Jackie McLean, 73; Saxophone Great Played With Jazz Legends

Jackie McLean's introduction as a player to Birdland in New York City would become a legendary story in jazz. A protege of both pianist Bud Powell and saxophonist Charlie Parker, McLean was building a solid reputation in small bands in Harlem as an emerging force on saxophone.

He was not yet 21, however, and was plenty nervous when he showed up at Birdland one night, not to listen to the great musicians that came through town -- as he often had over the years -- but to play.

He walked into the club, found the band's leader, trumpeter Miles Davis, and introduced himself. And then McLean discovered that the rest of the group that night consisted of Art Blakey on drums, Percy Heath on bass, Horace Silver on piano and Gene Ammons on tenor saxophone. All of them would become legends of jazz.

"Miles pushed me out to play the first solo," McLean recalled in an interview with the Hartford Courant some years ago. About eight bars into the solo, McLean had an overwhelming feeling, and it wasn't good. He put down his horn and dashed backstage, where he found a convenient garbage can, leaned his face into it and let go. As he pulled his head out, the owner of the club, who was looking on in amazement, threw McLean a towel and said, "Get the hell back out there!"

"So I wiped my mouth," McLean said, and headed back on stage.

The rest of the players "were all just standing there," he said. "It was like time stopped, like a dream sequence. Nobody was playing, just the rhythm section. I went back out and finished playing my solo."

McLean said the audience gave him a wild ovation. "It was like they thought, 'Hey, here's a guy who throws up and plays.' "

From that mixed beginning in 1951, McLean, who died Friday at his home in Hartford, Conn., at 73, built a career as one of the great saxophonists, composers and educators in jazz. He had been in failing health for some time, family members said, but they did not announce the cause of death.

The same year that he played with Davis at Birdland, he joined the great trumpeter in the recording studio for an album called "Dig." The title came from an original composition by McLean, who was on his way to building a national reputation.

Over the next two decades, McLean produced an extensive body of recordings for the Prestige, New Jazz and Blue Note labels. The Blue Note recordings, including the albums "Jackie's Bag," "A Fickle Sonance" and "Let Freedom Ring," helped define the pioneering sound of the label in the early 1960s.