Donald Dean

Donald Wesley Dean (* 21st June 1937 in Kansas City , Missouri ) is an American drummer of modern jazz .

Live and act

Dean grew up in Kansas City; from 1961 he worked as a professional musician in Los Angeles , where he played with Kenny Dorham . In the 1960s he also worked with Ray Crawford , Andrew Hill , Carmell Jones , Dexter Gordon , George Shearing , Harold Land , Yusef Lateef , Ron Carter , Hampton Hawes, and Gerald Wilson . From 1968 to 1972 he was a member of Les McCann's band , with whom he performed at the 1969 Montreux Jazz Festivalperformed (the recording of the concert appeared on the album Swiss Movement by McCann and Eddie Harris ). In 1972 he performed in Montreux with Rahsaan Roland Kirk and McCann, and then worked and recorded with Jimmy Smith until the mid-1970s ( Bluesmith , Testifyin ' ). Later he was a member of Horace Tapscott's octet . In the 1990s he founded the Donald Dean Septet ; In 1996 his first album Diversity was released on the Posi-Tone label , on which musicians such as Bobby Pierce (piano / organ), Charles Owens (tenor saxophone) and Thurman Green (trombone) participated. At the Jazzfest Berlin 1998 he accompanied Oscar Brown Jr. and Pee Wee Ellis ; in the same year he was involved with Tapscott at Freddie Hubbard's birthday party in Leimert Park . He also toured Europe in 1999 with Luluk Purwanto , with whom he already recorded in 1992 and 1994, and then worked with the pianist Phil Wright and the guitarist Tomas Janzon.

His extensive collection of photos and recordings is a core part of the Los Angeles Jazz Institute's collections .

Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings . 8th edition. Penguin, London 2006, ISBN 0-14-102327-9 .
Leonard Feather , Ira Gitler : The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. Oxford University Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-19-532000-X .