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Larry Willis, RIP


Kevin Bresnahan

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Far as I know, I only heard Larry once — of all places, playing Sunday morning in church here in DC (Larry was from Baltimore, iirc) -- as a special guest-musician that morning.

This was shortly after I moved to DC in 2011, and I chatted him up between services too. Seemed like an incredibly nice guy. I think he said the BN date with Jackie was his first ever studio recording, iirc.

I rattled off 6-7 recordings that I knew his was on, that were favorites of mine (and this was before I had a smartphone to look all that up in an instant). He seemed to appreciate that his body of work was still known, and appreciated.

RIP.

Edited by Rooster_Ties
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5 hours ago, sonnymax said:

Has anyone read a verified account of Larry's passing?

Nothing yet but in searching around Facebook, I got even more bad news from Mike LeDonne's FB feed:

Mike LeDonne
18 hrs · 
 

Something very bad is happening in the universe right now because some of our greatest artists/people are dropping like flies! Just this morning I found out that Larry Willis and Richard Wyands have both passed away. These were old and dear friends of mine that were also my heroes.
I'm still reeling from losing Harold Mabern and now this. I really have no words to express how I feel except to say that this is a very sad time. Losing these 3 masters so close together is very weird and feels very heavy.

Edited by bresna
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This is another punch to the gut.  After years of wanting to see Larry Willis perform, I had the good fortune of seeing him play 4 times in the Cleveland area over the past few years.  First was with Hugh Masekela, the next two times were with Vanessa Rubin and the last was with Eric Alexander in May.  I got the nerve to approach him after the Alexander show, shake his hand and chat for a minute.  I pointed out that in the span of about a month, I had seen the entire personnel of his marvelous Steal Away album (Cecil McBee with The Cookers and Gary Bartz with the Oberlin faculty), which was pretty amazing.  I also encouraged him to play a solo concert the next time he was in the area.  He replied something like, 'We'll see what the future holds.'  With the manager of another local club telling me earlier this month that he hoped he could bring Willis in the next time he was in the area, I was optimistic about the future.  

Thank you for the music, Mr. Willis, and rest in peace.

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