Sonny Fortune
Saxophonist who played with Miles Davis and Elvin Jones
SONNY FORTUNE, who has died aged 79, was a busy and widely applauded saxophonist and composer on the New York jazz scene for half a century. Although a dedicated disciple of John Coltrane, he was equally adept at funk, R&B, Latin and other idioms. His principal instruments were the alto and soprano saxophones and the flute.
Cornelius Lawrence Fortune was born in Philadelphia on May 19 1939, the son of a truck driver. He began teaching himself the saxophone in his teens and later studied at the Granoff School of Music. Coltrane, who had attended the same school, encouraged Fortune and recommended him to his former drummer, Elvin Jones, when he graduated. Fortune was playing in New York with Jones’s quartet when news came of Coltrane’s sudden death in July 1967.
Shortly afterwards, Fortune joined the bandleader Mongo Santamaria. He made an impressive contribution to Santamaria’s brand of jazzflavoured Latin-american music, as can be heard on the band’s 1969 album, Stone Soul.
The Coltrane connection, however, remained strong and the invitation to join Coltrane’s former pianist, Mccoy Tyner, resulted in a two-year collaboration and a pair of excellent albums: Sahara (1972) and Song For My Lady (1973).
In fact, so immersed was Fortune in the music he and Tyner were making that he turned down an offer from Miles Davis. Impressed, perhaps, by this rare occurrence, Davis repeated his offer, which was accepted.
Fortune remained with Davis for a year. His contributions to recordings made during that time bear out his slightly guarded comment in an interview: “It was an unbelievable experience. The music he was playing was a little out of my realm – but it was Miles.”
On leaving Davis, Fortune launched his own recording career with an album of original pieces, Long Before Our Mothers Cried (1974). It featured several percussionists playing African and Afro-cuban rhythms, and was followed by two more in similar vein. In 1977 he signed with Atlantic Records, producing three albums in a funky style, closer to that label’s popular image.
In the 1980s there was less scope for individual artists to record their own work, and Fortune joined the band of cornetist Nat Adderley, and then returned to Elvin Jones, who was successfully touring the world with a band he called his Jazz Machine.
For a while, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Fortune contrived to be a member of both bands at once, touring constantly. In 1987, along with Jones, Tyner and bassist Reggie Workman, he was one of the Coltrane Legacy Band. The quartet’s appearances were well received in the US, but it did not record.
Fortune resumed recording his own work with three albums for the Blue Note label. Four in One (1994) is a set of his versions of themes by Thelonious Monk, while A Better Understanding (1995) and From Now On (1996) consist largely of his own compositions.
All told, Sonny Fortune can he heard on about 70 albums, his own and those of George Benson, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus and many others. In a long and successful career it is probable that he appeared at least once wherever in the world jazz has a substantial following. It is strange that he never quite attained the fame to match these achievements.
In his later years he was a regular feature at two Manhattan venues: Sweet Rhythm, in Greenwich Village (until it closed in 2009), and Smoke Jazz and Supper Club, on the Upper West Side. Jazz is traditionally held to be at its best in such surroundings and by all accounts he was lionised by the clientele.
Sonny Fortune was married and divorced. He is survived by his son. A daughter predeceased him.
Sonny Fortune, born May 19 1939, died October 25 2018