James “Jabbo” Ware
James “Jabbo” Ware, a jazz saxophonist, composer, arranger, music copyist and band leader, died on December 29, 2022, in a hospital in Poughkeepsie, NY, after a brief illness.
Mr. Ware was born in Rome, Georgia on November 16, 1942, and grew up there before moving to Chattanooga, and, when he was seventeen years old, to Saint Louis. Jabbo had a host of strong women in his life--especially his grandmother Ada Hines--whose influence, he noted often, helped to shape the man he was.
Around 1960 he migrated to Saint Louis where he found his true calling and passion… jazz.
He moved into a Central West End neighborhood rife with jazz fans and jazz musicians, one of whom became his saxophone teacher and life guide, Harry Wynn. Mr. Wynn inspired young Ware to join a student band where he met two life-long friends, J D Parran and Alfred Netterville. Wynn taught him to copy his music exercises from the printed books by hand. Jabbo was extremely fulfilled by this exercise performing it daily and was later inspired to compose music for the St. Louis Black Artists Group (BAG) Big Band along with Parran, Oliver Lake, Julius Hemphill, and others.
By the late 1960’s he was lured to New York City by his close friend and renowned baritone saxophonist, Hamiet Bluiett, with the promise of living at the center of the music world where he continued to learn from masters such as George Coleman. He plied his trade as a music copyist, arranger, and baritone saxophonist in large jazz ensembles, working with Archie Shepp, Charlie Mingus, Slide Hampton, Frank Foster, Jaki Byard, Gil Evans, Muhal Richard Abrams, Hilton Ruiz, Jimmy Heath, Ron Carter, Jimmy Owens, Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri and many others.
Jabbo’s signature contribution and dream fulfilled was performing and recording his own compositions from the 1970’s onward. His big band, the Me, We and Them Orchestra, was conceived on Duke Ellington’s model of individual voices focused through a performing family of musicians. His CD Vignettes in the Spirit of Ellington was a tribute to Ellington’s influence on his music. In 1991, he created a nonprofit organization, Y’All of New York, dedicated to promoting jazz through educating young people, composing, and performing. His composition, Migration, was written for full orchestra and selected for performance by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in the late 1990s.
Beginning in the 1990s, James found a second home in the Catskill Mountains, enjoying the mountains, music, and people of Fleischmanns and, for the past 12 years, Roxbury, NY.
Mr. Ware was preceded in death by his grandmother and grandfather, Ada and Horace Hines; his mother, Bernice (Ware) Black; stepfathers, James Welch and Robert Black; his aunts, Ola May Ware and Eddie Louise (Ware) Schropshire; and his uncles, Lamar Ware and Louis Ware, Jr.
He is survived by his loving and devoted wife Diana J. Mason; loving sister, April Esenwah-Butcher; brother Robert Black; uncle, Rudolph Ware; brother-in-law, Mike Butcher; and many beloved cousins, nieces, nephews, and extended family.
In lieu of flower, donations can be made in memory of James Jabbo Ware to fund a music scholarship at Greenwich House Music School at https://www.greenwichhouse.org/donate/.