Weston, Randy, 1926-2018

Randy Weston was born on April 6, 1926 to Vivian and Frank Weston in Brooklyn, New York. He studied classical piano as a child and was raised in an atmosphere thick with sounds and ideas of modern jazz. Among his childhood friends and neighbors were bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik and drummers Al Harewood and Max Roach; it was at Max Roach's house that Weston would encounter George Russell, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker. His father owned a small restaurant in Brooklyn, which was a hangout for many local artists and performers. A committed Garveyite, the elder Weston instilled in his son a profound consciousness of his African heritage that would shape his life in music.

Following military service in Asia during the Second World War, Weston returned to Brooklyn to run his father’s restaurant, where he became further immersed in the innovative jazz of Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, and, most especially, Thelonious Monk. In 1951, Weston moved to Lenox, Massachusetts, where he began working at the Music Inn, a venue where he would go on to perform and collaborate with scholar Marshall Stearns on presentations on the history of jazz. Weston’s first recordings as a band leader were issued in the mid-1950s, at which point he also initiated a lifelong collaboration with the trombonist and arranger Melba Liston. Liston would go on to arrange most of Weston’s compositions until her death in 1999.

...