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The Career Of Billy Higgins

Jazz Unlimited for May 13, 2018 will be “The Career of Billy Higgins.”  A drummer who played for musicians with widely divergent styles, an always smiling Billy Higgins lifted the bandstand for musicians as diverse as Stan Getz and Cal Tjader, Paul Horn, Thelonious Monk, Teddy Edwards, Milt Jackson, Lee Morgan, Pat Metheny, Abbey Lincoln, John Coltrane, Geoff Keezer, David Murray, Pat Martino, Junko Onishi, Bertha Hope, Ornette Coleman, Bobby Hutcherson, Mal Waldron, Charles Lloyd, Clifford Jordan, and Sun Ra during his 44-year performing career.

The Slide Show contains my photographs of some of the musicians heard on this show.

Here is Pat Metheny (g) Joshua Redman (ts) Christian McBride (b) and Billy Higgins (d) at Umbria in 1993.  The tune was not named.

Dennis Owsley has broadcast a weekly jazz show for St. Louis Public Radio since April 1983. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a retired Monsanto Senior Science Fellow and college teacher. His show, Jazz Unlimited, airs every Sunday from 9:00 p.m. to midnight. The show has the largest jazz audience in St. Louis and was named Best Jazz Radio Show in St. Louis for the years 2005-2007 and 2009 by the Riverfront Times. In celebration of his 25 years on the air, January 24, 2008 was proclaimed Dennis Owsley Day" in the City of St. Louis. He is the 2010 winner of the St. Louis Public Radio Millard S. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award. Dennis is also a noted photographer, and his exhibit, In the Moment: Photographs of Jazz Musicians, ran from September 23, 2005 to January 21, 2006 at the Sheldon Art Gallery. He is a lifetime student of jazz history and teaches short courses on the subject. Dennis is the author of the award-winning book City of Gabriels: The History of Jazz in St. Louis 1985-1973, published in 2006.