radio station WBGO.

Also, a number of musicians weighed in about Bluiett on social media and on their personal sites, including bassist Melvin Gibbs, with a good story about playing a blues gig early in his career with Bluiett; saxophonists Sam Newsome, Jaleel Shaw and Tony Kofi, bassists Dave Holland and Christian McBride, and guitarist Vernon Reid.

Perhaps the best way to remember Hamiet Bluiett, though, is through his music, and toward that end, StLJN has assembled some favorite online video clips of live performances featuring him, starting up above with a complete set of of the World Saxophone Quartet, recorded at near the height of their collective powers in 1987 at Jazzfest Berlin.

This is the original WSQ lineup, with Bluiett, Julius Hemphill (alto sax, soprano sax), Oliver Lake (alto sax, soprano sax) and David Murray (tenor sax), and the set contains several arrangements from their then-current album of arrangements of music by Duke Ellington.

After the jump, we leap back in time to July 1974, when Bluiett was part of Charles Mingus's band for a performance at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Todi, Italy.

The song is called "Flowers For A Lady," and after tenor saxophonist George Adams and pianist Don Pullen play their solos, at about the six-minute mark it's Bluiett's turn, and he comes in hard, shredding in the altissimo register while Mingus and drummer Dannie Richmond stoke the rhythm.

After that, there's a full concert of Bluiett's band Clarinet Family from 1984 in Berlin, featuring fellow St. Louisan J.D. Parran in the ensemble along with clarinetists Buddy Collette, Edward "Kidd" Jordan, John Purcell, Dwight Andrews, Don Byron, and bassist Fred Hopkins.

Next up is a video apparently shot in 2000 in Ghana, featuring Bluiett with some local players. There's not a whole lot of other information available about this clip, but Bluiett sounds good on it, and it's an interesting groove.

The fifth video documents a performance by Bluiett's Bio-Electric Ensemble in June 2013 as part of the Vision Festival at Roulette in New York City. Along with the leader, the group features Matthew Whittaker on electric keyboards, D.D. Jackson on piano, Harrison Bankhead on bass and Hamid Drake on drums.

That's followed by another set of music by Bluiett, Drake, and bassist William Parker, recorded in January 2016 in NYC.

Finally, you can view the profile of Bluiett done in 2008 by KETC's Living St. Louis program, and a nearly hour-long interview with Bluiett, conducted by saxophonist and latter-day WSQ member Bruce Williams in October 2016 at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...