Jazz great drummer, Louie Bellson (born Luigi Paulino Alfredo Francesco Antonio Balassoni) died at the age of 84 due to complications from Parkinson's disease on February 14, 2009. Bellson was a composer, arranger, bandleader, jazz educator, and vice president for Remo drum company. Bellson is most famously credited with pioneering the use of two bass drums.
Bellson, an internationally-acclaimed artist performed in most of the major capitals around the world.
Louie Bellson was born in Rock Falls, Illinois in 1924 and started playing drums at three years of age. At age 15, he pioneered the double-bass drum set-up. At age 17, he triumphed over 40,000 drummers to win the Slingerland National Gene Krupa contest.
In 1943, he performed with the Benny Goodman band and Peggy Lee in The Powers Girl,the first of his many film appearances. Between 1943 and 1952, Bellson performed with Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, and Duke Ellington (for whom he wrote "Skin Deep" and "The Hawk Talks"). In 1952 he married Pearl Bailey, and he left Ellington to be her musical director. Bellson and Bailey had two daughters, Dee Dee J. Bellson and Debra Hughes. Their marriage would last until Bailey's death in 1990. About 1992, he married his second wife, Francine who became his manager.
Later in the 1950s and 1960s, he performed with Jazz at the Philharmonic, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Count Basie, Duke Ellington again, and Harry James again. He also appeared on several Ella Fitzgerald studio albums.
He performed and/or recorded approximately 200 albums as a leader, co-leader or sideman with such renowned musicians and leaders such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Woody Herman, Benny Carter, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, Hank Jones, Zoot Sims, Sonny Stitt, Milt Jackson, Clark Terry, Louie Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Shelly Manne, Billy Cobham, James Brown, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennett, Pearl Bailey, Mel Torme, Joe Williams, Wayne Newton and film composer John Williams. Bellson's list of awards received, including the prestigious American Jazz Masters Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, is too voluminous to list.
Bellson led his own orchestra almost steadily for more than forty years. His last band was called the Big Band Explosion. In May 2007, Bellson recorded a number of his compositions and arrangements for big band, featuring Clark Terry on Flugelhorn, with Kenny Washington and Sylvia Cuenca on drums. The big band was manned by the members of Clark Terry's Big Band. The resultant album, Louie and Clark Expedition 2 was released in January, 2008 (see our review here.
