Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Walter Benton was born September 9, 1930 in Los Angeles, California and first began playing saxophone as in high school. After three years of service in the Army in the early 1950s, he played in 1954 with Kenny Clarke, Max Roach and Clifford Brown.

From 1954 to 1957 he played Afro-Latin jazz with Perez Prado, touring Asia with the band. Returning to the States, he went on to work with Quincy Jones in 1957 and Victor Feldman in 1958-59. He led his own group from 1959, recording under his own name in 1960 with Freddie Hubbard, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Tootie Heath.

That same year he worked again with Max Roach and Julian Priester. In 1961 he recorded with Abbey Lincoln, Roach once more, Eric Dolphy and Slide Hampton. By the late 1960s he was working with Gerald Wilson and John Anderson.

As so often happens with great players, in the late 60’s Benton became discouraged with the state of jazz and the overall music business, disappeared from the scene, sank into poverty never re-discovered. He stopped playing and lived the rest of his days in cheap rooming houses and collected a pittance of social assistance.

On August 14, 2000, West Coast tenor saxophonist Walter Benton, who played cool and bluesy, ventured into free and wild before returning to his roots with his beautiful dark and somewhat diffused sound coupled with his own ideas and phrasing, passed away in total obscurity in Los Angeles at the age of 69.

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