Alfred ‘Pee Wee’ Ellis – 21/04/1941 – 23/09/2021

Pee Wee Ellis has died at his home in Somerset, UK after over six decades of international success as saxophonist, composer, arranger and bandleader. While his career embraced jazz, soul, world music and the blues it is probably for his time as bandleader and co-composer with James Brown that he will be best remembered. During that period (1965-69) Ellis and Brown crystallised a new style of hard-edged R’n’B into what would become the enduring groove of funk, with the seminal ‘Cold Sweat’ followed by a string of jointly-written hits including the anthemic ‘Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)’. The music’s international acclaim led to a relentless touring and recording schedule, with Ellis frequently turning Brown’s sketchy musical inspirations into tightly arranged numbers while crammed into the back of a bus. But while he would always value the experience he left Brown after five years, later insisting that he had really only joined to make enough money to be able to play jazz, his first musical love.

Born in Florida in 1941 his family moved to Texas where he learned clarinet and saxophone in the school band, however the shocking racist murder of his stepfather sent the family to Rochester, New York, in 1955. Ellis started his first professional bands while in High School and around this time, chancing to meet Sonny Rollins in a New York music shop, the 16-year-old saxophonist audaciously asked him for lessons. The saxophone colossus obligingly agreed to a series of weekly meetings which would be a lifetime influence on Ellis’ lyrical hard-bop jazz style. Through the 70s he did indeed pursue jazz, working as studio arranger/musician with George Benson and Esther Phillips, among others, and performing with Dave Liebman. Then a 1979 studio session saw him recruited for the first of two spells as Van Morrison’s bandleader, between which Ellis returned to funk with the JB Horns, a powerful collaboration with ex-JBs Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley.

A successful 1992 UK solo tour with his Pee Wee Ellis Funk Assembly led him to settle in Frome, Somerset with his English wife and manager Charlotte, and he became much in demand as arranger for African artists including Oumou Sangare, Ali Farka Toure and Cheikh Lo, the latter taking part in Ellis’ 2009 Afro-funk touring project Still Black, Still Proud. The Pee Wee Ellis Assembly continued to perform at international festivals and a 2019 European Christmas tour with vocalist Ian Shaw was reprised for what would turn out to be Pee Wee Ellis’ final performance in Bristol just three weeks before his death. Those who knew him will remember an easy-going man with a ready and mischievous wit and a wealth of stories, while those with whom he played will not forget his encouragement and the incisive musical insights and tight discipline that made his compositions and arrangements so reliably compelling.