Curly Russell

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Curly Russell · Dillon Curley Russell was born in 1917 in Trinidad and died in 1986 in New York. He was an American jazz bassist who can be heard on many bebop recordings. He got his nickname Curley because of his curly hair. He played in the Tadd Dameron Sextet. He was in demand because he could keep up with the breakneck tempos of bebop, and he appears on several key recordings from that period. At the end of the 1950s he left the music world.

Music and breakthrough

On 1 May 1951 he took part in the recording session of Un Poco Loco, a composition by the pianist Bud Powell, with Max Roach on drums. The literary critic Harold Bloom put this piece on his short list of the greatest works of twentieth-century American art.

Influence

According to the jazz historian Phil Schaap, the well-known bebop tune Donna Lee is named after Russell's daughter. That tune is a contrafact of Back Home Again in Indiana, that is, a new melody over the chords of an existing song. In 2002 his daughter donated his bass to the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. Russell is an example of the bassists who made the bebop sound possible: they held the fast pulse so firmly that the soloists were free to play over the chords.

Listening

In School of Rock

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