Samuel Aaron Bell (April 24, 1921 - July 28, 2003) was an American jazz double-bassist.
Bell was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma. When he was a child, Bell's mother taught him to play the piano. In high school, he learned the trumpet and the tuba. Bell entered Xavier University in New Orleans in 1938 and was introduced to the bass violin, for which he showed an immediate and natural affinity that startled and impressed his teachers. Xavier bandmaster Allegretto Alexander assigned bassist Bell to both the university’s stage band and swing band.
Bell graduated in 1942 and spent the next four years in a U. S. Navy Band in Indiana. Immediately after being discharged from the Navy, Bell returned to Muskogee to teach music and take charge of the Manuel Training High School Concert and Marching Band, which he led to a championship at the all-state competition in Enid.
This career phase ended when Bell sat in with Andy Kirk’s Clouds of Joy band when it played in Tulsa. He toured with Kirk for a year, then entered New York University and earned his first Master’s degree, in music education, in 1951. He resumed performing, first with Teddy Wilson at the Embers Club in New York, then freelanced with such luminaries John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Lester Young , Stan Getz, J. J. Johnson, Lucky Millinder, Jimmy Lunceford, and Cab Calloway. He also led the Aaron Bell Trio, based at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills.
In 1960 Bell was offered a position in Duke Ellington's orchestra opposite drummer Sam Woodyard. He left Ellington's orchestra in 1962, and went on to play with Dizzy Gillespie before taking a series jobs on Broadway as a pit musician.
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| Ellington, Strayhorn & Bell |
He served as bassist, arranger and pianist and conductor for Sammy Davis, Jr., then worked as staff bassist for the NBC studio orchestra, played numerous Broadway shows; and recorded frequently, scoring several albums in his own name for the MGM, RCA and Herald labels.
Bell was a resident artist at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City from 1969 to 1972. At La MaMa, he wrote music for Ed Bullins' one-act plays, produced as Short Bullins in 1972, and for William Mackey's Family Meeting. His music for Bullins' plays also went on tour with the Jarboro Company, named after Caterina Jarboro and directed by Hugh Gittens, on their 1972 Italy tour. During this tour, the company performed Bullins' one-acts and Richard Wesley's Black Terror in Milan and Venice.
Bell gave a performance of his original compositions, including the pieces he wrote for those plays, on March 19, 1972, as part of the Music at La MaMa concert series. He also wrote the music for the Cotton Club Gala, which was originally produced at La MaMa in 1975.
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In 1969, Bell joined the music faculty of Essex County College in Newark, New Jersey. His tenure there included more than 10 years as chair of the Performing Arts Department and a wide range of other responsibilities, including creating and the directorship of the instrumental and jazz program and serving as professor of theory, counterpoint, orchestration and jazz. Bell earned a second Master’s degree and Doctorate in theory and composition from Columbia University. He was considered the foremost academic authority on Ellington’s music.
In the 1980s, he returned to the piano. Bell retired from active performance in 1989 and died in 2003, at the age of 82, at the Calvary Hospital in the Bronx.
(Edited from okjazz.org & Wikipedia)