Hal McKusick

An excellent cool-toned altoist and an intermittent clarinetist, Hal McKusick caused the big rings of Les Dark brown, Woody Herman (1943), Boyd Raeburn (1944-1945), Alvino Rey (1946), Pal Full, and Claude Thornhill (1948-1949). In the 1950s, furthermore to his use Terry Gibbs and Elliot Lawrence, he was a active and versatile studio room musician. During 1955-1958, McKusick documented nine albums of materials as a head for Jubilee, Bethlehem, Victor, Coral, New Jazz, Prestige, and Decca. Those small-group recordings, although fundamentally cool bop, occasionally used extremely advanced agreements, including graphs by George Helpful, Manny Albam, Gil Evans, Al Cohn, Jimmy Giuffre, and especially George Russell. Hal McKusick passed away in Apr 2012 at age 87.