mercredi 30 avril 2014

International Jazz Day


vendredi 25 avril 2014

Journée internationale du jazz: Nîmes, le 30 avril Novotel





Mercredi 30 Avril

NIMES - Gard
Mercredi 30 avril à partir de 18h00
Auditorium Hôtel Atria, 15 Bd de Prague
  
JOURNEE INTERNATIONALE DU JAZZ !!
 à 18h00 (gratuit pour tous)
"Drôle D'oiseau" : Un film documentaire sur Michel Portal de Stéphane Sinde – Produit par Oléo films - 2012-57min Entouré de Sylvain Luc, Bruno Chevillon, Bernard Lubat, Hamid Drake, Daniel Humair, Vincent Peirani, Bojan Z, Michel Portal se livre pour un portrait tout en délicatesse.

à 20h30 (17 et 20 euros)
FREDERIC MONINO TRIO All the way
Frédéric Monino : basse, Olivier Roman-Garcia : guitare, François Laizeau : batterie

Le montpelliérain Frédéric Monino s’inscrit dans cette lignée des bassistes qui redonnent à la basse électrique lyrisme et poésie, sans lui faire perdre son rôle de pilier rythmique pour autant. Les habiles compositions de son nouvel album « All the way » montrent d’ailleurs qu’il est aussi imaginatif et pertinent dans l’écriture que sur scène. Trois musiciens d'une grande virtuosité́, mais aussi et surtout d'une incroyable créativité.

MICHEL PORTAL  et VINCENT PEIRANI DUO
Michel Portal : clarinettes, Vincent Peirani : accordéon

Pour cette première journée internationale organisée par JAZZ A JUNAS et JAZZ 70 nous accueillerons Michel Portal, véritable incarnation de la curiosité, aux côtés de Vincent Peirani, musicien de l'année 2013 !!

Tout à la fois musicien de jazz et classique, clarinettiste, saxophoniste et bandonéoniste, Michel Protal est constamment en recherche de rencontres qui vont bouleverser sa focale, le remettre en question. 
La magie de cette rencontre est de nous révéler nos émotions. Chaque concert est une surprise, quelque chose entre jazz et musique populaire. Un duo d'une beauté incroyable à ne pas rater !!


MERCREDI 30 AVRIL
NIMES, Auditorium Hôtel Atria, à partir de 19h00
Tarifs : 20€ / 17€ (gratuit pour moins de 16 ans)
Tarif réduits pour adhérents de Jazz à Junas, de Jazz 70 et du réseau Jazz en L'R
Renseignements et préventes
www.jazzajunas.fr 04 66 80 30 27

Billetterie



mercredi 23 avril 2014

Reviving the House Coltrane Built


Photo
Some Impulse Records album covers from the 1960s: Sonny Rollins, the Gil Evans Orchestra and Charles Mingus.
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Henry Butler, the New Orleans jazz pianist, released his debut album, “Fivin’ Around,” in 1986. And along with ratifying a major talent — a smartly rampaging virtuoso whose engagement in New York soon afterward drew a smattering of notable pianists — it signaled the reactivation of Impulse Records, the storied former home of the saxophonist John Coltrane, which had then been dormant for nearly a decade. “We had a nice little hand in reviving the label at that time,” Mr. Butler recalled this week.
History may be about to repeat itself, in a fashion. Impulse has, in effect, been quiet since the late 1990s.  But on July 15 it will release “Viper’s Drag,” a new album by Mr. Butler and the trumpeter Steven Bernstein. The first in a series of scheduled new releases, it represents another hopeful reboot for the label.
This new iteration of Impulse, to be announced on Wednesday, is being run by the veteran executive Jean-Philippe Allard, as a division of Universal Music France. It has a strict jazz focus, with other releases including a 1990 concert recording by the bassist Charlie Haden and the guitarist Jim Hall; a joint effort by the violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, the bassist Stanley Clarke and the guitarist Biréli Lagrène; and new albums by an impressive and diverse heap of pianists: Kenny Barron, Ran Blake, Sullivan Fortner, Rodney Kendrick, Jacky Terrasson and Randy Weston.
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John Coltrane, who defined the image of Impulse Records.
Provisionally speaking, Impulse’s reactivation reflects a larger turnaround for major-label jazz divisions, most of which had struggled or been shuttered within the past decade or so. OKeh Records, another historically significant jazz label, was revived last year under the umbrella of Sony Masterworks, and has released albums by artists both emerging and established. Blue Note Records, which endured a few shaky seasons under EMI, is on stronger footing as it celebrates its 75th anniversary — and is now a property of the Universal Music Group, as is Verve. If you also factor in Nonesuch, ECM and Concord Jazz, which operate as independents with major backing, you get a picture more robust than anyone would have dared to imagine just a few years ago.
Impulse began its life as a subsidiary of ABC-Paramount, founded by the producer Creed Taylor, who had a feel for bringing modern jazz into the pop mainstream: Among the label’s first four albums, in 1961, was the Ray Charles classic “Genius + Soul = Jazz.” Coltrane made his Impulse debut later that year, beginning an intensely productive association — with the label and with Mr. Taylor’s successor, Bob Thiele. Coltrane’s integrity and questing spirituality would come to define the image of Impulse, though the label was hardly restricted to music in his style.
In his 2006 book, “The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records,” the journalist and music historian Ashley Kahn outlines the label’s trajectory through the 1960s and ’70s, including its sale to the more pop-oriented MCA Records “for what was then a fire-sale price: $30 million.” The last batch of albums on the label, before Mr. Butler and “Fivin’ Around,” was released in 1977.
Shifting corporate structures dictated the label’s fortunes then and since. In 1990 MCA bought the jazz label GRP, which took over management of Impulse, eventually building a small but serious roster that included the pianists McCoy Tyner, Danilo Pérez and Eric Reed, as well as Diana Krall. By the late ’90s, MCA had been renamed the Universal Music Group, acquiring PolyGram, which owned Verve; all of that new conglomerate’s jazz holdings, including Impulse, were organized under the Verve Music Group. By the 2000s, most of the Impulse roster had been reassigned to Verve, leaving Impulse to function as a reissue label. (One special exception was “Translinear Light,” a landmark final recording by the keyboardist and harpist Alice Coltrane, John’s widow, released in 2004.)
Photo
The pianist Henry Butler with the trumpeter Steven Bernstein & the Hot 9, at the Jazz Standard in January. Matt Munisteri is on guitar and Brad Jones on bass. CreditJacob Blickenstaff for The New York Times
The current Impulse revival can be traced to another tectonic industry shake-up: the 2012 purchase of EMI Music by the Universal Music Group, for $1.9 billion. “We already had the Verve label, and through the acquisition of EMI we were gaining Blue Note,” said Max Hole, the chairman of Universal Music Group International, speaking from London. “So we became, overnight, the keeper of some of the world’s absolute greatest jazz recordings. I felt we weren’t very organized in the way we looked at jazz, globally.”
It was Mr. Allard’s suggestion that led to a resurrection of Impulse, which gives Universal three of the most recognizable jazz labels. Speaking from Paris, he said the label would project an international perspective, taking advantage of its foothold outside the United States. (He has a North American artists and repertoire manager in Brian Bacchus, another industry veteran.)
To some extent this mirrors the situation for OKeh, which also has a European head office, and a pointed slogan: “Global expressions in jazz.” Both examples suggest a buy-in to the commercial conviction articulated by Mr. Hole: “There’s still a very healthy jazz market in certain countries in the world.”
Asked to define his mission for the revived Impulse label, Mr. Allard said, simply: “I want to make it successful. For me it’s very important that jazz is not a failure. Without compromising the music, I want commercial success.” It would be misleading, in other words, to say that the label is bravely taking up the mantle of post-Coltrane avant-gardism. Mr. Allard instead cited the soul-jazz singer Gregory Porter, whose win at the Grammys this year has fueled strong sales.
But the example of Mr. Porter also illustrates some of the potential complications in Impulse’s current position. Though he was signed to Universal, and probably would have been an Impulse artist, the timing led to his landing at Blue Note. Under the new structure, Impulse’s albums will be distributed in the United States by Blue Note, which in other respects is a competitor. Mr. Hole differentiated the three jazz labels in the Universal fold by way of artistic personality, contrasting Mr. Allard’s straight-ahead jazz sensibility with those of Don Was, the president of Blue Note (which mixes in rock and R&B), and David Foster, the chairman of Verve (which leans toward satiny orchestral pop).


Mr. Butler — who will play music from “Viper’s Drag” with Mr. Bernstein and the Hot 9 at the Zinc Bar on Wednesday — struck a note of cautious optimism that seems, for the moment, well advised. “This is my second go-round on the label,” he said slowly, “and you never know what a label is going to do until the record gets out there and they actually start doing something.”

mardi 22 avril 2014

Jazz Supreme par Raphaël Imbert



Jazz Supreme : Initiés, mystiques & prophètes

Raphaël Imbert

De façon parfaitement justifiée, la parution de ce livre fait grand bruit. Et pour cause.
Les livres qui parlent de jazz ne sont pas légion et, pour la plupart, ne font qu’approfondir des sujets déjà traités : biographies de musiciens, études de styles, analyses… Et soudain paraît l’ouvrage outsider. Si surprenant qu’on a l’impression de n’avoir (presque) rien lu avant lui.
« Philosophie imaginaire », tel est le nom de la collection qui, aux éditions de l’Éclat, publie Jazz Supreme, de Raphaël Imbert. Pas si imaginaire que ça, finalement, quand on sait que cet ouvrage est le fruit d’une dizaine d’années de travail. Et grâce à cela, Imbert endosse la respectable chasuble du chercheur par-dessus son bleu de musicien.
Initiés, mystique et prophètes est un titre qui, à première vue, me terrasse d’ennui. Mais, en préambule, l’auteur se positionne comme agnostique et explique sa démarche. Je cède donc à la curiosité.
L’élément « spirituel » dont il est question dans la première partie, dépasse largement les préoccupations de fidèles du dimanche. Il s’agit en fait de l’étude presque moléculaire de la séquence ADN du jazz, que ces racines, celles qui ont germé à la Nouvelle-Orléans, portent dans leur sève. Les processions funéraires, le mystère, le secret, le syncrétisme des religions des maîtres blancs, du vaudou, tout cela circule en permanence. Cette spiritualité a été alimentée au fil des siècles par la nécessité de communautarisme, notamment à cause de l’esclavage ou, plus tard, de la ségrégation. Et alors même que le jazz s’épanouit dans les lieux de mauvaise fréquentation et de petite vertu, sa dimension spirituelle s’en trouve renforcée. Elle est personnelle, intime, fière. De plus, c’est le gage, pour de nombreux musiciens, que cette musique est bien la leur, qu’elle est d’essence particulière et ne peut être comprise que par des esprits éclairés.
La seconde partie dévoile, sans aucune volonté de sensationnalisme, les relations entre la franc-maçonnerie et les musiciens afro-américains. C’est, pour moi en tout cas, une découverte. Ce genre de sujet ressemble tant aux marronniers des magazines privés d’imagination qu’il fallait de sérieux arguments pour motiver la lecture. C’est la partie la plus riche en détails et informations. Il faut admettre que l’univers des loges n’est pas simple à comprendre, mais on s’y fait petit à petit. Certes, il y a eu des musiciens francs-maçons et oui, l’auteur donne des noms. Mais ce qui est passionnant, c’est la spécificité de ces loges, leur histoire, le rôle qu’elles ont joué dans la lutte contre l’esclavage, dans les relations sociales, etc.
Enfin, cerise sur le gâteau, Raphaël Imbert s’offre une analyse des différentes version de « My Favorite Things », bluette signée Rogers-Hammerstein et que Coltrane a transformée en hymne à l’histoire du jazz, au saxophone soprano. Un monument d’improvisation, une œuvre de tension, declimax, de souffle.
Fondateur de la compagnie Nine Spirit, saxophoniste lui-même, Raphaël Imbert a déjà abordé ce type de recherche, mais en tant que musicien. Il a notamment enregistré la fameuse suite Bach Coltrane, où les deux musiques sont liées et où, bien entendu, la dimension spirituelle, religieuse, est omniprésente. Et il a récidivé avec un répertoire similaire, mais cette fois autour de Mozart et Ellington (Heavens – Amadeus & The Duke). C’est donc en spécialiste qu’il propose cette plongée au cœur même de l’œuvre de Coltrane, musicien emblématique du jazz supreme, porté par une foi inébranlable et une spiritualité personnelle transcendante. Ce qui justifie pleinement la troisième partie, plus technique, de cet ouvrage.
Il ne sera désormais plus possible d’écrire sur le jazz sans avoir lu Jazz Supreme : Initiés, mystiques & prophètes. La dimension spirituelle du jazz n’est plus de ces sujets qu’on balaie d’un revers de manche. Et Raphaël Imbert vient de poser le pied sur un nouveau continent qui reste à explorer - en dehors de l’espace afro-américain par exemple.
par Matthieu Jouan // Publié le 21 avril 2014

dimanche 20 avril 2014

AINARA, au Cratère d'Alès le jeudi 24 avril


Jeudi 24 Avril

ALES - Gard

Le Jeudi 24 avril à 20h30
Scène Nationale d'Alès,
Le Cratère, Salle d'à côté 

AINARA
Trio d'en Bas / Trio Kej
Samuel Bourille (piano), Philippe Gloaguen (guitares), Arnaud Rouanet (saxophone) , Yoann Scheidt (batterie), Pierrick Tardivel (contrebasse) et Jean-Luc Thomas (flûte).

Pour la deuxième année, après une première collaboration en 2013 avec le concert de Denis Badault, nous nous associons pour un nouveau concert des plus excitants.  Le groupe breton Kej et le Trio d’en bas se sont rencontrés lors de deux festivals en Aquitaine. Deux trios, deux groupes qui depuis des années multiplient expériences et rencontres, que ce soit avec des musiciens du Mali, du Brésil, des poètes, des circassiens, des comédiens ou des artistes plasticiens. Ils ont eu envie de se mélanger, d’aller les uns chez les autres (ils étaient en résidence 2013 du Collectif Jazz en L'R), de croiser leurs univers et de créer une œuvre : Aïnara (hirondelle en basque), fruit de ce sextet fait de deux trios. Entre la musique bretonne traditionnelle, le jazz, l’improvisation, ces allumés de la rencontre cherchent à s’imprégner de l’univers de l’autre, pour mieux nous faire partager cette musique à la fois mélodique et rythmique, mais aussi inventive, joyeuse, libre, hors des sentiers battus et lieu de tous les possibles.
Ouvrez bien grand vos oreilles pour cette rencontre étonnante, sensible et détonante, humaine et musicale.

 En partenariat avec le Cratère, Scène Nationale d'Alès.

JEUDI 24 AVRIL
ALES, Le Cratère Scène Nationale, à 20h30
Tarifs : 9,10,12,14 euros
Renseignements et réservations, Le Cratère : 04 66 52 52 64
Du lundi au vendredi de 13h15 à 18h00 et le samedi de 10h à 13h

ou sur www.lecratere.fr

vendredi 18 avril 2014

Festival Jazz LE VIGAN








5ème édition !!

Du 18 au 20 avril, sous chapiteau

C’est donc avec beaucoup de  plaisir que nous vous dévoilons la programmation de cette cinquième édition,
qui se veut  toujours aussi éclectique et de grande qualité. La diversité des styles et des groupes sera forte
pour favoriser le plus grand nombre de découvertes, arpenter des territoires inconnus.

Après quatre très belles éditions, le point fort de la saison de Jazz à Junas que représente cet
événement
au Vigan prend de plus en plus d’ampleur et semble être très attendu !
Ainsi, dès le vendredi 18 avril, nous vous proposerons de découvrir un musicien très talentueux qui fait partie
des nouvelles référence de la  "nouvelle scène jazz française" : Fabrice Martinez et son quartet "Chut !". Il
laissera place à une des plus grandes références du jazz français et européen : Louis Sclavis, pour un
 tout nouveau quartet créé avec Keyvan Chemirani, percussionniste iranien de renom.
Le samedi 19 avril continuera de nous faire traverser l'univers du jazz
 avec un projet tout en douceur et en mélodie
avec 2 grands personnalités, citées souvent comme des véritables références chacun dans leur instrument :
Daniel Mille à l'accordéon et Sylvain Luc à la guitare.

Un samedi qui terminera de manière festive avec une formation Blues venue d'Angleterre les 24 pesos sous la houlette
de ​Jean-Jacques Milteau, un des grands maîtres de l'Harmonica ! Enfin, place au cinéma avec un ciné-concert
"Dreams" de Akira Kurozawa orchestré par 2 musiciens vivants en région Gérard Pansanel et Marc Simon.
Comme chaque année, le samedi matin, un concert sur le marché avec cette année la fanfare Bakchich fera vibrer
les chalants ! Et une nouveauté cette
année en ce week-end Pascal, un spectacle jeune public suivi d'une
chasse aux œufs le dimanche 20 avril !


Retrouvez le dossier de presse complet de cette 5ème édition e en format pdf en cliquant sur le lien :

Dossier de presse Festival du Vigan 2014


Renseignements et ventes de billets sur  wwww.jazzajunas.fr ou par téléphone au 04 66 80 30 27

jeudi 17 avril 2014

Concert TomMcClung Trio à Nîmes, le vendredi 18 avril

Unique Concert Tom McClung Trio le vendredi 18 avril , 21.00 à l'Ever'in Cafe Nîmes


Tom McClung, piano, Archie Shepp saxophone, Wayne Dockerey contrabasse et Steve Mcraven  batterie, concert 2009 à Junas

BONJOUR TOUT LE MONDE !
       POUR BIEN COMMENCER LE WEEK-END DE PÂQUES, NE MANQUEZ PAS LE CONCERT du VENDREDI 18 AVRIL à 21h àl’Ever’in (place Séverine à Nîmes) avec le
                              Trio Tom Mc Clung.
RESERVATION OUVERTE   (en réservant vous trouverez un siège réservé avec un numéro)           lejazz.estla@laposte.net    ou  04 66 64 10 25

dimanche 13 avril 2014

Fred Ho, saxophoniste baryton vient de nous quitter à l'âge de 56 ans

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CreditJoshua Bright for The New York Times

Fred Ho: The Music Lives On

The baritone saxophonist Fred Ho died on April 12th after a years-long battle with cancer. Mr. Ho’s music is known for straddling the line between classical and jazz.
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Fred Ho, a composer, saxophonist, writer and radical activist who composed politically charged operas, suites, oratorios and ballets that mixed jazz with popular and traditional elements of what he called Afro-Asian culture, died on Saturday at his home in Brooklyn. He was 56.
The cause was complications of colorectal cancer, said his student and friend Benjamin Barson. Mr. Ho had been in a war with the disease — his preferred metaphor, which he expanded on in many books, essays, speeches and interviews — since 2006.
Mr. Ho, who was of Chinese descent, considered himself a “popular avant-gardist.” He was inspired by the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and by the ambitious, powerful music of African-American bandleaders including Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Sun Ra and especially Charles Mingus. But he rejected the word jazz, which he considered a pejorative term imposed by Europeans.
Self-reliance was a priority for Mr. Ho. He rarely played in anyone else’s band (among the exceptions were stints with the arranger Gil Evans and the saxophonists Archie Shepp and Julius Hemphill). Describing himself as a “revolutionary matriarchal socialist and aspiring Luddite,” he never owned a car and made many of his own clothes from kimono fabric.
Photo
Fred Ho in 2013. CreditJoshua Bright for The New York Times
Despite his determination to stand outside the mainstream, he found support from grant-giving organizations, academic music departments who hired him as artist in residence, and nonprofit arts institutions — including, in New York City, the Public Theater, the Kitchen and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Born Fred Wei-han Houn on Aug. 10, 1957, in Palo Alto, Calif. — he changed his surname in 1988 — he moved with his family when he was 6 to Amherst, Mass., where his father taught political science at the University of Massachusetts. He felt a powerful attraction to the art and rhetoric of black culture; as a teenager, he audited college classes taught by Mr. Shepp, the drummer Max Roach and the poet Sonia Sanchez, who were all putting progressive politics in their art. (He never formally studied music, but began teaching himself baritone saxophone when he was 14.)
In interviews, Mr. Ho recalled that his father physically abused his mother. “One of my first insurrections,” he told Harvard Magazine, “was to defend my mother against his physical beatings and give him two black eyes.”
He served in the Marines, where he learned hand-to-hand combat, and was discharged in 1975 because, he said, he had fought with an officer who had used a racial slur. In his 20s, Mr. Ho briefly joined the Nation of Islam and then the I Wor Kuen, a radical Asian-American group inspired by the Black Panthers. Like his two younger sisters, Florence Houn and Flora Houn Hoffman, he attended Harvard University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1979.
His sisters and his mother, Frances Lu Houn, survive him.
Mr. Ho moved to New York in the early ’80s to pursue a career as a musician. He formed the Afro Asian Music Ensemble and became associated with other Asian-American musicians working on a newly emergent hybrid conception of jazz, including the pianist Jon Jang and the saxophonist Francis Wong. His first records, “Tomorrow Is Now!” and “We Refuse to Be Used and Abused,” were released by the Italian jazz label Soul Note.
In 1989, Mr. Ho had his first work performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the bilingual opera “A Chinaman’s Chance.” He then created two ballet operas based on the Chinese novel “Monkey,” by Wu Ch’eng-en, “Journey to the West” (1990) and “Journey Beyond the West: The New Adventures of Monkey” (1997). Both used Mandarin in their librettos, and both reimagined Monkey, a trickster figure, as a political agitator, upsetting the power structures of the gods. Mr. Ho called them “living comic books.”
Other ambitious works, many of which were recorded, were on the subjects of Chinese folklore, physical combat, domestic abuse, the black power movement and revolutionary feminism — and sometimes all of those subjects together, as in the opera “Warrior Sisters: The New Adventures of African and Asian Womyn Warriors” (1991), written with the librettist Ann T. Greene.
That work imagined a meeting of Fa Mu Lan, the Chinese fighter who was the subject of a sixth-century folk ballad; Yaa Asantewaa, who in 1900, in what is now Ghana, led the Ashanti rebellion against British colonialism; Sieh King King, a young Chinese-American woman who agitated for women’s rights in early-20th-century San Francisco; and Assata Shakur, the Black Liberation Army activist.
After learning in 2006 that he had colorectal cancer, Mr. Ho documented his fight against the illness in a book, “Diary of a Radical Cancer Warrior: Fighting Cancer and Capitalism at the Cellular Level,” followed by another, more prescriptive one, “Raw Extreme Manifesto: Change Your Body, Change Your Mind and Change the World by Spending Almost Nothing!” He wrote about his treatment in a blog, naming the doctors he mistrusted, thanking his friends and theorizing about his illness.
In “Future’s End,” a lecture from 2010 that he published at the website of the artists’ collective called Commoning, he wrote that the cause of cancer is “capitalist industrialism” and “social toxicity,” and praised Luddism, his philosophical passion, as the only alternative: “the opposition to technology (any of it) that is harmful to people or to the planet.”
Even in his final years, as Mr. Ho underwent multiple operations, he was still working: on “Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon!,” a choreographed martial-arts opera based on the 1970s manga comics of Kazuo Koike, performed for two weeks at La MaMa in May and June 2013; on “The Sweet Science Suite,” for 20-piece band and dancers, dedicated to Muhammad Ali, which had its stage premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in October 2013; and on several unfinished opuses.

vendredi 11 avril 2014

Wayne Henderson, a Founder of the Jazz Crusaders, Dies at 74


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Wayne Henderson in 2010. CreditDavid Mdzinarishvili/Reuters
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Wayne Henderson, a trombonist and composer who was a founding member of the Jazz Crusaders, a group that began in the 1950s playing straight-ahead bebop and then morphed into leading performers of jazz-funk, died on Saturday in Culver City, Calif. He was 74.
His wife, Cathy, said the cause was heart failure triggered by diabetes.
The Jazz Crusaders, who shortened their name to the Crusaders in 1971, placed 19 albums on the Billboard Top 200, eight of them in the Top 50. Their funky, danceable renditions of songs by the Beatles, Carole King and others extended their reach beyond jazz fans, as did original songs by Mr. Henderson like “Keep That Same Old Feeling.” At the height of their success, the Crusaders opened for the Rolling Stones.
“We are the fathers of jazz-funk-fusion, and I am a funkster at heart,” Mr. Henderson said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times in 1995. “We took pop tunes like ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘So Far Away’ and did them melodically with a groove, so people could dance if they wanted.”
That groove — subtle, almost mesmerizing repetitions of a theme — was the essential characteristic of the Crusaders’ music. Its influence can be heard today in acid jazz, house music and hip-hop.
Mr. Henderson was born on Sept. 24, 1939, in Houston, where he formed a group called the Swingsters in 1952 with three high school friends: Wilton Felder, a tenor saxophonist; Joe Sample, a keyboardist; and Stix Hooper, a drummer.
As young teenagers, they traveled the Gulf Coast playing strip clubs and hole-in-the wall joints, even as their aspirations were focused on the cutting-edge work of jazz artists like John Coltrane.
“There’s nothing city-slick about what we do,” Mr. Sample said in an interview with The Independent, a London newspaper, in 2003. “It’s a combination of southeast Texas and Louisiana roots.”
After settling in Los Angeles in the late 1950s, the group drew praise for its unusual sound, which featured melody lines played by tenor sax and trombone in unison. Mr. Henderson, known as Big Daddy, became the group’s spokesman and wrote and arranged many of its songs.
They changed their name to the Jazz Crusaders in 1961 and recorded their first album, “Freedom Sound,” for the Pacific Jazz label that year. Their 1962 recording of “The Young Rabbits,” a high-energy Henderson composition, led to comparisons to Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, the leading proponents of the stripped-down style known as hard bop.
In the early 1970s they dropped “jazz” from their name — because, they explained, people kept telling them they liked their music but didn’t understand jazz. Their new music was different in more than name. An electric bassist and guitarist were added. So were vocalists. Mr. Sample began playing electric keyboards.
“We were the co-creators of funk music,” Mr. Henderson said in an interview with The Kansas City Star in 2006. “Other guys started the jazz-funk thing, too — Cannonball Adderley, Herbie Hancock — and we started selling records just like the pop guys. And we kept the integrity of the music.”
In 1975, Mr. Henderson left the group to concentrate on producing artists like the vibraphonist Roy Ayers and the drummer Chico Hamilton. He also worked as a studio musician with Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell and many others. In later years he periodically reunited with members of the group, most recently in London last October. His wife said he was working on starting a new group, the Super Blues Crusade, at his death.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Henderson, who lived in Los Angeles, is survived by his sons, Wayne Jr. and Randy, and two grandsons.
Mr. Henderson explained his songwriting process in a 2004 NPR interview. It began, he said, when a melody popped into his head: “And when you can hum it, then the next thing comes, obviously, the rhythm, man. See, once I get my melody, then I lay into my rhythm, and then fill all those beautiful harmonics.” He added, “But I think melody — I’ve got to think that first.”