Saw that news on Facebook
NPR did a nice piece on Curtis:
Curtis Fuller, Leading Trombonist Of Jazz's Detroit Wave, Dies At 86
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/10/995507160/curtis-fuller-leading-trombonist-of-jazzs-detroit-wave-dies-at-86
Curtis was someone I knew a little bit through my dad. He would always wave and come over to hang out with us a bit when he saw us at a show. What a marvelous gentleman and musician he was.
Curtis was orphaned at an early age and was raised in the city's orphanage at Herman Kiefer. Whenever he played in Detroit, like his appearances at the Jazz Festival, a group of very grown up "Kiefer kids" would always show up to see him and he would often send a little shout out to them.
Later in his childhood he was at the Children's Aid Society in Detroit. In his teenage years he lived at a Catholic boys facility in Inkster, where he went to high school and first learned the trombone. After a short time at WSU he went to NYC with fellow rising Detroit jazz star Yusef Lateef and stayed, becoming a well-recorded first call trombonist by the time he was 22.
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