found: African American National Biography, accessed December 17, 2014, via Oxford African American Studies Center database:(Blackwell, Ed; percussionist, jazz musician, rhythm and blues musician, singer; born 10 October 1929 in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States; met saxophonist Ornette Coleman (1951) and assembled a quartet with Billy Higgins on drums, which arrived in New York and became a revolution in jazz (1959); with Coleman, took part in the Atlantic recordings This is Our Music, Free Jazz and Ornette on Tenor (1961); performed at the Five Spot with a quintet co-led by the reedman Eric Dolphy and the trumpeter Booker Little; entered academia, joining Connecticut's Wesleyan University as an artist in residence (1975); joined up with fellow Coleman alumni Cherry, Dewey Redman (tenor), and Charlie Haden (bass) to form Old and New Dreams (1976); served as a lodestar for these Coleman alumni throughout the eighties; died 07 October 1992 in Hartford, Connecticut, United States)
