Jackie McLean Dies

By I Apr. 1, 2006

Alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, a quintessential hard bop saxophonist who was a living connection to the greatest legends of the music, died Friday. He was 73. McLean died at his Hartford home after a long illness. He was 73.

McLean was founder and artistic director of the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the University of Hartford’s Hartt School. He and his wife, actress Dollie McLean, also founded the Artists Collective, a community center and fine arts school in Hartford’s inner city primarily serving troubled youth. McLean was one of the few veterans who encouraged the new ideas of the free-jazz movement that followed.

McLean was born on May 17, 1932, in New York. He began playing the saxophone when he was 15 and shortly afterwards played with Sonny Rollins (1948-‘49). During the next 10 years, he worked with Miles Davis, Paul Bley and Charles Mingus, and was also a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers before forming his own quintet in 1958. On such records as 4,5, And 6 and Swing Swang Swingin’, McLean displayed a heavy Charlie Parker influence, but maintained his own approach to rhythm and feeling for the blues. He also wrote the standards “Dig” and “Hip Strut” and acted in the play The Connection from 1959 to 1961. While he received inspiration from the innovators of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, McLean released New Soil, One Step Beyond, Destination…Out! and New And Old Gospel. These records featured his own increasingly complex writing and Gospel included Ornette Coleman on trumpet. In 1968, McLean began teaching at the University of Hartford in Connecticut.