Music
Doug Watkins
1934–1962
· jazz double bassist
Detroit-born bassist, an original Jazz Messenger, who played on Sonny Rollins's Saxophone Colossus and dozens of hard-bop sessions before dying in a car crash at 27.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
near Holbrook, Arizona
aged 27- Birth name
- Douglas Watkins
- Detroit years
- 1934–early 1950s
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Doug Watkins grew up in Detroit's postwar jazz scene, part of the generation of young players, among them his cousin Paul Chambers, Donald Byrd and Tommy Flanagan, who carried the city's bebop training to New York in the early 1950s. There he became one of the most in-demand bassists of the hard-bop era. He was an original member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and later left with Horace Silver, who wrote that the two wanted to escape the band's drug problems and the police searches that came with them. At 22 he played on Sonny Rollins's Saxophone Colossus (1956) with Max Roach and fellow Detroiter Tommy Flanagan, and he freelanced with Donald Byrd, Kenny Burrell, Jackie McLean, Lee Morgan and Hank Mobley. When Charles Mingus moved to piano in 1961, he hired Watkins on bass. His own albums were Watkins at Large (1956) and Soulnik (1960), on which he played cello. He died in a car accident in Arizona in 1962.
Highlights
- Original member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers
- Bassist on Sonny Rollins's Saxophone Colossus (1956)
- Played bass for Charles Mingus's Oh Yeah (1961)
- Leader albums Watkins at Large (1956) and Soulnik (1960)