What would have happened to James Brown if he hadn't run into Pee Wee Ellis? What from Van Morrison? Pee Wee Ellis himself had a laconic answer ready: “Van Morrison is a musician. James Brown thought he was one. ”Ellis was Van Morrison's twin brother of various mothers, who attached black thoughts to the Irish singer-songwriter's ideas, arranged and roughened all the songs and breathed a distinctly jazz breath into the music with his saxophone. James "Mr. Dynamite “Brown had no ideas. But a lot of energy - in the vocal cords as well as in the legs. And he had sharp-edged lyrics: "Cold Sweat", "It's a Man's World", "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud".

Everything else was done by Pee Wee Ellis. That means the musically best time of James Brown - “America's No. 1 Soul Brother “- were the years from 1965 to 1969 when Pee Wee Ellis laid the musical fuse for the explosive funk shows in the background. Van Morrison, on the other hand, was long before that and remained a great pop artist in his own right even after his time with Ellis.

Pee Wee Ellis was what America calls “a musician's musicalian”. He was funny and completely relaxed, even if it was hectic, and that was the rule in the jazz & funk & rock & roll business. Everyone liked having someone like that in their band: as a saxophonist, composer and arranger, professional, versatile, stylistically polyglot. The man who has been given the title of “Dr. Wireless. hc “, was able to play with everyone and was on stage and in the studio with everyone - from Ron Carter and George Benson to Parliament. From Marianne Faithfull to Esther Phillips to Ginger Baker and Lenny Kravitz. Also with Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley, the other two background winds from the James Brown Band,with whom he formed the tribute band "JB Horns" in the eighties.

His tenor and baritone saxophone, this weatherproof sound and the rhythmic attacks, you could always tell that Sonny Rollins, one of the greats of jazz, was his first teacher and mentor, and perhaps even encouraged him to follow his example . To strengthen his tone, like a demosthenes of jazz, Rollins had temporarily stood on the Williamsburg Bridge between Brooklyn and the Lower East Side in New York during the day to play against the street noise. In any case, his student's saxophone had a similar radiance that drowned out everything until the end.

In December 2019, Pee Wee Ellis, who had lived in the south-west of England for a long time, was in Germany for the last time with the singer China Moses to wish his fans here a bizarre Funky Christmas;

more expressive good news than quiet contemplation.

And without a holiday goose, of course, but rather with its "Chicken", the song that - like so many of his hits - has meanwhile found a second existence as a sampler in hip-hop.

In individualistic jazz, Pee Wee Ellis was an unmistakable type.

He died last Friday at the age of eighty.