Ronnie Boykins
Encyclopedia
Ronnie Boykins was a jazz
bassist
and is best known for his work with pianist/bandleader Sun Ra
, although he had played with such disparate musicians as Muddy Waters
, Johnny Griffin
, and Jimmy Witherspoon
prior to joining Sun Ra's Arkestra.
period, travelled with them to Canada
and then to New York City
. Boykins has been described as "the pivot around which much of Sun Ra's music revolved for 8 years".
This is especially pronounced on the key recordings from 1965 (The Magic City
, The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One
and The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume Two
) where the intertwining lines of Boykins' bass
and Ra's electronic
keyboards
provide the cohesion. He was a regular member of Sun Ra's band from 1958 until 1966, and occasionally thereafter up to 1974.
Like his fellow Sun Ra bandmates, John Gilmore
and Pat Patrick, Boykins attended Chicago
's DuSable High School
and studied under its famed music teacher "Captain" Walter Dyett
. He also studied with Ernie Shepard, who would later work with Duke Ellington
.
Before joining Ra, Boykins had joined with a trombonist friend to open a private club—The House of Culture—with the intent of promoting black culture.
Boykins' arco solo on Sun Ra's "Rocket No. 9 Take Off for Planet Venus" from 1960 may be the first recorded example of the bass being played in a horn
-like manner within a relatively free context, predating similar work by Alan Silva
and David Izenzon
. Boykins worked with both free and straight-ahead musicians.
In 1962, he recorded with the hard bop
tenor saxophonist
Bill Barron
and, the next year, with pianist
Elmo Hope
. Boykins worked with tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp
's New York Contemporary Five
in 1964. Boykins left Ra in 1966, ostensibly to pursue more lucrative opportunities; Ra had a difficult time finding a replacement, at times settling for playing his own bass lines on keyboard
.
In the late '60s, he formed his own group, the Free Jazz Society, which included the pianist
John Hicks
.
In the '70s, Boykins played with the Melodic Art-tet, a cooperative free jazz
ensemble that also included drummer
Roger Blank, saxophonist Charles Brackeen, and trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah
.
In 1975, the bassist led a session for ESP Disk that produced his self-titled LP
, The Will Come, Is Now.
In 1979 he played with Steve Lacy
and Dennis Charles on New York Capers and Quirks. In the course of his career, Boykins also worked with Mary Lou Williams
, Marion Brown
, Sarah Vaughan
, and Daoud Haroom, among others.
He died of a heart attack
in 1980 at the age of 45.
His son, Ronnie Boykins Jr. is a Music Producer, Film Maker and Photographer. He scored the feature film Urchin
.
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
bassist
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
and is best known for his work with pianist/bandleader Sun Ra
Sun Ra
Sun Ra was a prolific jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy," musical compositions and performances. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama...
, although he had played with such disparate musicians as Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...
, Johnny Griffin
Johnny Griffin
John Arnold Griffin III was an American bop and hard bop tenor saxophonist.- Early life and career :Griffin studied music at DuSable High School in Chicago under Walter Dyett, starting out on clarinet before moving on to oboe and then alto sax...
, and Jimmy Witherspoon
Jimmy Witherspoon
Jimmy Witherspoon was an American jump blues singer.-Early life and career:James Witherspoon was born in Gurdon, Arkansas. He first attracted attention singing with Teddy Weatherford's band in Calcutta, India, which made regular radio broadcasts over the U. S. Armed Forces Radio Service during...
prior to joining Sun Ra's Arkestra.
Biography
He joined the Arkestra during the ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
period, travelled with them to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and then to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Boykins has been described as "the pivot around which much of Sun Ra's music revolved for 8 years".
This is especially pronounced on the key recordings from 1965 (The Magic City
The Magic City
The Magic City is an album by the American jazz musician Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra. Recorded in two sessions in 1965, the record was released on Ra's own Saturn label in 1966...
, The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One
The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One
The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One is a 1965 album by the jazz musician Sun Ra. The back cover describes it as an "album of compositions and arrangements by Sun Ra played by Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra"....
and The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume Two
The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume Two
The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume Two is a 1965 recording by the jazz musician Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra. Where Volume One of the Heliocentric Worlds series had predominantly featured short abstract pieces, Volume Two features longer pieces performed by a smaller group, making it closer...
) where the intertwining lines of Boykins' bass
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
and Ra's electronic
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
keyboards
Keyboard instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
provide the cohesion. He was a regular member of Sun Ra's band from 1958 until 1966, and occasionally thereafter up to 1974.
Like his fellow Sun Ra bandmates, John Gilmore
John Gilmore (musician)
John Gilmore was an American jazz tenor saxophone player best-known for his long tenure as a member of Sun Ra's Arkestra...
and Pat Patrick, Boykins attended Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
's DuSable High School
DuSable High School
DuSable High School was a public high school in Chicago opened in the Bronzeville neighborhood in 1934. It was named after Chicago's first permanent non-native settler, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. DuSable was built to accommodate the growing Phillips High School in the 1930s. The campus was...
and studied under its famed music teacher "Captain" Walter Dyett
Walter Dyett
Walter Henri Dyett was an American violinist and music educator. As musical director at DuSable High School in Chicago, he trained many students who went on to become well-known musicians.- Career :...
. He also studied with Ernie Shepard, who would later work with Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
.
Before joining Ra, Boykins had joined with a trombonist friend to open a private club—The House of Culture—with the intent of promoting black culture.
Boykins' arco solo on Sun Ra's "Rocket No. 9 Take Off for Planet Venus" from 1960 may be the first recorded example of the bass being played in a horn
Horn section
In music, a horn section can refer to several groups of musicians. It can refer to the musicians in a symphony orchestra who play the horn . In a British-style brass band it refers to the tenor horn players. In popular music, it can also refer to a small group of wind instrumentalists who augment a...
-like manner within a relatively free context, predating similar work by Alan Silva
Alan Silva
Alan Silva is an American free jazz double bassist and keyboard player.-Biography:...
and David Izenzon
David Izenzon
David Izenzon was an American jazz double bassist.Izenzon began playing double bass at age twenty-four. He played locally in his hometown of Pittsburgh before moving to New York City in 1961...
. Boykins worked with both free and straight-ahead musicians.
In 1962, he recorded with the hard bop
Hard bop
Hard bop is a style of jazz that is an extension of bebop music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz which incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano...
tenor saxophonist
Tenor saxophone
The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor, with the alto, are the two most common types of saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B, and written as a transposing instrument in the treble...
Bill Barron
Bill Barron (musician)
Bill Barron was an American jazz tenor and soprano tenor saxophonist.-Biography:...
and, the next year, with pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
Elmo Hope
Elmo Hope
St. Elmo Sylvester Hope was an American jazz pianist, performing chiefly in the bop and hard bop genres. His highly individual piano-playing and, especially, his compositions have led a few enthusiasts and critics such as David Rosenthal to place him alongside his contemporaries Bud Powell and...
. Boykins worked with tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp
Archie Shepp
Archie Shepp is a prominent African-American jazz saxophonist. Shepp is best known for his passionately Afrocentric music of the late 1960s, which focused on highlighting the injustices faced by the African-Americans, as well as for his work with the New York Contemporary Five, Horace Parlan, and...
's New York Contemporary Five
New York Contemporary Five
The New York Contemporary Five was an avant-garde jazz ensemble active in the first half of the 1960s.It has been described as "a group which, despite its ... short lease on life, has considerable historical significance", laying "the cornerstone of what might be called the mainstream of free jazz"...
in 1964. Boykins left Ra in 1966, ostensibly to pursue more lucrative opportunities; Ra had a difficult time finding a replacement, at times settling for playing his own bass lines on keyboard
Keyboard instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
.
In the late '60s, he formed his own group, the Free Jazz Society, which included the pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
John Hicks
John Hicks (jazz pianist)
John Josephus Hicks, Jr. was an American jazz pianist and composer, active in the New York and the international jazz scene from the mid-1960s.-Biography:...
.
In the '70s, Boykins played with the Melodic Art-tet, a cooperative free jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
ensemble that also included drummer
Drummer
A drummer is a musician who is capable of playing drums, which includes but is not limited to a drum kit and accessory based hardware which includes an assortment of pedals and standing support mechanisms, marching percussion and/or any musical instrument that is struck within the context of a...
Roger Blank, saxophonist Charles Brackeen, and trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah
Ahmed Abdullah
Ahmed Abdullah is a jazz trumpeter. He began playing when he was 13 years old. By the 1970s he was performing in New York's loft scene, and joined the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1976. Since that time he has played with Chico Freeman, Ronnie Boykins, Charles Brackeen, Steve Reid, John Hicks and Marion Brown...
.
In 1975, the bassist led a session for ESP Disk that produced his self-titled LP
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
, The Will Come, Is Now.
In 1979 he played with Steve Lacy
Steve Lacy
Steve Lacy , born Steven Norman Lackritz in New York City, was a jazz saxophonist and composer recognized as one of the important players of soprano saxophone....
and Dennis Charles on New York Capers and Quirks. In the course of his career, Boykins also worked with Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. Williams wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements, and recorded more than one hundred records...
, Marion Brown
Marion Brown
Marion Brown was a jazz alto saxophonist and ethnomusicologist. He is most well known as a member of the 1960s avant-garde jazz scene in New York City, playing alongside musicians such as John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and John Tchicai...
, Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Lois Vaughan was an American jazz singer, described by Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century."...
, and Daoud Haroom, among others.
He died of a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
in 1980 at the age of 45.
His son, Ronnie Boykins Jr. is a Music Producer, Film Maker and Photographer. He scored the feature film Urchin
Urchin (film)
Urchin is a 2007 film about a homeless boy living in a New York City underground mole people community called Scum-City.-Plot:This is the story of a child who lives in Scum City. When the Old Man came to Scum City, a homeless camp in the Manhattan tunnels, his story seemed wild...
.
As sideman
- 1964: George BensonGeorge BensonGeorge Benson is a ten Grammy Award winning American musician, whose production career began at the age of twenty-one as a jazz guitarist....
- The New Boss GuitarThe New Boss GuitarThe New Boss Guitar of George Benson is the debut album by jazz/soul guitarist George Benson.-Side one:#"Shadow Dancers" - 4:45#"The Sweet Alice Blues" - 4:36#"I Don't Know" - 6:45-Side two:... - 1964: Bill Barron, Ted Curson & Orchestra - Now, Hear This!
- 1964: Bill Dixon 7-tette/Archie Shepp and the New York Contemporary 5Bill Dixon 7-tette/Archie Shepp and the New York Contemporary 5Bill Dixon 7-tette/Archie Shepp and the New York Contemporary 5 is an album released on the Savoy label originally featuring one LP side by Bill Dixon's septet and one LP side by the New York Contemporary Five featuring saxophonist Archie Shepp...
- 1967: Rahsaan Roland KirkRahsaan Roland KirkRahsaan Roland Kirk was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist who played tenor saxophone, flute and many other instruments...
- Now Please Don't You Cry, Beautiful EdithNow Please Don't You Cry, Beautiful EdithNow Please Don't You Cry, Beautiful Edith is an album by jazz multi-instrumentalist Roland Kirk. It was originally released on the Verve label in 1967 and features performances by Kirk with Lonnie Liston Smith, Ronnie Boykins and Grady Tate... - 1974: Sam RiversSam RiversSamuel Carthorne Rivers , is an American jazz musician and composer. He performs on soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet, flute, harmonica and piano....
- CrystalsCrystals (album)Crystals is an avant-garde/free-jazz LP by Sam Rivers on the Impulse! label released in 1974 in a stereo/quadraphonic format.- Criticism :...