Jazz Guitar Great Joe Beck Checks Out
Joe Beck, a jazz guitarist who collaborated with artists such as Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis and James Brown, has died at a local hospice after battling lung cancer. He was 62. Joe had many friends here in Bangkok where he played a number of times. He died July 22.
Beck got started as a teen in the 1960s playing in a trio in New York. By 1968, he was working with Miles Davis and other stars.
He was a prolific studio and session performer, arranger and producer, with an identifiable harmonic and rhythmic sound. He was honored five times by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences as a “Most Valuable Player.” “My career happened because I happened to be in the right place at the right time in a very unique time of jazz music,” Beck said in an interview last year with JazzGuitarLife.com.
After taking a three-year break from music to run a dairy farm, Beck went back to music in the 1970s, working with artists such as Gloria Gaynor and Esther Phillips, including on her hit single, “What a Difference a Day Makes.”
In 1975, his collaboration with saxophonist David Sanborn, “Beck and Sanborn,” became a cool fusion hit.
He also composed and arranged for film and television, and played with the Royal Philharmonic orchestra in London, the Milan Philharmonic in Italy and the Paris String Ensemble in France.
He last toured in December 2007, playing in Europe with fellow jazz guitarist John Abercrombie. Beck also taught guitar at Naugatuck Valley Community College in Waterbury.
He is survived by his wife, Marsi, and five children.