Cranshaw, Bob [Melbourne Robert]
- Lawrence Koch
- , revised by Barry Kernfeld
Extract
[Melbourne Robert]
(b Evanston, IL, Dec 3/10, 1932; d New York, Nov 2, 2016). American bass player. His birthday had been published as December 10, but the New York Times obituary gives December 3. The son of a drummer, he played piano from the age of four and drums from the age of nine before taking up double bass and tuba in high school. He began to work professionally as a double bass player in the Chicago area, and in 1957 became a founding member of Walter Perkins’s MJT + 3. He also played with Perkins in Eddie Higgins’s trio at the London House and the Cloister Inn; in August 1959 the trio accompanied Coleman Hawkins at the Playboy Jazz Festival in Chicago. Cranshaw went to New York with MJT + 3 in 1960 and after the group disbanded in 1962 joined Sonny Rollins, with whom he worked intermittently into the 1980s; his playing may be heard to advantage on ...
