Jimmy Heath, the brilliant saxophonist, composer, bandleader and jazz educator, was born 100 years ago in Philadelphia — specifically, in a row house at 5710 Ludlow Street, on Oct. 25, 1926. "I was in a hurry to get here," he wrote in I Walked with Giants: The Autobiography of Jimmy Heath, "so I couldn't wait for my mother to get to a hospital."
Heath exhibited a similar spirit of restless enterprise throughout his musical career — from the time he was developing his style as a young bebopper known as "Little Bird" to a decades-long tenure with the Heath Brothers, which he formed with Percy Heath, a bassist, and Albert "Tootie" Heath, a drummer. (Last year, Strata-East reissued their debut album, Marchin' On!, through Mack Avenue Records; I wrote the liner notes.)
Jimmy Heath came up in Philly alongside his fellow saxophonist John Coltrane, and he was a close compatriot to trumpeter Miles Davis. So it feels apt, and not just a matter of chance, that his 100th birthday comes on the heels of their own centennial celebrations.
To mark the milestone, BCM+D Records, the resident label of the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University, will release The Newest One, an album he recorded with his big band in 2018. (Heath died in 2020, at 93.) Featuring new arrangements of tunes from across his career, the album will be released on Nov. 20.
“Master Heath was one of the greatest composers and arrangers in the history of jazz,” says Antonio Hart, a former protégé who appears on the album and helped shepherd its release. In a statement, Hart adds that Heath "was tuned in to the creator in terms of that love, that higher vibration, so when you hear his music or when you play his music, it just makes you feel good.”
Hart will also be a featured guest in a special tribute concert on Heath's birthday, Sunday, Oct. 25, at 3 p.m. in the Temple Performing Arts Center. The concert, which is free and open to the public, and co-presented by WRTI, will feature the award-winning Temple Jazz Orchestra, led by Terell Stafford, a trumpeter who also regarded Heath as a mentor. Stafford recalled some of Heath's wise counsel as an educator on a recent episode of The Late Set podcast.
In addition to Stafford and Hart, the concert on Oct. 25 will feature a trio led by pianist Jeb Patton, a longtime member of the Heath Brothers band. And of course, it will enlist the talents of more than a dozen students in the TJO, some of whom talked about Heath and his importance to Philadelphia during a recent rehearsal at TPAC.
Jimmy Heath's 100th anniversary tribute concert will be recorded for future broadcast on WRTI; tune in to hear it on Sunday, Nov. 22 at 8 p.m.
