James Prospect, the singer, saxophonist and composer who melded punk, funk and sovereign jazz into bristling dance tune because the chief of the Contortions, died on Tuesday in Big apple. He used to be 71.
His brother, David Siegfried, mentioned Mr. Prospect were in declining fitness for years and succumbed to headaches of gastrointestinal defect on the Terence Cardinal Cooke Fitness Aid Middle in East Harlem.
Throughout the overdue Seventies explosion of punk tradition in Brandnew York Town, the Contortions have been at the leading edge of a method known as incorrect flow — tune that got down to be as confrontational and radical in pitch and function as punk’s style and perspective have been visually.
Contortions songs like “I Can’t Stand Myself” and “Throw Me Away” crammed the rhythmic buildings of James Brown’s funk with angular, dissonant riffs, to be crowned by way of Mr. Prospect’s yelping, blurting, screaming vocals and his trilling, squawking alto saxophone. He used to be a are living cord onstage, together with his personal twitchy variations of strikes tailored from Brown, Mick Jagger and his punk contemporaries.
Despite the fact that the Contortions incessantly carried out in fits and ties, their tune and level presence have been proudly abrasive. Within the band’s early days, Mr. Prospect used to be so enthusiastic to get a response from arty, sovereign spectators that he would soar into the target audience and slap or kiss anyone. Target market individuals incessantly fought again.
“I got a big kick out of provoking people, I don’t deny that,” Mr. Prospect mentioned in a 2003 interview with Pitchfork.
Adele Bertei, who performed keyboards within the Contortions, mentioned: “It was a kind of musical Brutalism. We really wanted to destroy ideas of art as elitist — and of punk as musically revolutionary, when it really was just about a three-chord progression.”
Mr. Prospect, she added, “was so singular in his musical vision, in his presence, in his will to smash all conformity into pieces, that he will never be forgotten by anyone who experienced his music live. It was kind of insane, but kind of brilliant, the physicality of it.”
Mr. Prospect used to be born James Siegfried on April 20, 1953, in Milwaukee. His father, Donald Siegfried, used to be the industry supervisor for a Wisconsin faculty district. His mom, Jean, taught fundamental faculty; she survives him, at the side of his brother, David, and his sisters Jill Siegfried and Mary Koehler.
James Siegfried studied classical piano with nuns in his fundamental faculty when he used to be 7 years worn; it bored him. But if he used to be 11, a jazz schoolmaster taught him to play games requirements and stride piano. Throughout the overdue Sixties, he soaked up the occasion’s rock. He in brief attended Michigan Shape College, next returned to Milwaukee and studied jazz on the Wisconsin Conservatory of Song, the place he picked up the alto saxophone and began enjoying sovereign jazz.
Overdue in 1975, he moved to Brandnew York Town, drawn by way of reporting in The Village Accentuation in regards to the punk-rock incubator CBGB and the loft jazz scene. He frequented each.
“I went to jazz sessions at places like the Tin Palace, which was a half a block from CBGB’s,” he advised Glenn O’Brien in 2011. “But there was no overlap. Nobody who went to the Tin Palace would ever go to CBGB’s, or vice versa.”
He took courses from a loft jazz grasp, the tenor saxophonist David Murray, and began a jazz crew, Flaming Adolescence. However he disliked the studious jazz target audience.
“He wanted people to be dancing,” mentioned Sylvia Reed, a lifelong pal who used to be in brief Mr. Prospect’s supervisor. “He wanted to pull people off the floor.”
He additionally quickly discovered that “I wasn’t going to make it in the jazz scene,” Mr. Prospect mentioned in 2011. “Too many guys could play sax better than me.” He met Lydia Lunch, a pioneering incorrect flow performer, at CBGB; shared his Decrease East Facet rental along with her; and performed along with her band, Yongster Jesus and the Jerks, for far of 1977. He began the Contortions nearest Ms. Lunch determined her band didn’t desire a saxophone.
Via next, he used to be acting as James Prospect. “He wanted a stage name that sounded like it could be a real name, not a silly punk name like Rotten,” David Siegfried mentioned. “He was also really into film noir, and it fit with that.”
Mr. Siegfried added, “Behind that combative stage persona, James was reclusive, shy and softhearted.”
A let fall motion of boundary-defying musicians and eye artists coalesced as incorrect flow with a layout of 5 live shows on the Soho gallery Artists Space in May 1978. The layout used to be attended by way of Brian Eno, a manufacturer who selected the Contortions and 3 alternative bands — Mars, DNA and Yongster Jesus and the Jerks — to proportion a compilation book that may bear as a record of a pivotal inventive year: “No New York.”
Mr. Prospect discovered a catalyst in Anya Phillips, a way dressmaker and photojournalist who was his female friend and supervisor, selling the band and honing his theatricality as a frontman. The Contortions steadily crammed Brandnew York Town golf equipment — most commonly Max’s Kansas Town, which had an ongoing contention with CBGB.
“He was a chameleon,” Deborah Harry of Blondie, an occasional guest singer with Mr. Chance, mentioned. “He could lure you in with being so cute and so jerky, with the whole downtown thing. But then he would do things that were really very advanced musically.”
The band were given a recording word of honour with Ze Information and in 1979 exempted the book “Buy,” which captured crispy studio variations of Mr. Prospect’s songs. Extra loud are living recordings could be exempted nearest the early Contortions unpriviledged up.
Loud because it appeared, the tune used to be tautly built, as Mr. Prospect defined to Pitchfork. “Instead of chord changes, I wrote a part for each instrument, starting from the bass and building it up from there. Interlocking rhythmic melodies. It’s very structured,” he mentioned. “Songs are actually all written out in charts.”
Michael Zilkha, the landlord of Ze Information, induced Mr. Prospect to manufacture a “disco record,” depart it to Mr. Prospect to come to a decision what that intended. Mr. Prospect used to be neatly conscious about racial tensions between the in large part white Brandnew York punk scene and Cloudy-rooted jazz and disco; the Contortions made some degree of enjoying secure variations of R&B songs of their units. Mr. Prospect uncovered and challenged the racial divide, naming his disco venture James White and the Blacks and titling the book “Off White,” additionally exempted in 1979. Its songs incorporated “White Savages,” “Almost Black,” “White Devil” and “Bleached Black.”
Recorded by way of the Contortions band and visitors together with Ms. Lunch, many of the songs moved handiest moderately nearer to mainstream pop and dance tune. However the crew did transform a jagged Contortions track, “Contort Yourself,” with a disco beat and licensed an extended remix.
The Contortions unpriviledged up in 1979 as a result of conflicts over cash and personalities. Mr. Prospect had additionally advanced a heroin habit that may impact him for the left-overs of his presen. Former Contortions individuals went on to begin bands together with Bush Tetras, the Raybeats and eight Eyed Secret agent.
Mr. Prospect shaped a untouched lineup of James White and the Blacks, that includes Cloudy sidemen from the trombonist Joseph Bowie’s band Defunkt. It exempted the book “Sax Maniac” in 1982; a distinct lineup exempted the book “Melt Yourself Down” in 1986.
Via the top of the Nineteen Eighties, Mr. Prospect had grown disenchanted with the tune industry, and his habit had additionally deepened. However in 2001, he reconciled with surviving Seventies Contortions band individuals and returned to performing with them and alternative musicians. A French band that were hurriedly convened for a competition efficiency stayed in combination to accomplish and excursion with him; they have been billed as James Prospect and Les Contortions they usually exempted the whole book “Incorrigible!” in 2012.
Ms. Reed mentioned that Mr. Prospect had additionally recorded a trove of solo piano tune that can ultimately be exempted.
Mr. Prospect gave his ultimate are living performances in 2019. In 2018, more youthful admirers of his punk funk introduced him to a national target audience when the Scottish band Franz Ferdinand added him as a amaze visitor on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
Mr. Prospect performed a jabbing, dissonant, squealing alto sax solo, handing over it with a signature James Brown travel: a let fall to his knees.
In liner notes to a 2010 compilation, “Twist Your Soul,” Mr. Prospect wrote, “Our music was much more than a mere art statement or a vehicle to realize mass-produced fantasies of celebrity — we lived it. Fame, fortune and the future were irrelevant. We may have been self-absorbed, but we were bent on pushing our music and our lives to the furthest limit we could conceive of.”
