Irish bassist, educator and composer Ronan Guilfoyle remembers “one of the true greats of jazz”, Benny Golson.
Sad to hear about the passing of the legendary Benny Golson, one of the true greats of jazz. I was privileged to play a couple of tours in Spain and Ireland with Benny, the great drummer Keith Copeland, and guitarist Tommy Halferty, and what an experience that was.. To stand behind him night after night and play all THOSE tunes, and realise over and over again that you were playing with the guy who WROTE all those tunes! We played two sets of music each night, all Benny’s compositions – I remember we always opened with ‘Along Came Betty’ and closed with ‘Stablemates’.
One thing that really impressed me about Benny, was his utter commitment to playing. There he was, playing yet another gig, (one of thousands over the years), in yet another small venue, but he played each gig as if it was the last. I remember watching Keith and Benny, (combined age at that time 132!) playing a ferocious, up-tempo drum and tenor duet on ‘Stablemates’ at 2am in a small club in Malaga, and marvelling at the sheer intensity and love of music they were demonstrating and seeing it as an example of what greatness really is.
The hang was wonderful too, so many stories, including some about practicing after school with Coltrane in Philadelphia when they were both in their early teens, (he always called Coltrane ‘John’, which made you realise just who you were dealing with when playing with Benny!), including maybe the greatest single jazz anecdote I’ve ever heard – about the thirteen year old Benny and John going to hear Charlie Parker for the first time. When I asked Benny how that felt he said, ‘Did you ever see that newsreel footage of the girls at the Beatles’ concerts screaming, crying, and fainting? Well that was John and I at Bird’s gig – except we didn’t faint’.
Photo copyright Michael Jackson
Benny was always immaculately dressed and groomed, always on time, incredibly clean living, (didn’t even drink coffee, let alone smoked or drank), and spoke in a very professorial way, and I remember him relating an anecdote about playing with Art Blakey, and Blakey playing press-rolls behind Benny’s solo that were so loud that Benny couldn’t hear himself, and as Benny described it, ‘And I thought to myself – this fellow has taken leave of his senses!’ Benny was jazz all the way through, but there was nothing of the hipster about him.
He was both very serious in his speech and yet had a mischievous sense of humour that could be extraordinarily witty, and was a brilliant raconteur. He was also so generous with us in terms of talking about music, asking us what we were doing, asking to see scores of mine (!) and just being such great company on the road. Playing with him was one of the greatest musical experiences of my life.
RIP Benny, you were great in every way.
Benny Golson. Born Philadelphia, 25 January 1929. Died New York, 21 September 2024.
