Home » Jazz Musicians » Jymie Merritt

Jymie Merritt

Jymie Merritt was an American jazz double-bassist, electric-bass pioneer, band leader and composer. Merritt was a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers group from 1957 until 1962. The same year he left Blakey's band, Merritt formed his own group, The Forerunners, which he led sporadically until his death in 2020. Merritt also worked as a sideman for blues and jazz musicians such as Bullmoose Jackson, B.B. King, Chet Baker, Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, and Lee Morgan.

Jymie Merritt worked in jazz, R&B, and blues. In the early 1950s he toured with rock and roll musicians Bullmoose Jackson and Chris Powell moving on to work with bluesman BB King from 1955 to 1957.

In 1957, Merritt moved to Manhattan, New York, to work with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. The Messenger ensemble Merritt joined featured his friend Benny Golson as well as Bobby Timmons and Lee Morgan. Merritt's touring and recording with Blakey extended until 1962, when an unknown ailment forced him to stop touring.

By 1964, Merritt was back, working with the trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker, and is featured prominently in Baker's unfinished autobiography published under the title As Though I Had Wings: The Lost Memoir.

From 1965 to 1968, Merritt worked with the drummer, composer and activist Max Roach, not only in the rhythm section but as a composer, recording "Nommo" on Roach's Atlantic album Drums Unlimited (1966). "Nommo" would earn Merritt a nomination for Best Jazz Composer in DownBeat magazine's Critics Poll.

Merritt left Max Roach in the late 1960s to work with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, appearing with Gillespie's band on The Dick Cavett Show.

One of Jymie Merritt's most productive showcases as a composer was when he reunited with his former Jazz Messenger colleague gifted trumpeter Lee Morgan. Morgan's Blue Note album Live at the Lighthouse (1970) featuring Merritt's composition "Absolutions" (recorded earlier by Max Roach).

In 1962, Jymie Merritt formed and fronted the Forerunners in Philadelphia. The band, which evolved into a music cooperative exploring Merritt's own system of chord inversions, harmonics, and unique approaches to composition and rehearsals, produced a lexicon of its own known as the Forerunner system or concept. The Forerunner concept in its early days culminated in Merritt's expansive composition "Visions of the Ghost Dance".

Among the original members of the Forerunner band were Odean Pope, Kenny Lowe, Donald Bailey, and September Wrice. This group performed regularly in and around Philadelphia for five years, until Merritt joined Max Roach’s band. Pope also joined Roach’s band, playing with him into the 1970s. Forerunner was on and off periodically from the 1960s through the 1980s, depending on what band Merritt was playing with at the time as well as how his health was. Saxophonist Bobby Zankel was a member of the second incarnation of the band when he joined in 1982, which also included Alan Nelson, Odean Pope, Julian Pressley, Colmore Duncan, and Warren McLendon. Zankel is primarily known as an alto player, but played baritone sax with the band, and described the role of the sax section over solos as taking on an accompanying role, where they would always play under the soloist, comparing it to the typical role of the bassist but in the sax section."[4] Approaching his 90th birthday Merritt continued to rehearse and perform with the current incarnation of The Forerunners, many of whom have been with the ensemble from its inception.

Read more

Tags

5
Album Review

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: First Flight to Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings

Read "First Flight to Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


Perhaps Art Blakey's greatest gift was that he was able to—and also enabled you—to transport through time to when invention was new and not reheated, rebranded, or far worse, rejected out of hand. Just take his opening solo on the Charlie Parker-penned opener “Now's the Time" from the absolutely ribald and raucous First Flight To Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings and get a riotous earful for yourself. Blakey bops, pops, and booms and you're there in the room in Tokyo, ...

13
Album Review

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: First Flight to Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings

Read "First Flight to Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings" reviewed by Chris May


There is a saying in the opera world which, though innocuous on the face of it, damns a work before the overture has begun let alone after the fat lady sings. The saying, beloved of breathless publicists deaf to its implication, is that such and such an opera is “rarely performed." The reason it is rarely performed, of course, is because nine times out of ten it is a dud. When it comes to jazz albums the parallel ...

22
Album Review

Lee Morgan: The Complete Live at the Lighthouse

Read "The Complete Live at the Lighthouse" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


Suffice to say that if Blue Note's original Live at The Lighthouse (1970) lit a fire under you and all the subsequent expanded iterations did nothing to douse said flames, this definitive final word on a very good thing is going to grab your attention fast and hold it hard. Fourteen previously unreleased whirlwind turns around the bandstand complete the picture painted that July weekend in California when trumpeter supreme Lee Morgan and his pirate quintet—Bennie Maupin on ...

8
Album Review

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: Just Coolin'

Read "Just Coolin'" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


Great moments play all over Just Coolin', the new archival Blue Note Art Blakey release from 1959, recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio with Lee Morgan, Bobby Timmons and Jymie Merritt. For a bit of history, let's just point out that Hank Mobley was returning to the tenor chair he held from 1951-56, but which had just recently (for back then) been occupied by Shorter, and before him Benny Golson. Not the slightest expectation here. And should there have been ...

15
Album Review

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: Just Coolin'

Read "Just Coolin'" reviewed by Chris May


It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man or woman in possession of a good quantity of Art Blakey albums, must be in want of a lot more. Previously unreleased albums are particularly enticing. So do not be fooled by the Reid Miles-inspired cover of Just Coolin': the disc is previously unissued. It presents Blakey in his pomp fronting a dream-team Jazz Messengers lineup. AAJers do not need to be reminded that Blakey was at the ...

23
Extended Analysis

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers: Moanin'

Read "Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers: Moanin'" reviewed by Mike Oppenheim


Throughout its history, jazz has constantly evolved, developing from and reacting against its earlier incarnations. The mid-1940s saw bebop reinvent jazz as an artist's genre, distinct from the swing style that was the popular music throughout the 1930s and '40s. Bebop was music for listening, not dancing, and the emphasis became virtuosic improvised solos instead of memorable tunes and arrangements. However, the advent of bebop itself led to further reactions and developments within jazz during the 1950s. The newer genre ...

917
Interview

Jymie Merritt: Dedication Personified

Read "Jymie Merritt: Dedication Personified" reviewed by Victor L. Schermer


Jymie Merritt came up in Philadelphia during the evolution of bebop and hard bop, when the town was a hotbed of musical activity. Players like John Coltrane, Benny Golson, and Philly Joe Jones were getting started there, and musicians like Charlie Parker, J.J. Johnson, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis would come to the city to perform and to mentor them.

Merritt soon spread his “on the road" wings with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, including some memorable ...

Read more articles
204

Event

Philadelphia Jazz Fair 2009 - July 12th Schedule

Philadelphia Jazz Fair 2009 - July 12th Schedule

Source: All About Jazz

PHILADELPHIA JAZZ FAIR 2009 SUNDAY, JULY 12

Schedule 1:00 - Opening Remarks PJHP - Caplan Recital Hall 1:10 - The University of the Arts Student Jazz Quartet featuring Adam Siegel, AJ Luca, Ryan Kuhns, Anwar Marshall - Caplan Recital Hall 1:10 - Film Screening: Icons Among Us (106 minutes) - Connelly Auditorium* 1:30 - Film Screening: Brownie Speaks (86 minutes) - Caplan Recital Hall 3:10 - Performances - Caplan Recital Hall John Blake, Steve Beskrone, Jim ...

256

Event

Jazz Musicians Jymie Merritt and Trudy Pitts to be Honored

Jazz Musicians Jymie Merritt and Trudy Pitts to be Honored

Source: All About Jazz

Jazz fair will be held July 12, 2009 at The University of the Arts Philadelphia, PA – On Sunday, July 12, jazz aficionados from the Philadelphia area and beyond will gather on the campus of The University of the Arts to celebrate the city’s rich musical legacy and to honor two of the area’s most distinguished jazz musicians. Philadelphia Jazz Fair 2009 will be presented by the Philadelphia Jazz Heritage Project and The University of the Arts. It will feature ...

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

The Complete Live at...

Blue Note Records
2021

buy

First Flight to...

Blue Note Records
2021

buy

Just Coolin'

Blue Note Records
2020

buy

Mosaic

Blue Note Records
1962

buy

Similar

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.