In my early years as a jazz fan, the recordings of the Modern Jazz Quartet introduced me to the delights of chamber jazz, the language of bop, and the vast artistic range of the vibraphone and bass, two instruments that I previously had paid little attention. The last surviving member of the MJQ, bassist Percy Heath passed away on April 28^th, two days shy of his 82^nd birthday.

Photo by Howard A. Gitelson

Percy Heath grew up in one of America’s gifted jazz families, the elder brother of saxophonist Jimmy and drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath. From his birthplace in Wilmington, NC, Percy moved to the jazz-rich environs of Philadelphia as a youngster. His first instrument was the violin which he began studying in junior high. One of the famed Tuskegee Airmen in the Air Force during World War II, Heath took up the bass after the war, studying at the Granoff School of Music in 1946 and influenced by Jimmy Blanton, Oscar Pettiford and Ray Brown. Around Philadelphia, he developed his reputation, playing an early gig with Red Garland and becoming the house bassist at the Down Beat Club.

Heath’s timing was great in more ways than one, as his emergence in the late 1940s coincided with the new-found importance of the bass in the jazz ensembles of the developing bop style. Noted John Fordham in The Guardian, Heath was “precise in his intonation, buoyant and springy in feel and capable of spontaneous counter-melodies that enhanced the frontline's playing. He always sounded as if he was pushing the beat, rather than sitting contentedly on top of it.” Heath also benefited from the opportunities that arose with his musician siblings, working with brother Jimmy on sax in Howard McGhee’s band and later with drummer Tootie, sometimes the three Heath Brothers were together on the bandstand.

By 1950, Percy Heath had moved to New York and was playing regularly with such bop innovators as Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Fats Navarro, Sonny Rollins, and Dizzy Gillespie, and particularly was Dizzy’s bassist for two years. But most significant in Heath’s career at this time was the opportunity to replace his muse, Ray Brown, in a quartet with pianist John Lewis, vibist Milt Jackson, and drummer Kenny Clarke. Eventually Conny Kay replaced Clarke in what became the long-standing Modern Jazz Quartet. Heath remained with the MJQ throughout its active lifespan, bringing “his accuracy of pitch, sensitivity to dynamics and cool, almost fragile, sound [that] was ideally suited to a band dedicated to making a jazz equivalent of chamber music” (John Fordham, The Guardian).

The MJQ disbanded for the first time in 1974, but reunited in the early 1980s and worked together until their final finale, in 1997. When not with the MJQ, Heath worked with Sarah Vaughan for a while and then in a quartet with his brothers and pianist Stanley Cowell. Outside of the MJQ, Heath was a dynamic soloist on both bass and on the cello, which he elevated to the status of an effective jazz instrument “of low-register lyricism” (John Fordham, The Guardian.)

When Percy Heath died in New York on April 28^th, his brothers were in New Orleans for the Jazz and Heritage Festival. In his honor, Albert "Tootie" and Jimmy Heath opened their late afternoon set with Jimmy's "A Sound for Sore Ears,” and followed with Kenny
Dorham's “No End.” “We're going to dedicate this one to Percy," said Jimmy, "because this one is entitled ‘No End' and there's no end to the beauty.”