Benny Golson:

Jazz saxophonist, Benny Golson, is one of the last remaining legends of the music. Of the 57 jazz musicians pictured in the iconic “A Great Day In Harlem” photograph, he is one of only two still living. Golson played with the bands of Tadd Dameron, Lionel Hampton, Johnny Hodges, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Many of Golson’s compositions have become jazz standards. Songs such as Stablemates, Killer Joe, I Remember Clifford, Blues March, Whisper Not, Along Came Betty, and Are You Real have been performed and recorded numerous times by many musicians. Golson co-founded and co-lead The Jazztet with trumpeter Art Farmer. In 1995, Benny Golson received the NEA Jazz Masters award of the National Endowment for the Arts. Golson has also received the Mellon Living Legend Legacy Award at the Kennedy Center as well as the International Academy of Jazz Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award at Carnegie Hall. In 2009, Benny Golson was inducted into the International Academy of Jazz Hall of Fame.