Saxophonist, Singer Big Nick Nicholas, Dies At Age 75

Big Nick Nicholas, a tenor saxophonist and singer who played with some of the greatest musicians of postwar jazz, died Oct. 29 at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Queens. He was 75 and lived in Queens.

The cause was heart failure, said Pastor Dale Lind, pastor to jazz musicians at St. Peter’s Church in Manhattan.

Born George Walker Nicholas, in Lansing, Mich., he was a large man with big features; he said that the nickname Big Nick stuck to him from age 10. He had a robust, deep sound on the tenor saxophone, influenced by his hero, Coleman Hawkins.

In the late 1940s, while maintaining a semi-regular presence at the after-hours sessions at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, he also worked with some of the great formative bands of the decade, including those led by Earl Hines, Lucky Millinder and Dizzy Gillespie.

Nicholas contributed a 16-bar solo to the African-Cuban jazz piece “Manteca,” a 1947 recording by Dizzy Gillespie’s group that remains one of the most important in jazz. (It was also while in Gillespie’s band that he made an impression on a young John Coltrane, who would record an original piece called “Big Nick” on the 1962 album “Duke Ellington and John Coltrane.”)

In the early ‘50s, Nicholas led his own group and organized jam sessions at the Paradise Club in Harlem.

But it wasn’t until the ‘80s that he made frequent appearances as a band leader in New York City. He had a full-fledged comeback then, releasing the first album under his own name in 1983 on the India Navigation label, and he appeared often as a band leader in Manhattan jazz clubs.

He is survived by his wife, Eula.