Sonny Stitt

Though Charlie Parker inspired legions of followers whose echoes surfaced in countless idioms, few matched the intensity of Sonny Stitt’s devotion. Several of Stitt’s earliest recorded solos replicated Parker’s lines almost verbatim, a proximity that endured until he reduced his emphasis on alto in favor of tenor, where he deftly fused Parker’s conception with Lester Young’s. In time he forged a personal timbre and manner, yet any alto outing kept him within Parker’s orbit. Celebrated as an eloquent interpreter of blues and ballads—an outlook that shaped John Coltrane—Stitt could tear through brisk bebop passages only to pivot into a trembling, magnetic slow melody.

He held the alto chair in Tiny Bradshaw’s orchestra during the early 1940s before entering Billy Eckstine’s pioneering big band in 1945, where he performed beside nascent bebop figures such as Gene Ammons and Dexter Gordon. Later he appeared in both Dizzy Gillespie’s large ensemble and its sextet. Beginning in 1949 Stitt also played tenor and baritone, periodically forming a two-tenor front line with Ammons. That year he recorded with Bud Powell and J.J. Johnson for Prestige; throughout the 1950s and 1960s he completed numerous sessions for Prestige, Argo, and Verve. He led assorted small groups during the fifties and rejoined Gillespie briefly at the decade’s close.

A short engagement with Miles Davis took place in 1960. Stitt then reunited with Ammons, at one point joining a three-tenor configuration that included James Moody. Atlantic sessions occupied him through the sixties, most notably the landmark Stitt Plays Bird, an expansive statement that squarely confronted his Parker lineage. He continued directing his own units yet joined the Giants of Jazz in the early seventies alongside Gillespie, Art Blakey, Kai Winding, Thelonious Monk, and Al McKibbon. Further dates in the seventies appeared on Cobblestone, Muse, and additional imprints, among them the defining album Tune Up. Active as both performer and recording artist into the early eighties, he worked for Muse, Sonet, and Who’s Who in Jazz until a fatal heart attack in 1982.