An immense influence to us all and a true Twisted Jazz forefather
Soul and jazz
singer Terry Callier has died. The 67-year-old songwriter experienced
belated success in his career after working with acts including Massive Attack and Beth Orton. He died on Sunday after suffering from a long illness.
Born
in the Chicago projects, Callier was a childhood friend of Curtis
Mayfield and Jerry Butler, and began singing in doo-wop groups in his
teens. Later he became a fixture on the city's coffee house scene,
releasing a debut album titled The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier in
1968. In the early 70s he released three critically celebrated
"jazz-folk" albums and toured with George Benson and Gil Scott-Heron,
but he had abandoned music for a job as a computer programmer at the
University of Chicago until a new generation rediscovered his work in
the early 90s.With the encouragement of the likes of Eddie Pillar of the
Acid Jazz label in London, Callier started to gig again in the UK, and
contributed to a Beth Orton EP in 1997. The following year he released
his own album, Timepeace. It was only when that record won a United
Nations award that his employers at the university discovered his new
double life and dismissed him from his post.
"After all that had
happened over the years, I wasn't looking to be a musician again because
I had got used to having that pay cheque every two weeks," he told the Guardian in 2004.
Five more albums followed, including 2009's Hidden Conversations, written and produced with Massive Attack.
Callier had been dividing his time in recent years between Chicago and England.
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