Buddy Arnold

b. Arnold Grishaver, 30 April 1926, the Bronx, New York City, New York, USA, d. 9 November 2003, Los Angeles, California, USA. Arnold took up playing the tenor saxophone at the age of nine and at 16 was performing professionally. An early engagement was with George Auld and he also played with Joe Marsala. Military service during World War II interrupted his career but after the war he joined Buddy Rich’s band for a west coast tour. He made his recording debut in 1949 with singer Gene Williams who was accompanied on a Mercury Records session by the ‘Junior Thornhill Band’ comprising instrumentalists drawn mainly from Claude Thornhill’s band, and which included arranger Gil Evans. Two years later, Arnold played with Buddy DeFranco but by this time he had become addicted to drugs and thus began a long period of musical and personal decline. In the mid-50s he was hospitalized but then signed with ABC-Paramount Records, making an album in 1956 on which he was joined by Gene Quill (saxophone), Frank Rehak (trombone), John Williams (piano), and others. In 1958, another downswing occurred when he was charged with attempted burglary and went to prison. At the start of the 60s, now pardoned, Arnold joined the Tommy Dorsey band and was then with Stan Kenton, appearing on Adventures In Blues and Adventures In Jazz. Settled now in Los Angeles, he signed with Capitol Records for whom he made some long unavailable albums. Straight for a while, his addiction again overcame him and in 1981 he was arrested, this time on charges of forging prescriptions and impersonating a doctor. For this, he was sentenced to seven years in the state prison at San Quentin. In an attempt at rehabilitation, Arnold entered a drug treatment programme and was granted an early parole. Aided by his second wife, Carole Fields, in 1992 Arnold established the Musicians’ Assistance Program, an organization dedicated to the support and encouragement of musicians seeking treatment for drug and alcohol addiction. In the following decade the organization claimed to have assisted more than 1, 500 individuals, regardless of their ability to pay, and became one of the music industry’s most prominent charities. Despite or perhaps because of the many downs of his switchback career, towards the end of his life Arnold gained the respect and affection of many people in the music business. The course of his career makes it difficult to arrive at an accurate assessment of his musical stature but what is clear is that had he not led the life he did, jazz would have benefited from his undoubted musicianship. Arnold died at Cedars Sinai Hospital from complications following open-heart surgery.