Richie Kamuca
b. 23 July 1930, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, d. 22 July 1977. After working in groups in and around his home town, Kamuca joined the Stan Kenton Orchestra on tenor saxophone in 1952. Two years later he was in Woody Herman's band and then settled on the west coast, where he played and recorded with, among others, Shelly Manneand Shorty Rogers. Kamuca was also on the 1955 Cy Touff Octet and Quintet sessions for Pacific Jazz which featured Harry Edison and used charts by Johnny Mandel. The following year Kamuca was again on dates for Pacific, as a member of the Chet Baker- Art Pepper Sextet and also on a Bill Perkins album that included Pepper. In 1959, he again recorded with Pepper and was also featured on the highly successful live recordings made by Manne at the Black Hawk club in San Francisco. In the early '60s, Kamuca moved to New York, where he worked in a small group with Roy Eldridge and became a member of the studio orchestra for the Merv Griffin television show. He was a founder member of Bill Berry's rehearsal band, which comprised mostly musicians from the studio orchestra, and when the Griffin show abruptly moved to Los Angeles, Kamuca went too. There, he worked with Berry in his re-formed big band, recording with him and under his own name for the Concord label. A fine player of ballads, with a warm and impassioned style, Kamuca's indebtedness to Lester Young is apparent, but he never slavishly followed his idol. One of his last recordings was dedicated to Charlie Parker, and throughout his later years he can be heard developing original ideas and gradually changing his style as he matured.