Floyd Standifer

Floyd Standifer (born January 3, 1929 in Wilmington (North Carolina) , † January 22, 2007 in Seattle ) was an American jazz musician ( trumpet , saxophone, singing ), music teacher and composer .

Live and act

Standifer moved with his parents to a farm near Gresham, Oregon in 1936 ; his father was a preacher with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church , his mother a teacher. As early as 1937 he played drums in a band in Portland (Oregon) and learned the saxophone and trumpet by himself . As a tuba player , he played in a high school band. From 1946 he studied physics at the University of Washington , but continued to occupy himself with jazz when he joined a circle of musicians around Quincy Jones , Ray Charles , Ernestine Anderson and Buddy Catlett and in the black music scene of Seattle nightclubs around Jackson Street and later in East Madison. In 1959 Standifer became a member of the Quincy Jones Big Band , which toured Europe for nine months; Recordings of the tour appeared on the albums Free and Easy and Q Live in Paris around 1960 .

After returning to the United States, he lived in New York for a short time, but then returned to Seattle. In 1962 he played at the world exhibition held there, for which he composed the jazz liturgy Postlude . During this time he worked with Joe Venuti and the accordionist Frank Sugia and recorded two albums under his own name, How Do You Keep the Music Playing and Scotch and Soda . He later taught at the Cornish College of the Arts , the University of Washington, Olympic College in Bremerton and the Northwest School. He also performed regularly at the Pampas Club and performed with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra . In 2004 he worked on an album by Bob Hammer . The city of Seattle honored the musician in 1996 and 2000 with a Floyd Standifer Day .

Web links

• Obituary in seattlepi.com
• Portrait in The Seattle Times
• Birthdays at Nfo.net