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Remembering Hamiet Bluiett

Jazz Unlimited for November 4, 2018 will be “Remembering Hamiet Bluiett.”  Born in St. Louis but raised in Brooklyn, Illinois, Hamiet Bluiett, one of the greatest baritone saxophone players in jazz history, passed away on October 4.  We will honor his legacy as a founder of BAG in St. Louis, and a founding member of the World Saxophone Quartet, which worked until 2016.  We will also hear his own groups, including the Clarinet Family along with music by Leo’s Five, Randy Weston, Lester Bowie, James Carter, Arthur Blythe and Julius Hemphill.

The Slide Show contains my photographs of some of the artists heard on this show.

Due to copyright restrictions, the audio from this show is no longer available. Audio links are available for one week after a show airs, starting on the Monday after the show.

The video is of Hamiet Bluiett (bar) Curtis Lundy (b) and Lee Pearson (d) at the Eddie Land Jazz Festival in Italy in 2010.

Dennis Owsley has broadcast a weekly jazz show for St. Louis Public Radio since April 1983. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a retired Monsanto Senior Science Fellow and college teacher. His show, Jazz Unlimited, airs every Sunday from 9:00 p.m. to midnight. The show has the largest jazz audience in St. Louis and was named Best Jazz Radio Show in St. Louis for the years 2005-2007 and 2009 by the Riverfront Times. In celebration of his 25 years on the air, January 24, 2008 was proclaimed Dennis Owsley Day" in the City of St. Louis. He is the 2010 winner of the St. Louis Public Radio Millard S. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award. Dennis is also a noted photographer, and his exhibit, In the Moment: Photographs of Jazz Musicians, ran from September 23, 2005 to January 21, 2006 at the Sheldon Art Gallery. He is a lifetime student of jazz history and teaches short courses on the subject. Dennis is the author of the award-winning book City of Gabriels: The History of Jazz in St. Louis 1985-1973, published in 2006.