Alfred ‘Pee Wee’ Ellis

Sax man/arranger supreme BORN 1941

Co-writer of James Brown’s funk classics Cold Sweat, Licking Stick-Licking Stick, Say It Loud, I’m Black And I’m Proud and more, saxophonist/ arranger/bandleader ‘Pee Wee’ Ellis had been schooled in jazz in the late 1950s by Sonny Rollins and joined Brown’s expanding band in 1965, becoming musical director when Nat Jones moved on in ’67. “He was really in sync with what I was trying to do,” Brown wrote in his autobiography The Godfather Of Soul. Ellis’s work as arranger/MD with Brown led to a long career and demand for his services in multiple music forms but notably playing on many Van Morrison albums, from Into The Music to Days Like This and

The Healing Game, standing out on the track Summertime In England on 1980’s Common One. Affable and easy-going, Ellis would later perform or record with many names, from Ginger Baker and Marianne Faithfull to Ali Farka Touré, and recorded solo albums such as 1993’s Twelve And More Blues, A New Shift (1996) and more. 2018’s In My Ellingtonian Mood was a fittingly classy farewell.