Floyd Standifer - 1929-2007

The Northwest jazz community will be shedding a lot of tears today.. as Seattle's beloved bebop jazz luminary died Monday. He was 78.



Tonight, Floyd Standifer probably would've played at the New Orleans Creole Restaurant on his regular Wednesday night slot. For those of you who'd never had a chance to see him play, this was a well-loved class act who could light up a room, whether it was with his tenor sax, trumpet, flugelhorn, singing, or just chatting it up between sets - in kind of a barroom philosopher kind of way.

nice Earshot Jazz piece, feature on page 6 (pdf, takes a minute to load)

I'm lucky to seen him play. His style on the trumpet reminded me kind of the warm "hard bop" played by the late, great Clifford Brown... but then he could switch gears and play that lush sounding tenor, or when it was right, a smoky fluid flugelhorn.

RIP Floyd.