Johnny Griffin, One of the Greatest, is Gone

The great jazz tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, who played with many of the greats but chose to live in France, died on Friday. He was 80. The cause of death was unclear. He was found dead on Friday morning in the music room of his home in Mauprevoir in western France by his wife Miriam. Griffin began playing with Lionel Hampton in 1945 and moved on to play with John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and Art Blakely in the 50's and 60's.. The 1958 album he cut with Coltrane and Blakely called "A Blowing Session" remains among his signature works. "Jazz," said Griffin, " is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good, in spite of conditions."
All that Jazz did an excellent commentary on Griffin. Here's a sample:
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Back in 1963, despite the solid reputation he had established as a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Thelonious Monk’s group (and as co-leader of a band with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis), Griffin felt forced to flee to Europe.

During the Sixties, Griffin was one of an elite corps of resident American jazzmen in Europe, a group that included Kenny Clarke, Arthur Taylor, Horace Parlan, Kenny Drew, and, of course, Dexter Gordon (“Dexter’s family to me,” he smiles). He had no trouble finding work there. He played in radio and television studio bands, was installed for long engagements in clubs such as the Blue Note in Paris, played in countless jazz festivals, and continued his recording career unabated. He did everything but return to the United States. And he missed it: “Europeans love jazz very much, but American audiences respond to the music in a really special way.”

Johnny Griffin’s triumphant homecoming in 1978, coming on the heels of Dexter’s, ended 15 years of exclusively expatriate life in Europe. The occasion was one of jazz’s happiest, most heartwarming events in memory. Griffin found himself playing to an entirely new generation of fans, while his older fans discovered the tenor saxophonist to be playing better than ever."

for the full story, see All That Jazz.

Adam Bernstein, staff writer of the Washington Post, said of Griffin:

"The Chicago-born Griffin emerged as a top-flight player in the 1950s, when he performed with saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Thelonious Monk's quartet and drummer Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.

Mr. Griffin was a masterful improviser in hard bop, a swaggering, blues-inflected branch of swing music played at breakneck speed.

New York Times jazz critic John S. Wilson once wrote of Mr. Griffin's skill that he "plays the tenor saxophone with long, light, flowing lines that build to tremendously forceful passages, which despite their fierce energy and the power of his attack, always remain completely controlled and smoothly executed."