Kenny Ball, a British jazz trumpeter passed away earlier this week in Basildon Hospital in Essex.
Born May 22, 1930, Kenny Ball was best known as a lead trumpet player and bandleader of Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen.
Kenny Ball started his career after taking trumpet lessons and turning professional in 1953. Later on he was spotted by Lonnie Donegan and signed to Pye Records which put him on TV shows.
Ball was taken to the top of charts with his "Midnight in Moscow" in 1962 when it got to number two in the charts. "Midnight in Moscow" became his signature tune. Ball gained success also in the United States and sold more than one million copies worldwide.
Watch Kenny Ball performing "Midnight in Moscow" in the video below.
Ball had an opportunity to tour the UK with his personal hero Louis Armstrong, and played at the wedding reception for Lady Diana and Prince Charles, in 1981, in Buckingham Palace.
He was survived by his partner, and by his son Keith who joined his father and the band Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen in recent years. Ball worked as a professional jazz musician for over six decades.
"Britain has lost one its most charismatic bandleaders, and a figurehead of the trad movement. Kenny Ball was one of the most extrovert and cheery figures in British entertainment. His chart-topping hits of the 1960s brought jazz to a huge audience, and he was a dazzlingly accomplished trumpeter, with one of the most developed techniques in jazz. Amid the bravura cadenzas were subtleties that passed many of his audience by, such as playing complex solos in unison with his clarinetist, and his high note range seemed so effortless that he made light of its difficulty," said Broadcaster Alyn Shipton, presenter of BBC Radio 3's Jazz Record Requests.
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