David 'Fathead' Newman (February 24, 1933 - January 20, 2009)

The saxophonist Fathead Newman was the epitome of what is known in jazz as the “Texas tenor”, a gritty soloist steeped in the blues, but with the projection and tone to punch above his weight in any band.

In the 1950s he was the main saxophonist with Ray Charles, and his combination of pugnacious solos, making the most of the few bars he was given in Charles’s vocal arrangements, together with sinuous countermelodies to the vocals themselves, made him an essential ingredient in the formative sound of soul jazz.

Both before and after his time with Charles, Newman was also a brilliant exponent of bebop, the fast-paced style of modern jazz pioneered by Charlie Parker, and in recent years he toured widely playing this kind of music in a quintet with the trombonist Curtis Fuller, and the pianist Cedar Walton, with whom Newman had attended high school in the late 1940s.

On its albums such as Diamondhead, this band also gave Newman the opportunity to display his talents as a jazz flautist, on which instrument he was also a player of the first rank.

He was born Davis Newman Jr in 1933 in Corsicana, Texas, but grew up in Dallas, where he adopted the forename David. His nickname “Fathead” followed in his early teens, when his school music teacher spotted him playing with the sheet music upside down on his stand. The teacher had failed to notice Newman’s photographic memory, which allowed him to master almost any tune at a single glance.

Texas was a relatively small musical pond in the late 1940s, and so Newman came into contact with most aspiring jazz musicians of his own age, notably including the innovative saxophonist Ornette Coleman, and the two men played together in Red Connors’ band. During his time in high school and at Jarvis Christian College, Newman was to play in several other local bands, initially the jazz orchestra of Buster Smith, but, as time went on, more often the popular blues groups led by such stars as Lloyd Glenn, T-Bone Walker and Lowell Fulson.

“I was brought up a bebop musician but it wasn’t so acceptable, especially in Dallas,” Newman said. “You couldn’t make a living doing that, so I had to play rhythm and blues. I adapted to it easily, being from an area where blues was prevalent.”

Fulson’s pianist was Ray Charles, and when Charles formed his own group in 1952 he invited Newman to join him. Charles said he loved Newman’s ability to mix a sweet and tender ballad tone with the earthy blues of his home state. As a result, Newman played alto, tenor or baritone saxophone on virtually all of Charles’s recordings for the next 12 years, including such massive hits as Hallelujah I Love Her So, Night Time is the Right Time and I Got a Woman.

In 1958 Charles helped Newman to make his debut as a leader for Atlantic Records with Fathead — Ray Charles Presents David Newman. The title track, Fathead, was an intriguing blend of Newman’s bebop-influenced tenor sax, with the more orthodox blues accompaniment of Charles’s piano.

This disc was the start of a long and prolific recording career under Newman’s own name, which he continued until his death. His final album, The Blessing, is due out this year.

His work encompassed a huge range of stylistic territory from the deliberate African call-and-response of Congo Chant on his 1961 album Straight Ahead to the trappings of electric funk on the disc Captain Buckles.

In addition to this steady output of impressive recordings, Newman became one of the most in-demand session players for blues and soul records, contributing cameos to albums by Aretha Franklin, B. B. King, Joe Cocker and Doctor John, among many others. More recently he played on albums by the singers Natalie Cole and Roseanna Vitro. He maintained impressive jazz credentials as well, bringing his athletic bebop style to discs by Art Blakey and Red Garland.

In the early 1960s Newman left Ray Charles’s orchestra to battle heroin addiction, but he overcame this, briefly returning to Charles’s band in the early 1970s and then enjoying a long working relationship for almost ten years with the flautist Herbie Mann.

In the 1980s Newman frequently appeared alongside his former Ray Charles colleague, the alto saxophonist Hank Crawford, easily conjuring up the musical atmosphere of their 1950s heyday live and on record.

Thereafter, as well as the partnership with Fuller, he also played alongside many other big names in jazz, and was an established favourite on the international festival circuit. A tall, distinctive figure, with a trim grey beard and sporting a beret, Newman was a softly spoken and charming man, whose easygoing personality belied the fiery punch of his playing.

He was one of the coterie of top- flight jazz musicians recruited by Robert Altman to appear and play in the movie Kansas City in 1995. Almost a decade later he had the interesting experience of watching Bokeem Woodbine playing the character of “Fathead” alongside Jamie Foxx as Charles in the 2004 film Ray. He was not impressed and thought the part was a crude caricature of their real-life relationship.

Newman is survived by his wife, Karen, and four sons.

David “Fathead” Newman, jazz saxophonist and bandleader, was born on February 24, 1933. He died from pancreatic cancer on January 20, 2009, aged 75

Coxsone Dodd (January 26, 1932 – May 4, 2004)

The Jamaican record producer Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd, who has died of a heart attack aged 72, nurtured the career of nearly every internationally renowned reggae artist. He was one of the first to record local talent, and an integral force in the development of ska. Having been involved in the development of reggae for more than 50 years, his contribution to the evolution of the island's music, from his Studio One recording facility, is simply enormous. It was at Studio One that he cut the first recordings by Bob Marley and the Wailers.

Dodd was born in Kingston, spent some formative years in the parish of Saint Thomas, and returned to the capital to learn cabinet making and train as an automobile mechanic. Dodd's father was a contractor-cum-mason who helped build the Carib Theatre, a landmark building in the Kingston Cross Roads business district. In the early 1950s, Dodd's mother ran the Nanny's Corner restaurant at the downtown junction of Lawes Street and Ladd Lane. There customers were entertained by the sound, if not the presence, of Billy Eckstein, Sarah Vaughan, Lionel Hampton and Louis Jordan wafted out of the family Morphy Richards radio.

In the early 1950s, Dodd worked as a farm labourer in the United States. Having seen the money being made at outdoor block parties he started thinking about an entry into the music business.

From the late 1940s, the Jamaican music scene was based around the sound systems, huge sets of portable equipment that played rhythm and blues at open-air dance events. In the early 1950s the leading sound was Duke Reid The Trojan, established by former policeman Arthur Reid, a friend of Dodd's parents. Dodd did guest spots, spinning his records on Reid's set, but then became Reid's biggest competitor with the Sir Coxsone's Downbeat sound system. It took its name from a noted Yorkshire cricketer whose batting skills Dodd was said to emulate.

Dodd had a superior selection of R&B and rare jazz discs; he also had toaster Count Machuki, a wisecracking DJ. Several other later famous figures worked for Dodd in this early phase. These included Prince Buster, a former boxer who staved off attacks from rival sound systems before striking out on his own in 1957, and Lee "Scratch" Perry, who began working for Dodd as a vocalist, talent scout and general dogsbody in 1961.

In 1956, Dodd began recording artists such as Bunny and Skully at Federal studio, usually with R&B echoes. An early hit, Theophilus Beckford's Easy Snappin, had a different beat, pointing the way to the ska that Dodd would champion by the end of the decade. By the early 1960s, he was ruling Jamaica with ska hits by Toots and the Maytals, the Gaylads and the Skatalites, Jamaica's premier ska group.

In October 1963, on the site of a former nightclub, The End, Dodd opened the Jamaica Recording and Publishing Studio - always called Studio One - close to the Carib Theatre at 13 Brentford Road. He signed Bob Marley and the Wailers, and gave them immeasurable guidance, selecting Marley as leader and scoring several number ones with them. He acted as something of a surrogate father to Marley during this period, even giving him a place to live on the premises.

When rock-steady briefly supplanted ska in 1966, Dodd found Duke Reid overshadowing him, but when the new reggae style emerged in 1968, Coxsone was back on top with enthralling recordings by the Heptones, the Abyssinians, Bob Andy and Marcia Griffiths. The organist Jackie Mittoo, who arranged much of this material, also scored instrumental hits of his own.

In the early 1970s, Dodd advanced Dennis Brown's career and made forays into dub. Although recuts of his rhythms recorded at his rivals, Channel One, subsequently found greater favour, he beat them at their own game with a Studio One renaissance in 1979, voicing new material with proto-dance hall singers such as Sugar Minott, Johnny Osbourne and Freddy McGregor, plus DJs Lone Ranger and Michigan and Smiley.

Then armed bandits attacked the Brentford Road headquarters. Dodd transferred Studio One to Brooklyn, New York, where he recorded during the 1980s and early 1990s. The music included dancehall works, with Frankie Paul and JD Smoothe sometimes voicing on new mixes of old rhythms. Reissues by Boston's Heartbeat records also kept his vintage material in focus.

In 1991, he received the Order of Distinction, Jamaica's third highest honour. Following his mother's death, Dodd moved back to Kingston in 1998 and reopened the Brentford Road for new recordings with veterans and young talent alike, while reissues and a documentary DVD released by London's Soul Jazz records brought Studio One's popularity to an all-time high. Last week, the Jamaican government renamed Brentford Road Studio One Boulevard.

Throughout it all, Dodd remained an avid music lover and an astute businessman. For the past few years, he had been plagued by arthritis. His wife Norma and several children survive him.

· Clement Seymour Dodd, record producer and entrepreneur, born January 26, 1932; died May 4, 2004

(Written by David Katz)

Lyn Collins (12 June, 1948 - 13 March, 2005)

Lyn Collins was the featured vocalist with James Brown's Soul Revue between 1971 and 1976. Her powerful voice and compelling stage presence made her a natural foil for "The Godfather of Soul", although, she claimed later, "I would have preferred to sing more and scream less".

Lyn Collins was the featured vocalist with James Brown's Soul Revue between 1971 and 1976. Her powerful voice and compelling stage presence made her a natural foil for "The Godfather of Soul", although, she claimed later, "I would have preferred to sing more and scream less".

Brown, who dubbed her "The Female Preacher", signed Collins to his People label and produced her signature song, "Think (About It)", which first made the Top Ten in the US R&B charts before in 1972 crossing over to the mainstream charts. In the mid-Eighties, the feminist war-cry was revived by rare groove DJs in Britain and Collins's vocal ad lib "It takes two to make a thing go right, It takes two to make it out of sight" went on to become one of the most sampled funk moments, most famously providing the title and the infectious hook for "It Takes Two" by Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock which became a UK hit twice over in 1988 and 1989. Eric B & Rakim, De La Soul, DJ Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince, Janet Jackson and Public Enemy are some of the 70-plus artists who have sampled "Think (About It)" over the last 20 years.

Other distinctive vocal performances by Collins, on "Mama Feel good" (from the soundtrack to Black Caesar, 1973) and the Isaac Hayes compositions "Do Your Thing" and "Ain't No Sunshine", have featured on recordings by the hip-hop acts Big Daddy Kane, Above the Law and Ol' Dirty Bastard. But because Brown paid a salary to his backing musicians and singers, and claimed authorship for most of their material, Collins did not receive substantial royalties.

Born in Dime Box, Texas, in 1948, Lyn Collins grew up in neighbouring Abilene. She made her recording début with a song called "Unlucky in Love" when she was 14 and subsequently gave a demo tape to James Brown after seeing him in concert in 1968. He was impressed enough to cut five songs with her - including her first solo single, "Just Won't Do Right"/"Wheels of Life". When the vocalist Vicki Anderson quit the Soul Revue at the end of 1971, Brown invited Collins to join his People label as well as his touring show.

Following the success of "Think (About It)", Collins cut an album of the same title. She duetted with Brown on "What My Baby Needs Now" and also contributed the innuendo-laden "How Long Can I Keep It Up" to the soundtrack of the 1973 Blaxploitation film Slaughter's Big Rip Off. Brown used Collins on most of his recordings of the period, building her as a proto-feminist and sassy soul sister and even penning a song called "Women's Lib" for her.

In 1975 she issued her second album, Check Me Out If You Don't Know Me By Now, but the following year cut her last single for People, "Mr Big Stuff", and retired from touring. She became a session singer and did clerical work at the Record Plant recording studios in Los Angeles.

In the mid-Eighties, when the rare groove scene sparked off a renewed interest in James Brown's galaxy of Funky People, Collins's albums were reissued. She recorded a comeback single, "Shout", and subsequently revived "Think (About It)" with the Jamaican dance-hall singer Patra in 1993.

Adored by British fans, Collins performed last month at the Jazz Café in London with her friend Martha High. She died as a result of complications from a seizure she had suffered after choking on food.

Lyn Collins, singer and songwriter: born Dime Box, Texas 12 June 1948; married (two sons); died Los Angeles 13 March 2005.

(Written by Pierre Perrone)

Vincent Ford (1940 - December 28, 2008)

Vincent Ford is credited with writing one of Reggae’s best-loved anthems, No Woman, No Cry (1974), the song that helped launch Bob Marley as an international music star, and bring the reggae genre popular in the Carribean to a global audience.

The provenance of the song is hotly disputed by some Marley aficionados who claim that Marley himself wrote it and then credited it to his old friend, a fellow troubadour from their days growing up in the tough, crime-ridden ghetto of Trenchtown in Kingston, Jamaica. As Ford was a double paraplegic — confined to a wheelchair as a result of chronic diabetes — who ran a soup kitchen for the poor, it was claimed that Marley had attributed the song to Ford to enable him, as an act of philanthropy, to claim the royalties.

Others believe that Ford and Marley sat down one day in Ford’s flat and wrote the song together with Ford supplying the lyrics and Marley the melody. Marley confirmed in a 1975 interview that the song was penned at Ford’s flat while Ford himself always claimed that he wrote the song.

The song, an anthem for oppressed women, was inspired by Ford and Marley’s experience growing up in “Government Yard” in Trenchtown (now Bob Marley Yard), a public housing project comprising 16 cramped rooms in a tenement block.It is popularly claimed that while little time was spent inside the block, the tenants would gather around logwood fires at night to sup on communal broth and sing songs.

The song lyrics say: “I remember when we used to sit/ In the Government Yard in Trenchtown/ And then Georgie would make the fire lights/ And it was logwood burnin’ through the nights/ Then we would cook cornmeal porridge/ Of which I’ll share with you.”

Sometimes these sessions around the logfires would be a time to sing songs of comfort for local women who were victims of domestic violence. Hence the song’s ultimately uplifting refrain, “Everything’s gonna be alright”.

Ford, known as “Tata”, was able to live off the royalties for the rest of his life — which outlasted Marley’s by nearly 30 years. These considerable royalties were boosted by cover versions and samples by an eclectic group of artists, which includes Wyclef Jean, Joan Baez, the Fugees, Boney M, Pearl Jam, Jimmy Cliff and Faith Hill.

The royalty cheques helped to fund the Trenchtown soup kitchen. It still operates today and once doubled as a rehearsal studio for Marley and his band the Wailers. No Woman, No Cry first appeared on Marley’s album Natty Dread (1974). A rousing live version recorded at the Lyceum in London in 1975 became Marley’s first hit single in the UK. The song was voted No 37 in Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Ford was also credited with three songs from Marley’s album Rastaman Vibration: Positive Vibration, Crazy Baldhead and Roots, Rock, Reggae. Once again cynics claimed that Ford was not the original songwriter and that Marley credited the songs on the album to Ford and others, including his wife Rita, in order to avoid paying his record company a large portion of the royalties.

The debate over the authenticity of Ford’s songwriting for Marley continues to this day, but what is not in doubt is the deep and lasting friendship between them. Ford, who grew up in the same tenement block as the Marley family, taught Marley how to play the guitar. Five years his senior, the more streetwise Tata took Marley in hand, acting as a protective influence who kept the young Marley out of trouble on the streets of Trenchtown.

Diminutive in stature, Ford would later have both legs amputated as a result of his diabetes. A popular figure, Ford was often to be found at the Bob Marley museum in Kingston where he would keep Marley pilgrims entertained with a deep fund of personal anecdotes. Marley, who died of cancer, aged 36, in 1981, said of him: “Vincent Ford is a bredda from Trenchtown. Me and him used to sing long time. Me and him used to live in de kitchen together long, long time. Him good but him sick now.”

Ford is survived by two children.

Vincent Ford, songwriter, was born in 1940. He died of complications caused by diabetes on December 28, aged 68

Ray Barretto (April 29, 1929 – February 17, 2006)

RAY BARRETTO’S chosen instrument was the congas, which he played with a powerful percussive style famous for its endless flexibility. Yet he was far more than the best conguero of his generation. As musical director of the legendary Fania All Stars, he helped to pioneer the Latin-jazz movement often referred to as “Nuyorican”, in recognition of its Puerto Rican roots and adopted New York base.

He also made a string of brilliant and influential records as a dynamic and adventurous band leader in his own right, and was a sought-after session player across the worlds of jazz, Latin and rock music. In the course of a career spanning more than half a century, he could boast that he had played with everyone from Charlie Parker to the Rolling Stones.

Born into a Puerto Rican family in Brooklyn in 1929, he grew up in the tough ghetto areas of Harlem and the Bronx, influenced not only by Latin rhythms but by the swing bands of Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Benny Goodman.

In 1946 he joined the Army and, while stationed in Germany, he began playing percussion at regular jam sessions at the Orlando, a GI jazz club in Munich. According to legend, he did not have a congas so he removed the strings from a banjo and used its skin as a drum head.

He was much influenced by Dizzy Gillespie’s groundbreaking Latin-jazz fusions, and on his return to Harlem he took formal percussion studies, jammed with jazz greats such as Charlie Parker, Max Roach and Art Blakey and reconnected with the rhythms of the Latin music of his youth.

By the early 1950s Barretto had joined Eddie Bonnemere’s Latin Jazz Combo and then graduated to the band led by the Cuban pianist, José Curbelo, before his big break came in 1957 when he replaced Mongo Santamaria in Tito Puente’s band. His first day as a band member was spent in the studio recording Puente’s Dance Mania, now regarded as one of the seminal Latin jazz albums of its era. He stayed with Puente until 1961, when he briefly joined Herbie Mann ’s band.

That same year he made his debut as a band leader with the album Pachanga with Barretto. It was followed immediately by Latino, an album of Latin jam sessions that took the traditional Cuban flute and violin line-up known as charanga and reinvented it with the addition of blaring sax and trumpet.

Switching to the Tico label in 1962, Barretto followed with Charanga Moderna, another excursion in the same style, and the following year he had a Top 20 hit with the Latin-pop novelty dance number El Watusi. Away from salsa, he kept his hand in as a jazz musician, playing sessions with the likes of Sonny Stitt, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Cannonball Adderley, Freddie Hubbard, Cal Tjader and Gillespie.

But his brush with the pop charts for a while appeared to leave him uncertain in which direction to go, and it was not until he signed to Fania Records in 1967 that he again found his way. Starting with Acid (1967), over the next eight years he made ten superb salsa albums for the label, featuring various vocalists including Adalbarto Santiago, Tito Allen, Rubén Blades and Tito Gómez. Among his most memorable releases were Indestructible (1973), an album which also provided him with a popular nickname, and Barretto (1975), which was nominated for a Grammy award.

In 1968 he had become a founder member of the Fania All Stars, a glittering firmament of the biggest names in New York salsa. Founded by Jerry Masucci, the owner of Fania, and the singer Johnny Pacheco, Barretto became the band’s musical director as the All Stars went on to become one of the most influential bands in the history of Latin music, releasing a stream of brilliant recordings and becoming an explosive live attraction.

A sold-out concert at the New York Yankee Stadium was hyped as “the Latin Woodstock” and their live show was captured in the 1976 film Salsa. That same year they made their only British appearance at the Lyceum in London.

By the 1980s the All Stars was in decline, but Barretto remained an unstoppable force. After briefly leaving Fania for Atlantic in the late 1970s, he returned in triumph to make a string of fine albums, including an acclaimed teaming with the singer, Celia Cruz and his former lead vocalist Adalbarto Santiago on the 1983 album Tremendo Trio! A second album with Cruz, Ritmo en el corazón, won them a Grammy award in 1990.

In the 1990s he recorded with a sextet, New World Spirit, and in later years he returned to a more jazz-dominated style. His final release, Time Was — Time Is, appeared in 2005 and was nominated for a Grammy as best Latin jazz album.

Barretto suffered from asthma and was admitted to hospital in January after a heart attack. He was also treated for pneumonia and underwent quadruple bypass surgery.

He is survived by his wife, Annette “Brandy” Rivera, and their four children.

Ray Barretto, percussionist, was born on April 29, 1929. He died on February 17, 2006, aged 76.