Bennie Wallace

Bennie Wallace developed a distinctive approach that merges Ben Webster’s raspy timbre with the wide intervallic leaps associated with Eric Dolphy, while his exploratory phrasing reaches back stylistically to the swing era. He began on clarinet at age twelve and switched to tenor saxophone several years later. After graduating from the University of Tennessee in 1968, Wallace moved to New York in 1971 and made his debut there with Monty Alexander. He worked with Sheila Jordan, collaborated with numerous avant-garde musicians, performed in George Gruntz’s Concert Jazz Band in 1979, and led his own trio or quartet at intervals throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Although he recorded often for Enja before 1985, the Blue Note sessions from the mid- and late-eighties remain more memorable for the way they blend New Orleans R&B touches and a strong sense of humor into his attractive sound. In the nineties Wallace started composing for films, among them White Men Can’t Jump, while continuing to perform actively on the jazz circuit; the albums Old Songs on JVC, Talk of the Town on Enja, and Someone to Watch Over Me on Enja all appeared during that decade. Critical success arrived with Moodsville in 2002, followed by the release of In Berlin, drawn from his 1999 concert at the Berlin Jazz Festival. Since then he has issued further studio recordings, including The Nearness of You in 2004 and the Coleman Hawkins-themed Disorder at the Border in 2007.