Ray Appleton

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Otis "Killer" Ray Appleton (* 23. August 1941 in Indianapolis , † in October 2015 ) was an American jazz - drummer and percussionist.

Live and act

Ray Appleton got his nickname "Killer" at an early age when he was watched by his playmates Freddie Hubbard and Larry Ridley imitating the game of Max Roach at the age of eight . At fourteen he played with Wes Montgomery and later was a member of David Baker's quartet , which performed regularly at Club Topper on Indianapolis' 34th Street. When he was nineteen he left the local Indiana Avenue jazz scene with Kenny Dorham and moved to New York City , where he also led his own groups; for a while he had a quartet with Melvin Rhyne . He also played with musicians from the New York scene, such as John Coltrane , on whose albums Infinity and Cosmic Music he was a percussionist in 1966, as well as with Freddie Hubbard ( Backlash , 1966), Pat Martino ( Strings!, 1967), Jimmy Witherspoon ( The Blues is Now , 1967) and Jack McDuff ( Do It Now!, 1966).

In the 1970s and 1980s he lived partly in Europe, where he performed with Dizzy Gillespie and played at the North Sea Jazz Festival and other festivals, such as in Antibes . Although he lost a leg to diabetes in the 1990s and also developed hepatitis C , Appleton was able to resume his music activities and worked with David Hazeltine and again with Melvin Rhyne. In 1996 he recorded his first album under his own name with a sextet for the Sharp Nine label, Killer Ray Rides Again (with Charles McPherson , Slide Hampton and John Hicks ). In 1999 he worked on Rhyne's album Remembering Wes ; In 2004 the quartet, which they led with Rhyne, produced the album Latin Dreams , in which Milton Cardona also participated. In 2013 he released Naptown Legacy (Hollistic Music Works), which included compositions by Wes Montgomery , Freddie Hubbard, JJ Johnson and Buddy Montgomery and based on u. a. Brian Lynch and Peter Bernstein can be heard.

The drummer is not to be confused with the harmonica player of the same name.

Lexical entry

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ obituary in Nuvo.net
personal data
SURNAME Appleton, Ray
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Appleton, Otis Ray (full name); Appleton, Killer (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz musician
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Indianapolis
DATE OF DEATH between October 5, 2015 and October 11, 2015