George Braith

Multi-reedist George Braith stood among the rare jazz players who emulated Rahsaan Roland Kirk by handling several horns simultaneously. Born George Braithwaite on June 27, 1939, in New York City, he grew up under West Indian parents who steered all nine of their children toward music, particularly for church services. By age ten Braith had assembled a Calypso band and soon took up woodwind studies. At fifteen his jazz quintet spent a summer performing in the Catskills, and at seventeen critic Nat Hentoff took notice of him. Following high-school graduation, Braith led the quintet on a European tour, enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music, and played engagements along the East Coast. In 1961 he began refining his two-horn approach, pairing a stritch—a straight alto—with a soprano saxophone, each modified for single-hand operation; he also constructed a double soprano instrument he named the Braithophone by welding two horns together. Blue Note signed him, and in 1963 he joined John Patton on Blue John while cutting his own first album, Two Souls in One, which merged soul-jazz textures with folk melodies and featured the extended, well-received track “Braith-a-Way.” On the subsequent Blue Note releases Soul Stream and Extension he kept sharpening both technique and writing, yet gradually stepped back from simultaneous horn playing. Once he departed the label, Braith cut two Prestige dates—1966’s Laughing Soul and the more experimental 1967 album Musart. He further launched a New York venue also called Musart that served as a key avant-garde space for several years until he relocated to Europe and shuttered the club. Braith later came back to New York and resumed his multiple-horn explorations while performing in both clubs and on the street.