John Blake

Throughout his career, John Blake veered back and forth between R&B-ish sets and more adventurous dates. A pleasing if not overly distinctive violinist, the versatile Blake played in a wide variety of settings. After advanced classical study, he first gained recognition for his early-'70s recordings with <a href="spotify:artist:7C2DSqaNkh0w77O5Jz1FKh">Archie Shepp</a>. During the next decade, Blake recorded with <a href="spotify:artist:2EsmKkHsXK0WMNGOtIhbxr">McCoy Tyner</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:1Gth2y1RbGSA0OU0Ajdjhr">James Newton</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:4ubqlM8o4mDUo33CnxRFqM">Cecil McBee</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:1UpZCqaVFxjPMDeC5g6BkB">Jay Hoggard</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:05YVYeV4HxYp5rrWalvuE1">Grover Washington, Jr.</a>, touring extensively with <a href="spotify:artist:2EsmKkHsXK0WMNGOtIhbxr">Tyner</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:05YVYeV4HxYp5rrWalvuE1">Washington</a>. He made a series of generally interesting, if diverse, sets for <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Gramavision%22">Gramavision</a> in the 1980s (including a fascinating 1986 date with fellow violinists <a href="spotify:artist:2o9yy7JZaNONL55k3AtBKU">Michal Urbaniak</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:2AMQef1KyMP3l0egtvSyR2">Didier Lockwood</a>) and one CD for Sunnyside in 1992, showing a lot of potential. Striken with multiple myeloma, Blake died in August 2014 at the age of 67. ~ Scott Yanow, Rovi