Jimmy Heath, NEA Jazz Master and link to bebop era of 1940s, dies at 93
January 22, 2020 / No Comments“When he walks into a room,” trumpeter and bandleader Wynton Marsalis once said of Jimmy Heath, “jazz history is made.”
Not only was Mr. Heath one of the most accomplished saxophonists and composers of his time, but he was recognized as a living link to a dynamic period of jazz innovation, as someone who worked alongside Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane and other musical innovators of the 1940s and ’50s.
Mr. Heath, who was 93, died Jan. 19 at his home in Loganville, Ga., where he had lived for the past three years.