Joe Holiday

Though his profile never matched that of Stan Getz, the tenor saxophonist followed a comparable trajectory without the well-documented personal struggles. Joseph Befumo entered the world in Sicily in the mid-1920s; as a hard bopper he achieved wider commercial success once he perfected and documented the mambo. The 1951 release “This Is Happiness” became a hit, opening doors to further sessions that included Prestige dates with drummer Max Roach and pianist Billy Taylor. Sarah Vaughan enjoyed strong results with Holiday’s own “Serenada.” His clarinetist father relocated the family to New York City when the future saxophonist was roughly six months old. Settled in Newark, he began fronting his own groups by the mid-1940s. His earliest recordings appeared on the King label at the start of the following decade. He routinely spotlighted percussion on these dates, drawing on members of Machito’s Afro-Cubans. The Prestige material later resurfaced as the 1994 compact disc Mambo Jazz. Holiday also maintains a parallel career as an abstract painter whose canvases frequently depict jazz musicians.