NPR
Visit NPR for the audio of the story, including clips of Simone's performance.
'Why?': Remembering Nina Simone's Tribute to the Rev. Martin Luther King. Jr.
Weekend Edition Sunday, April 6, 2008 - Three days after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, performer Nina Simone and her band played at the Westbury Music Festival on Long Island, N.Y. They performed "Why? (The King of Love is Dead)," a song they had just learned, written by their bass player Gene Taylor in reaction to King's death.
Simone's brother, Samuel Waymon, who was on stage playing the organ, talks with Lynn Neary about that day and reaction to the civil rights leader's assassination.
"We learned that song that (same) day," says Waymon. "We didn't have a chance to have two or three days of rehearsal. But when you're feeling compassion and outrage and wanting to express what you know the world is feeling, we did it because that's what we felt."
Waymon and the band's performance of "Why? (Then King of Love is Dead)" lasted nearly 15 minutes as Nina Simone sang, played and sermonized about the loss everyone was feeling.
The song later appeared on several greatest-hits collections, most recently on the Anthology release from RCA.
Here's a YouTube video:
Showing posts with label latin soul. Show all posts
Showing posts with label latin soul. Show all posts
Monday, April 07, 2008
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Guitarist-activist Vernon Reid on how MLK's death affected black music
THE ROOT
King: The Soundtrack
A conversation with guitarist-activist Vernon Reid on how MLK's death affected black music.
By Martin Johnson
TheRoot.com
Updated: 12:55 PM ET Apr 3, 2008
April 4, 2008--If you liked music, then the Johnson home was the place to be in the late '60s. My brother Phillip always had the latest Motown or Stax singles. My sister Phyllis (yes, they're twins) played the Beatles, and the Stones, and of course Sly and the Family Stone. When he was home from college, my eldest brother, Byron, listened to blues and this guy with an especially raspy voice that he just called Bob (as if he was a friend from around the way). In addition, my Dad liked to play his Miles Davis, Lambert Hendricks and Ross or Duke Ellington records whenever possible, while my mother seemed to know the words to every Burt Bacharach-Hal David song (or at least every one sung by Dionne Warwick).
The South Side of Chicago had lots of great music pouring out of its homes, but I'm sure we ranked near the top of the charts.
Music added an ever-playing soundtrack to what was already a lively place. Our kitchen doubled as a salon where my parents, siblings, and their friends, held forth on a variety of issues of the day: the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, the latest goings on with Mayor Daley and what not. I didn't watch much TV growing up; listening to the discussions in the kitchen was much more interesting. I felt like I was privy to a very cool scene.
The events of April 4, 1968 struck us like a ton of bricks. I was only eight and still sorting out the vernacular of violence. I needed to know if shot meant killed and if killed meant dead. I thought these were simple yes or no questions, but I got mostly anguish in response.
We used to turn off the music to listen to Dr. King's speeches. That night we turned off the radio.
Eventually music came back on in the Johnson household, and as the weeks and months began to pass, even my young ears could discern a change in the sounds. The happy, optimistic sounds that had characterized much of my sibling's playlists had become wary, stern and borderline confrontational.
What would soon follow the harrowing days of April 1968 was an era of black self determinism in popular music that remains unparalleled. The line between musician and activist blurred.
I recently discussed this era with guitarist/activist Vernon Reid. He started with the groundbreaking electric jazz group, Ron Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society and went on to form the pioneering rock band Living Colour. In 1985, he cofounded The Black Rock Coalition, an organization that helped pave the way for artists of color to resume a more self deterministic path for their music. His work over the last decade has created dynamic fusions between rock and electronic music.
Reid is also an enthusiastic student of music and culture and a critical thinker. We exchanged e-mail recently about the 40th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination and the effect it had on the evolution of black popular music:
MJ: Where were you on April 4, 1968, how did the news of Dr. King's assassination hit you, and what was the reaction in your Brooklyn neighborhood?
Vernon Reid: It was one of the darkest days of my childhood. Both my parents were very distraught. My father was furious. My mother was as sad as could be. I remember people shouting in the streets--The public rage and sorrow was palpable. My aunts were very upset.... My Catholic Middle school was very quiet too, everyone acknowledged the seriousness of the event. There was a palpable sense that White America itself had done it. Of course, most white folks were deeply ashamed and horrified at the crime too, but these were extremely polarized times. President Johnson, for all his flaws, set the right tone when he addressed the nation at the time of the tragedy, thinking back.
MJ: By most accounts, the '60s were part of a golden era for black music, as styles evolved rapidly in many different places, especially Detroit and Memphis, but elsewhere too and sometimes on black-owned labels. However, with the exception of songs like "I'm Black and I'm Proud" and the work of Nina Simone, Charles Mingus and Max Roach, before King's killing most music engaged in little social commentary.
Vernon Reid: Black People have always had to watch "what we say" for fear of the consequences and repercussions of our speech. From the Republic's earliest days, the poet, the pundit, the wit, and the troubadour of African descent have always been acutely aware of the expectations and temperament of audience they've faced, very careful to conceal the reality of the lives we've been forced to live, while simultaneously bearing witness to the myriad joys and sufferings of life under varying degrees of constant oppression.
It's a neat trick. Part of the genius of Institutional Racism is that long after Ol' Massa's Gone Away and The Last Overseer hung up his whip, fear has been a constant companion of the African American, justified or not. Black performers are uniquely vulnerable to that fear, because the stage exposes and further objectifies. The safest route then is to merely entertain, to make and keep people "happy" (unchallenged and unchanged, but edified). Not to take anything away from the skill and talent required. This is a long and powerful tradition, subverted, raged, and signified against, but potent nonetheless.
The `60's Era was a massive turning point in Black popular culture with regards to social commentary---incendiary change was in the air; the fiery rhetoric of X and King among many others was not to be ignored-while pop music like Motown's was in denial, folk singers like Odetta and Richie Havens heard it all loud and clear, as did jazz artists like Coltrane, Max Roach, Miles Davis, and Charles Mingus... In a supreme irony, Hoover's F.B.I. was searching for the seeds of revolution in Martha and The Vandellas.
MJ: A Change Was Gonna Come, however. What impact do you attribute to the death of great leaders like Dr. King and Malcolm X?
Vernon Reid: The words and subsequent deaths of King and X had a tremendous effect on a wide range of African American musical artists--the civil rights movement was a motif in much of the work of Curtis Mayfield, Sly Stone, The Isley Brothers, War, Mandrill, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, etc.
In jazz, the evolution of Coltrane's journey into freedom and abstraction was arguably of a piece with the progressive and radical social movements of the time. The screaming saxophone became synonymous with the idea of international black self-determination. With that said, the Deaths of X and King were designed to send another message--this is what happens to Dreamers and Malcontents who step out of line--once again The Fear made flesh asserts itself- Watch your step- It's as current as the unarmed deaths of Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell.
MJ: In the years that followed the King assassination, it seemed that black popular music moved toward social commentary and a mood of self determinism took root. Marvin Garye made his opus, What's Going On. Edwin Starr's "War" was a pop hit. The Temptations Masterpiece, and oodles of songs by Curtis Mayfield, Gil Scot-Herron and others laid bare the truth about life on the streets and discontent in the community.
What changed and how? Was an iconoclast like Jimi Hendrix influential in his style, if not the way that he brought a new level of virtuosity to music?
Vernon Reid: I believe that Hendrix represented the pinnacle of the American Drama--an unruly avatar who heedlessly commingled tradition and anarchy to radically re-invent the role of electric guitar, and radically expand the notion of Black Identity by exploring it's outer reaches.
MJ: For you, what were the highlights of this era?
Vernon Reid: Jimi's version of the "Star Spangled Banner" during the final set of Woodstock was a defining moment, as was The Band Of Gypsies second set version of "Machine Gun" on New Year's eve 1970. Marvin's "What's Going On" is a masterwork, Miles' work from "In A Silent Way" on into the `70's. Gil Scott Heron's "Winter In America" and "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." War's "The World Is A Ghetto." Sly's "There's A Riot Going On." JB's "A Revolution Of The Mind." "We People Who Are Darker Than Blue" by Curtis Mayfield. "To Be Young Gifted And Black" by Nina Simone. Fela' Kuti's "Expensive Sh*t." The very first rock concert I ever saw was Funkadelic at Madison Square Garden supporting Cosmic Slop-now that was a highlight!
MJ: Why did it end?
Vernon Reid: A decade of war. upheaval, and assassinations from Kennedy to King had exacted a generational toll. It's instructive that Marvin Gaye's next big single after "What's Going On" was "Let's Get It On"- no less of an iconic song, but a harbinger of the Me Decade to come.
MJ: Was reviving the latitude of this era, one of your principal motives in starting the Black Rock Coalition in 1985?
Vernon Reid: The BRC was the start of a community of outsiders who refused to know their expected place. We were certainly influenced by a powerful and courageous legacy of activists like Medgar Evers and Angela Davis on the one hand and artists like Hendrix, Miles, Sly, Ornette, Coltrane, Simone, Mayfield. It was also influenced by the then current artistry of artists like Prince, Fishbone, AR Kane, and Bad Brains who lit the way forward.
Martin Johnson is a New York-based writer.
King: The Soundtrack
A conversation with guitarist-activist Vernon Reid on how MLK's death affected black music.
By Martin Johnson
TheRoot.com
Updated: 12:55 PM ET Apr 3, 2008
April 4, 2008--If you liked music, then the Johnson home was the place to be in the late '60s. My brother Phillip always had the latest Motown or Stax singles. My sister Phyllis (yes, they're twins) played the Beatles, and the Stones, and of course Sly and the Family Stone. When he was home from college, my eldest brother, Byron, listened to blues and this guy with an especially raspy voice that he just called Bob (as if he was a friend from around the way). In addition, my Dad liked to play his Miles Davis, Lambert Hendricks and Ross or Duke Ellington records whenever possible, while my mother seemed to know the words to every Burt Bacharach-Hal David song (or at least every one sung by Dionne Warwick).
The South Side of Chicago had lots of great music pouring out of its homes, but I'm sure we ranked near the top of the charts.
Music added an ever-playing soundtrack to what was already a lively place. Our kitchen doubled as a salon where my parents, siblings, and their friends, held forth on a variety of issues of the day: the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, the latest goings on with Mayor Daley and what not. I didn't watch much TV growing up; listening to the discussions in the kitchen was much more interesting. I felt like I was privy to a very cool scene.
The events of April 4, 1968 struck us like a ton of bricks. I was only eight and still sorting out the vernacular of violence. I needed to know if shot meant killed and if killed meant dead. I thought these were simple yes or no questions, but I got mostly anguish in response.
We used to turn off the music to listen to Dr. King's speeches. That night we turned off the radio.
Eventually music came back on in the Johnson household, and as the weeks and months began to pass, even my young ears could discern a change in the sounds. The happy, optimistic sounds that had characterized much of my sibling's playlists had become wary, stern and borderline confrontational.
What would soon follow the harrowing days of April 1968 was an era of black self determinism in popular music that remains unparalleled. The line between musician and activist blurred.
I recently discussed this era with guitarist/activist Vernon Reid. He started with the groundbreaking electric jazz group, Ron Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society and went on to form the pioneering rock band Living Colour. In 1985, he cofounded The Black Rock Coalition, an organization that helped pave the way for artists of color to resume a more self deterministic path for their music. His work over the last decade has created dynamic fusions between rock and electronic music.
Reid is also an enthusiastic student of music and culture and a critical thinker. We exchanged e-mail recently about the 40th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination and the effect it had on the evolution of black popular music:
MJ: Where were you on April 4, 1968, how did the news of Dr. King's assassination hit you, and what was the reaction in your Brooklyn neighborhood?
Vernon Reid: It was one of the darkest days of my childhood. Both my parents were very distraught. My father was furious. My mother was as sad as could be. I remember people shouting in the streets--The public rage and sorrow was palpable. My aunts were very upset.... My Catholic Middle school was very quiet too, everyone acknowledged the seriousness of the event. There was a palpable sense that White America itself had done it. Of course, most white folks were deeply ashamed and horrified at the crime too, but these were extremely polarized times. President Johnson, for all his flaws, set the right tone when he addressed the nation at the time of the tragedy, thinking back.
MJ: By most accounts, the '60s were part of a golden era for black music, as styles evolved rapidly in many different places, especially Detroit and Memphis, but elsewhere too and sometimes on black-owned labels. However, with the exception of songs like "I'm Black and I'm Proud" and the work of Nina Simone, Charles Mingus and Max Roach, before King's killing most music engaged in little social commentary.
Vernon Reid: Black People have always had to watch "what we say" for fear of the consequences and repercussions of our speech. From the Republic's earliest days, the poet, the pundit, the wit, and the troubadour of African descent have always been acutely aware of the expectations and temperament of audience they've faced, very careful to conceal the reality of the lives we've been forced to live, while simultaneously bearing witness to the myriad joys and sufferings of life under varying degrees of constant oppression.
It's a neat trick. Part of the genius of Institutional Racism is that long after Ol' Massa's Gone Away and The Last Overseer hung up his whip, fear has been a constant companion of the African American, justified or not. Black performers are uniquely vulnerable to that fear, because the stage exposes and further objectifies. The safest route then is to merely entertain, to make and keep people "happy" (unchallenged and unchanged, but edified). Not to take anything away from the skill and talent required. This is a long and powerful tradition, subverted, raged, and signified against, but potent nonetheless.
The `60's Era was a massive turning point in Black popular culture with regards to social commentary---incendiary change was in the air; the fiery rhetoric of X and King among many others was not to be ignored-while pop music like Motown's was in denial, folk singers like Odetta and Richie Havens heard it all loud and clear, as did jazz artists like Coltrane, Max Roach, Miles Davis, and Charles Mingus... In a supreme irony, Hoover's F.B.I. was searching for the seeds of revolution in Martha and The Vandellas.
MJ: A Change Was Gonna Come, however. What impact do you attribute to the death of great leaders like Dr. King and Malcolm X?
Vernon Reid: The words and subsequent deaths of King and X had a tremendous effect on a wide range of African American musical artists--the civil rights movement was a motif in much of the work of Curtis Mayfield, Sly Stone, The Isley Brothers, War, Mandrill, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, etc.
In jazz, the evolution of Coltrane's journey into freedom and abstraction was arguably of a piece with the progressive and radical social movements of the time. The screaming saxophone became synonymous with the idea of international black self-determination. With that said, the Deaths of X and King were designed to send another message--this is what happens to Dreamers and Malcontents who step out of line--once again The Fear made flesh asserts itself- Watch your step- It's as current as the unarmed deaths of Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell.
MJ: In the years that followed the King assassination, it seemed that black popular music moved toward social commentary and a mood of self determinism took root. Marvin Garye made his opus, What's Going On. Edwin Starr's "War" was a pop hit. The Temptations Masterpiece, and oodles of songs by Curtis Mayfield, Gil Scot-Herron and others laid bare the truth about life on the streets and discontent in the community.
What changed and how? Was an iconoclast like Jimi Hendrix influential in his style, if not the way that he brought a new level of virtuosity to music?
Vernon Reid: I believe that Hendrix represented the pinnacle of the American Drama--an unruly avatar who heedlessly commingled tradition and anarchy to radically re-invent the role of electric guitar, and radically expand the notion of Black Identity by exploring it's outer reaches.
MJ: For you, what were the highlights of this era?
Vernon Reid: Jimi's version of the "Star Spangled Banner" during the final set of Woodstock was a defining moment, as was The Band Of Gypsies second set version of "Machine Gun" on New Year's eve 1970. Marvin's "What's Going On" is a masterwork, Miles' work from "In A Silent Way" on into the `70's. Gil Scott Heron's "Winter In America" and "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." War's "The World Is A Ghetto." Sly's "There's A Riot Going On." JB's "A Revolution Of The Mind." "We People Who Are Darker Than Blue" by Curtis Mayfield. "To Be Young Gifted And Black" by Nina Simone. Fela' Kuti's "Expensive Sh*t." The very first rock concert I ever saw was Funkadelic at Madison Square Garden supporting Cosmic Slop-now that was a highlight!
MJ: Why did it end?
Vernon Reid: A decade of war. upheaval, and assassinations from Kennedy to King had exacted a generational toll. It's instructive that Marvin Gaye's next big single after "What's Going On" was "Let's Get It On"- no less of an iconic song, but a harbinger of the Me Decade to come.
MJ: Was reviving the latitude of this era, one of your principal motives in starting the Black Rock Coalition in 1985?
Vernon Reid: The BRC was the start of a community of outsiders who refused to know their expected place. We were certainly influenced by a powerful and courageous legacy of activists like Medgar Evers and Angela Davis on the one hand and artists like Hendrix, Miles, Sly, Ornette, Coltrane, Simone, Mayfield. It was also influenced by the then current artistry of artists like Prince, Fishbone, AR Kane, and Bad Brains who lit the way forward.
Martin Johnson is a New York-based writer.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Soul Sides' Box Set 2: Bugalú / Boogaloo mix
Check out this great Do the Boogaloo file mix (complete with playlist and notes) created by Oliver Wang at his Soul Sides blog. Click through the adds to listen to the music and check out the blog.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Saxophonist Donald Myrick's 1993 Obit
Someone asked me about him today. If you remember the sweet alto sax solo from the live version of Earth Wind & Fire's "Reasons," you've heard Myrick. Bad end to a wonderful career. It's a dated story, but indulge me.
The Los Angeles Times (August 15th 1993) ~ By Mathis Chazanov, Staff Writer
Saxophonist Donald Myrick, shot by a police officer when he answered his door with a butane lighter in his hand, was laid to rest at Bethany Baptist Church in West Los Angeles last weekend.
Percussionists tapped out a rhythm on congas and the tambourine. Eight horn men played a swinging fugue. Earth, Wind & Fire vocalist Philip Bailey brought a church full of people to their feet when he unleashed his high-soaring rendition of the hymn "Precious Lord."
It was a jazzman's funeral. But troubling questions about Myrick's life and death hung in the air like the grating notes of an unresolved chord.
"We'll get to the bottom of it," said singer-songwriter Oscar Brown Jr., who let Myrick and his friends rehearse in his Chicago basement more than 30 years ago.
"We'll find out what happened and we'll rectify it," said Brown at the funeral. "But that don't bother Don, because he's gone to join a bigger band."
Myrick, 53 at his death on July 30, had a career that many musicians would envy. He had recorded and toured with English pop star Phil Collins. His solo was featured in Collins' hit song and video "One More Night."
Earlier, he had been with Earth, Wind & Fire, a group that mixed doo-wop vocals, big-band horns, Afro-Latin rhythms and outlandish showmanship and sold millions of records in the 1970s and early '80s.
As his body lay in a casket beneath floral arrangements decorated with black quarter notes and a white dove, mourners spoke of the pure tone and quick musical ear, the generosity and gentleness of the man who was known as Hippmo.
The nickname goes back to childhood days, said Louis Satterfield, a bassist and trombonist who was Myrick's musical partner from college years until the end.
Overweight as a child, the youngster was called "Hippmo-potamus," but as Myrick matured into a master of blues, jazz and pop music, the name came to mean that he was "mo' hip," Satterfield said.
After playing with a college group called The Jazzmen, Myrick started his professional career with the Pharaohs, the house band at the old Regal Theater in Chicago. There he backed entertainers from Louis Armstrong to Smokey Robinson.
Fueled by the revolutionary spirit of the 1960s, the Pharaohs and their families followed a clean-living regimen of vegetarianism and black consciousness, but they did not shrink from the good things of life.
"We all were driving Mercedes-Benzes, and most people didn't know what kind of car it was in those days," Satterfield said.
Heeding the call of Maurice White, who played with them in The Jazzmen, the two moved to Southern California to form the core of Earth, Wind & Fire's horn section.
Later, they toured the world with Collins as the Phenix Horns. Myrick also played with Anita Baker, Bobby Blue Bland, Stanley Turrentine, Grover Washington Jr., Carlos Santana, Nancy Wilson, Diana Ross and others.
A picture on display at the funeral showed him shaking hands with Princess Diana.
"He was getting ready to do an album," Satterfield said. "He was going through some changes but he was coming out of all that. His music was more powerful than all of that. The only weapon he ever had was a weapon of peace -- the saxophone."
Separated from his wife of 26 years, diagnosed with leukemia and at loose ends professionally, Myrick was fatally shot by Santa Monica police when they served a search warrant at his small apartment in the Palms area of Los Angeles.
The search team was on the trail of a dial-for-drugs ring that operated out of two addresses on the Westside, Sgt. Gary Gallinot said. Alerted by informants, they put both places under surveillance.
A friend who was with Myrick in his final days said that the musician was not involved in the drug trade. But Gallinot said that detectives identified his apartment as a place where couriers would pick up rock cocaine for delivery to customers who placed their orders by telephone.
With two officers posted at a sliding-glass back door leading to a patio, four officers were at the front when Officer Gary Barbaro knocked and demanded entry at 6:10 a.m.
Opening the door with a key supplied by the management of the Oakwood apartment complex, Barbaro caught sight of Myrick, who authorities say was holding a black metal object that turned out to be a butane lighter.
"We're just as perplexed as to why he'd come to the door with something like that," Gallinot said.
Gallinot said Barbaro feared for his life and fired a bullet that hit Myrick in the chest. The musician died at a hospital a short time later.
A woman who was in the apartment was arrested on drug charges. Also arrested was a man police say headed the alleged cocaine operation, and two alleged drug couriers.
According to court documents, the search of Myrick's apartment turned up what was described as cocaine paraphernalia -- a Brillo pad, a metal plate, a heavy-duty razor blade, a fingernail tool, a cotton ball and part of a cigarette -- in a night stand.
There was also an electronic scale, a stack of plastic sandwich bags and a vial of inositol, a sugar-like vitamin. Inositol is often used to cut cocaine for retail sale, Gallinot said.
The seven-inch butane lighter, also known as a pencil torch, is the type commonly used to heat cocaine, he said.
Gallinot said it resembles a firearm known as a pencil gun, which was recently featured on television and in police training bulletins.
Police said they found crack pipes, a bag of marijuana and two pieces of crack cocaine at the apartment on Santa Monica Boulevard.
The operation relied on phone pagers and rental cars obtained by bribing a car rental clerk with cocaine, court documents said. The dealer would frequently change addresses but stay in touch with his customers by using the telephone company's call-forwarding service, according to the documents.
But Myrick's friends who attended his funeral were still at a loss over his death and questioned the officer's action.
"To be shot down like a common criminal, it's ridiculous," said Larry Dunn, the former keyboard player and musical director for Earth, Wind & Fire. "Most of the people here are still in shock."
Myrick's survivors include his wife, Barbara; three daughters, Shirika, Shani and Lauren; his mother, Antoinette Myrick; a sister, Shirley Wade, and a brother, Vernon Myrick. If you're reading this, you've probably already heard Myrick's work, but in the event you stumbled onto this page and can't remember Myrick's solos, here's the live versions of "Reasons" by Earth Wind and Fire from their Gratitude album. Skip the ad, and listen to Philip Bailey's amazing voice, or if you are pressed for time jump to the 4:00 mark and soon Myrick will come in and kill a vamp with soul:
The Los Angeles Times (August 15th 1993) ~ By Mathis Chazanov, Staff Writer
Saxophonist Donald Myrick, shot by a police officer when he answered his door with a butane lighter in his hand, was laid to rest at Bethany Baptist Church in West Los Angeles last weekend.
Percussionists tapped out a rhythm on congas and the tambourine. Eight horn men played a swinging fugue. Earth, Wind & Fire vocalist Philip Bailey brought a church full of people to their feet when he unleashed his high-soaring rendition of the hymn "Precious Lord."
It was a jazzman's funeral. But troubling questions about Myrick's life and death hung in the air like the grating notes of an unresolved chord.
"We'll get to the bottom of it," said singer-songwriter Oscar Brown Jr., who let Myrick and his friends rehearse in his Chicago basement more than 30 years ago.
"We'll find out what happened and we'll rectify it," said Brown at the funeral. "But that don't bother Don, because he's gone to join a bigger band."
Myrick, 53 at his death on July 30, had a career that many musicians would envy. He had recorded and toured with English pop star Phil Collins. His solo was featured in Collins' hit song and video "One More Night."
Earlier, he had been with Earth, Wind & Fire, a group that mixed doo-wop vocals, big-band horns, Afro-Latin rhythms and outlandish showmanship and sold millions of records in the 1970s and early '80s.
As his body lay in a casket beneath floral arrangements decorated with black quarter notes and a white dove, mourners spoke of the pure tone and quick musical ear, the generosity and gentleness of the man who was known as Hippmo.
The nickname goes back to childhood days, said Louis Satterfield, a bassist and trombonist who was Myrick's musical partner from college years until the end.
Overweight as a child, the youngster was called "Hippmo-potamus," but as Myrick matured into a master of blues, jazz and pop music, the name came to mean that he was "mo' hip," Satterfield said.
After playing with a college group called The Jazzmen, Myrick started his professional career with the Pharaohs, the house band at the old Regal Theater in Chicago. There he backed entertainers from Louis Armstrong to Smokey Robinson.
Fueled by the revolutionary spirit of the 1960s, the Pharaohs and their families followed a clean-living regimen of vegetarianism and black consciousness, but they did not shrink from the good things of life.
"We all were driving Mercedes-Benzes, and most people didn't know what kind of car it was in those days," Satterfield said.
Heeding the call of Maurice White, who played with them in The Jazzmen, the two moved to Southern California to form the core of Earth, Wind & Fire's horn section.
Later, they toured the world with Collins as the Phenix Horns. Myrick also played with Anita Baker, Bobby Blue Bland, Stanley Turrentine, Grover Washington Jr., Carlos Santana, Nancy Wilson, Diana Ross and others.
A picture on display at the funeral showed him shaking hands with Princess Diana.
"He was getting ready to do an album," Satterfield said. "He was going through some changes but he was coming out of all that. His music was more powerful than all of that. The only weapon he ever had was a weapon of peace -- the saxophone."
Separated from his wife of 26 years, diagnosed with leukemia and at loose ends professionally, Myrick was fatally shot by Santa Monica police when they served a search warrant at his small apartment in the Palms area of Los Angeles.
The search team was on the trail of a dial-for-drugs ring that operated out of two addresses on the Westside, Sgt. Gary Gallinot said. Alerted by informants, they put both places under surveillance.
A friend who was with Myrick in his final days said that the musician was not involved in the drug trade. But Gallinot said that detectives identified his apartment as a place where couriers would pick up rock cocaine for delivery to customers who placed their orders by telephone.
With two officers posted at a sliding-glass back door leading to a patio, four officers were at the front when Officer Gary Barbaro knocked and demanded entry at 6:10 a.m.
Opening the door with a key supplied by the management of the Oakwood apartment complex, Barbaro caught sight of Myrick, who authorities say was holding a black metal object that turned out to be a butane lighter.
"We're just as perplexed as to why he'd come to the door with something like that," Gallinot said.
Gallinot said Barbaro feared for his life and fired a bullet that hit Myrick in the chest. The musician died at a hospital a short time later.
A woman who was in the apartment was arrested on drug charges. Also arrested was a man police say headed the alleged cocaine operation, and two alleged drug couriers.
According to court documents, the search of Myrick's apartment turned up what was described as cocaine paraphernalia -- a Brillo pad, a metal plate, a heavy-duty razor blade, a fingernail tool, a cotton ball and part of a cigarette -- in a night stand.
There was also an electronic scale, a stack of plastic sandwich bags and a vial of inositol, a sugar-like vitamin. Inositol is often used to cut cocaine for retail sale, Gallinot said.
The seven-inch butane lighter, also known as a pencil torch, is the type commonly used to heat cocaine, he said.
Gallinot said it resembles a firearm known as a pencil gun, which was recently featured on television and in police training bulletins.
Police said they found crack pipes, a bag of marijuana and two pieces of crack cocaine at the apartment on Santa Monica Boulevard.
The operation relied on phone pagers and rental cars obtained by bribing a car rental clerk with cocaine, court documents said. The dealer would frequently change addresses but stay in touch with his customers by using the telephone company's call-forwarding service, according to the documents.
But Myrick's friends who attended his funeral were still at a loss over his death and questioned the officer's action.
"To be shot down like a common criminal, it's ridiculous," said Larry Dunn, the former keyboard player and musical director for Earth, Wind & Fire. "Most of the people here are still in shock."
Myrick's survivors include his wife, Barbara; three daughters, Shirika, Shani and Lauren; his mother, Antoinette Myrick; a sister, Shirley Wade, and a brother, Vernon Myrick. If you're reading this, you've probably already heard Myrick's work, but in the event you stumbled onto this page and can't remember Myrick's solos, here's the live versions of "Reasons" by Earth Wind and Fire from their Gratitude album. Skip the ad, and listen to Philip Bailey's amazing voice, or if you are pressed for time jump to the 4:00 mark and soon Myrick will come in and kill a vamp with soul:
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