Alto Saxophone | 1939-2018

Sonny Fortune’s alto sound was full, direct and quick to shift between Coltrane-derived intensity and groove-led fusion. Born in Philadelphia and trained at the Granoff School of Music, he moved to New York in 1967 and joined Elvin Jones’s group, then worked with Mongo Santamaria and McCoy Tyner before replacing Dave Liebman in Miles Davis’s band in 1974. As a leader he recorded Long Before Our Mothers Cried (Strata-East, 1974), Awakening (Horizon, 1975) and Serengeti Minstrel (Atlantic, 1977), and later made Four in One (Blue Note, 1994), a Monk tribute. He also played flute, soprano, tenor and baritone saxophones and clarinet. He died in 2018 at 79.