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The influential jazz producer, record company head and author Orrin Keepnews died today at his home in El Cerrito, California. He would have been 92 tomorrow. Keepnews guided the recording careers of 
Thelonious Monk
piano1917 - 1982
Orrin Keepnews, RIP
1917 - 1982
Bill Evans
piano1929 - 1980
Wes Montgomery
guitar1923 - 1968
Sonny Rollins
saxophoneb.1930
In the late 1940s, as managing editor of The Record Changer, Keepnews wrote one of the first extensive articles about Monk, then an obscure pianist. With Bill Grauer, Keepnews founded Riverside Records in 1953. They signed another pianist, Randy Weston, to Riverside a year later, and in 1955 signed Monk, whose series of Riverside albums brought him to prominence. Successful Riverside albums followed by other artists, including Evans, Montgomery, Rollins,
Cannonball Adderley
saxophone1928 - 1975
Abbey Lincoln
vocals1930 - 2010
Among the Bill Evans albums Keepnews produced were those of the pianist’s trio at the Village Vanguard in New York in 1961. They were among the most influential jazz recordings of the period and helped to determine directions that jazz took as it developed through the rest of 20th century and into the 21st. Evans showed his regard for Keepnews by titling one of his compositions as an anagram of “Orrin Keepnews”—“Re: Person I Knew.”
For an extensive biography, see Nate Chinen’s obituary in The New York Times.
I will miss Orrin as a close friend of more than half a century.
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Obituary
orrin keepnews
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
AAJ Staff
Thelonious Monk
Bill Evans
Wes Montgomery
Sonny Rollins
Cannonball Adderley
Abbey Lincoln
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