Melton "Shakir" Mustafa Sr. (November 23, 1947 – December 28, 2017) was an American
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
musician, music educator, and arranger who played the
trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...
and
flugelhorn
The flugelhorn (), also spelled fluegelhorn, flugel horn, or flügelhorn, is a brass instrument that resembles the trumpet and cornet but has a wider, more conical bore. Like trumpets and cornets, most flugelhorns are pitched in B, though some ...
.
Biography
Mustafa, the younger brother of saxophonist
Jesse Jones Jr., grew up in
Miami, Florida
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
, and learned the trumpet in middle school. As a teenager, he played in an
RnB
Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated in African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly ...
/
calypso band led by his brother Jesse. He was a student at
Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music is a private music college in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern American music, it also offers college-level cours ...
and at
Mississippi Valley State College. He then earned a degree in
music education
Music education is a field of practice in which educators are trained for careers as elementary or secondary music teachers, school or music conservatory ensemble directors. Music education is also a research area in which scholars do origina ...
at
Florida A&M University
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), commonly known as Florida A&M, is a public historically black land-grant university in Tallahassee, Florida. Founded in 1887, It is the third largest historically black university in the U ...
. In the late 1960s, he worked in backing bands of
soul
In many religious and philosophical traditions, there is a belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being".
Etymology
The Modern English noun ''soul'' is derived from Old English ''sāwol, sāwel''. The earliest attes ...
musicians such as
Sam & Dave
Sam & Dave were an American soul and R&B duo who performed together from 1961 until 1981. The tenor (higher) voice was Sam Moore (born 1935) and the baritone/tenor (lower) voice was Dave Prater (1937–1988).
Nicknamed "Double Dynamite", "The ...
,
Betty Wright
Bessie Regina Norris (December 21, 1953 – May 10, 2020), better known by her stage name Betty Wright, was an American soul and R&B singer, songwriter and background vocalist. Beginning her professional career in the late 1960s as a teena ...
,
Latimore,
The Marvelettes
The Marvelettes were an American girl group that achieved popularity in the early to mid-1960s. They consisted of schoolmates Gladys Horton, Katherine Anderson, Georgeanna Tillman, Juanita Cowart (now Cowart Motley), and Georgia Dobbins, who wa ...
, and
Joe Simon
Joseph Henry Simon (October 11, 1913 – December 14, 2011) was an American comic book writer, artist, editor, and publisher. Simon created or co-created many important characters in the 1930s–1940s Golden Age of Comic Books and served as the ...
. He eventually became active in the jazz scene of Miami and joined
Ira Sullivan
Ira Sullivan (May 1, 1931 – September 21, 2020) was an American jazz trumpeter, Flugelhorn, flugelhornist, flautist, saxophonist, and composer born in Washington, D.C., United States. An active musician since the 1950s, he often worked with ...
's band.
In the early 1980s, Mustafa played in Florida in
Jaco Pastorius
John Francis Anthony "Jaco" Pastorius III (; December 1, 1951 – September 21, 1987) was an American jazz bass guitar, bassist, composer and producer. He recorded albums as a solo artist and band leader and was a member of Weather Report from 1 ...
' Word of Mouth Band (''Invitation'', 1981), following up by performing with
Bobby Watson
Robert Michael Watson Jr. (born August 23, 1953), known professionally as Bobby Watson, is an American saxophonist, composer, and educator.
Music career
Watson was born in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and grew up in Kansas City, Kansas. He ...
and
Randy Bernsen
Randy Bernsen (born July 15, 1954) is an American jazz guitarist.
Career
Bernsen was born in Needham, Massachusetts and grew up in Florida. He attended high school in Plantation and was active in the clubs of South Florida, starting at age 1 ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
and from 1986 onward with the
Count Basie Orchestra
The Count Basie Orchestra is a 16 to 18 piece big band, one of the most prominent jazz performing groups of the swing era, founded by Count Basie in 1935 and recording regularly from 1936. Despite a brief disbandment at the beginning of the 195 ...
under the direction of
Frank Foster (who was involved with recordings by
Diane Schuur
Diane Joan Schuur (born December 10, 1953), nicknamed "Deedles", is an American jazz singer and pianist. As of 2015, Schuur had released 23 albums, and had extended her jazz repertoire to include essences of Latin, gospel, pop and country music ...
and
Caterina Valente
Caterina Valente (born 14 January 1931) is a French multilingual singer, guitarist, and dancer of Italian ethnicity. Valente is a polyglot; she speaks six languages, and sings in eleven. While she is best known as a performer in Europe, Valente ...
). He also worked with the
Duke Ellington Orchestra
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was bas ...
,
Woody Herman and His Orchestra
Woodrow Charles Herman (May 16, 1913 – October 29, 1987) was an American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, singer, and big band leader. Leading groups called "The Herd", Herman came to prominence in the late 1930s and was active until his dea ...
,
George Cables
George Andrew Cables (born November 14, 1944) is an American jazz pianist and composer.
Early life
Cables was born in New York City, United States. He was initially taught piano by his mother. He then studied at the High School of Performing Ar ...
,
John Hicks
Sir John Richards Hicks (8 April 1904 – 20 May 1989) was a British economist. He is considered one of the most important and influential economists of the twentieth century. The most familiar of his many contributions in the field of economic ...
,
Mingus Dynasty
''Mingus Dynasty'' is a jazz album by Charles Mingus, recorded in 1959 and released on Columbia Records in May 1960. It is a companion album to his 1959 record, ''Mingus Ah Um'', and was inducted in the List of Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipie ...
, and
Gunther Schuller
Gunther Alexander Schuller (November 22, 1925June 21, 2015) was an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, educator, publisher, and jazz musician.
Biography and works
Early years
Schuller was born in Queens, New York City, ...
.
In 1995, Mustafa recorded the
big band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s an ...
album ''Boiling Point'' (
Contemporary
Contemporary history, in English-language historiography, is a subset of modern history that describes the historical period from approximately 1945 to the present. Contemporary history is either a subset of the late modern period, or it is o ...
) under his own name, followed by ''St. Louis Blues'' (1997). He also recorded with
Eric Allison (''Mean Streets Beat'', 1996) and his brother Jesse Jones Jr. (''Soul Serenade'', 1996). His last album, ''The Travelling Man'', was recorded in 2012. In the field of jazz, between 1980 and 2012, he was involved in 32 recording sessions.
[Tom Lord ''The Jazz Discography'' (online, accessed December 29, 2017)]
In later years, Mustafa was mainly active in Florida as a music teacher; He founded the program for jazz studies at
Florida Memorial University
Florida Memorial University is a private historically black university in Miami Gardens, Florida. It is a member of the United Negro College Fund and historically related to Baptists although it claims a focus on broader Christianity.
History
...
in
Miami Gardens
Miami Gardens is a city in north-central Miami-Dade County, Florida. It is located north of Downtown Miami with city boundaries that stretch from I-95 and Northeast 2nd Avenue to its east to Northwest 47th and Northwest 57th Avenues to its west ...
. There was also an annual ''Melton Mustafa Jazz Festival'' in the 1990s, which also served as a fundraiser for college and high school jazz students. There, jazz greats such as
Jon Faddis
Jon Faddis (born July 24, 1953) is an American jazz trumpet player, conductor, composer, and educator, renowned for both his playing and for his expertise in the field of music education. Upon his first appearance on the scene, he became known ...
,
Benny Golson
Benny Golson (born January 25, 1929) is an American bebop/hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and arranger. He came to prominence with the big bands of Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie, more as a writer than a performer, before launch ...
,
Grover Washington Jr.
Grover Washington Jr. (December 12, 1943 – December 17, 1999) was an American jazz-funk and soul-jazz saxophonist. Along with Wes Montgomery and George Benson, he is considered by many to be one of the founders of the smooth jazz genre.
He wr ...
,
Wallace Roney
Wallace Roney (May 25, 1960 – March 31, 2020) was an American jazz (hard bop and post-bop) trumpeter. He has won 1 Grammy award and has two nominations.
Roney took lessons from Clark Terry and Dizzy Gillespie and studied with Miles Davis from ...
,
Patrice Rushen
Patrice Louise Rushen (born September 30, 1954) is an American jazz pianist and R&B singer. She is also a composer, record producer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and music director.
Her 1982 single "Forget Me Nots" received a Grammy Awar ...
,
Billy Cobham
William Emanuel Cobham Jr. (born May 16, 1944) is a Panamanian Americans, Panamanian–American jazz drummer who came to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s with trumpeter Miles Davis and then with the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
He was indu ...
,
Herbie Mann
Herbert Jay Solomon (April 16, 1930 – July 1, 2003), known by his stage name Herbie Mann, was an American jazz flute player and important early practitioner of world music. Early in his career, he also played tenor saxophone and clarinet (incl ...
,
Billy Taylor
Billy Taylor (July 24, 1921 – December 28, 2010) was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and from 1994 was the ...
,
Clark Terry
Clark Virgil Terry Jr. (December 14, 1920 – February 21, 2015) was an American swing and bebop trumpeter, a pioneer of the flugelhorn in jazz, and a composer and educator.
He played with Charlie Barnet (1947), Count Basie (1948–51), Duke ...
and
Randy Brecker
Randal Edward Brecker (born November 27, 1945) is an American trumpeter, flugelhornist, and composer. His versatility has made him a popular studio musician who has recorded with acts in jazz, rock, and R&B.
Early life
Brecker was born on Nov ...
performed. Mustafa died in 2017 in Miami from
prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is cancer of the prostate. Prostate cancer is the second most common cancerous tumor worldwide and is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related mortality among men. The prostate is a gland in the male reproductive system that sur ...
.
References
External links
Website*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mustafa, Melton
1947 births
2017 deaths
Musicians from Miami
American jazz music arrangers
African-American jazz musicians
American jazz educators
Afro Blue Band members
Florida A&M University alumni
Deaths from prostate cancer
20th-century African-American people
21st-century African-American people