Randy Weston born 6 April 1926

Randolph Edward "Randy" Weston (April 6, 1926 – September 1, 2018) was an American jazz pianist and composer whose creativity was inspired by his ancestral African connection. 

A native New Yorker, Weston was born and raised in Brooklyn, always the most Afrocentric of New York’s five boroughs because of its demographic mix of African-Americans, Caribbeans and Africans. His father was a Panamanian of Jamaican Maroon lineage who had also lived in Cuba prior to emigrating to the US, and who was a strong proponent of Marcus Garvey’s early pan-Africanist philosophies. His African-American mother was from Virginia, and deeply connected to the blues and spiritual/gospel traditions of the South. In fact, Weston belonged to a long line of Caribbean emigrants to the US who made crucial, pro-black interventions into African-American culture, including Garvey, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and many others. 

Weston was in fact slow to music, resisting his childhood piano lessons before being drafted into the US Army at the end of 1944. But when he returned to Brooklyn, he opened a restaurant that quickly became a meeting place for jazz musicians, and it was during this period that he also began working seriously on his own music. Like many musicians of his generation, he was a devotee of bebop and as a pianist, he had a particular affinity for players with a percussive touch like Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington and Art Tatum. 

Most influential of all was Monk, who tutored Weston upon visits to his apartment. “I’m convinced Monk came out of the ancient times because when he played the piano it was no longer a piano, it became for me another instrument entirely,” Mr. Weston said. “When I heard Monk play the piano it stretched my imagination for what I could do on the instrument; suddenly the possibilities seemed endless.” 

Weston began working professionally in R&B bands in the late '40s before playing in the bebop outfits of Cecil Payne and Kenny Dorham. After signing with Riverside in 1954, he released his debut album “Cole Porter in a Modern Mood,” and one year later was named New Star Pianist by DownBeat. Weston led his own trios and quartets and attained a prominent reputation as a composer, contributing jazz standards like “Saucer Eyes,” “Pam’s Waltz” and “Little Niles,” a waltzing number with a title that referenced his young son Niles, who later played percussion under the name Azzedin Weston. 

His breakout song was “Hi-Fly,” which the 6-foot-7 Mr. Weston described as a “tale of being my height and looking down at the ground.” It has since become a jazz standard, recorded by artists including Jon Hendricks, Mel Tormé, Sarah Vaughan, Art Blakey and Cannonball Adderley. Weston also released albums like Jazz á la Bohemia, The Modern Art of Jazz, and New Faces at Newport. He also met arranger Melba Liston, who collaborated with Weston off and on from the late '50s into the 1990s. 

Weston's interest in his roots was stimulated by extended stays in Africa; he visited Nigeria in 1961 and 1963, during which time he issued albums like Highlife: Music from the New African Nations, Randy!, and African Cookbook. He lived in Morocco from 1968 to 1973 following a tour, and subsequently remained fascinated with the music and spiritual values of the continent. In the '70s, Weston made recordings for Arista-Freedom, Polydor, and CTI while maintaining a peripatetic touring existence, mostly in Europe. His albums like Blue Moses, Tanjah (which earned him his first Grammy nomination in 1973), and Perspective found him continuing to incorporate African influences along with funk and soul-jazz, while moving between large-ensemble and small-group sets. 

However, starting in the late '80s, after a period when his recording had slowed, Weston's visibility in the U.S. skyrocketed with an extraordinarily productive period in the studios for Antilles and Verve. His highly eclectic recording projects included a trilogy of "Portrait" albums depicting Ellington, Monk, and himself; The Spirits of Our Ancestors, an ambitious two-CD work rooted in African music; a blues album; and a Grammy-nominated collaboration with the Gnawa Musicians of Morocco. Weston's fascination with the music of Africa continued on such works as 2003's Spirit! The Power of Music, 2004's Nuit Africaine, and 2006's Zep Tepi by Weston and his African Rhythms Trio. 

In 2010, Weston released the live album The Storyteller, which featured the then 84-year-old pianist in concert at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola as part of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Three years later, he paired with Billy Harper for The Roots of the Blues. The African Nubian Suite, an ambitious project conceptualized around Africa's heritage as the birthplace of humanity and civilization, followed in 2016. Weston issued the solo piano album Sound in 2018. He was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2001, and in 2016 was elected to DownBeat’s hall of fame. 

On September 1 of that year, he died at his home in Brooklyn at the age of 92. Weston's passing, who was in good health according to family and friends, came as a surprise. 

(Efited from AllMusic, The Wire & Washington Post)