Even in a city known for its brawny, larger-than-life piano players, Don Bennett stood out.
With an enormous keyboard sound and a technique that would not quit, Mr. Bennett ranked among Chicago’s mightiest jazz pianists.
Mr. Bennett, 62, who died Monday at the University of Chicago Hospitals, had not performed publicly since undergoing neck surgery in February 2001.
But his reputation as a leonine soloist, formidable bandleader and distinctive composer-arranger earned him the enduring respect of some of Chicago’s most esteemed players.
“Don Bennett was a natural talent and an absolutely natural pianist,” said Willie Pickens, a noted Chicago pianist who knew Mr. Bennett since the late 1950s.
“He had all this in-born talent, a great ear and a good conception of the kind of music he wanted to make.”
In general, that meant a piano style that merged the volatility of Ahmad Jamal, whom Mr. Bennett considered an early influence, with the galvanic, all-over-the-keyboard manner of McCoy Tyner, Art Tatum and other piano hyper-virtuosos.
It was a heroic approach to the keyboard born of uncounted nights in clubs on the South Side, where Mr. Bennett was born on Aug. 14, 1941.
“When he first came to me for lessons as a youngster, it was obvious he had all this talent, but he was quite undisciplined,” recalled Marijo Johnson, Mr. Bennett’s first piano teacher.
“But years later, when I was living in New York and he played one of his early CDs for me over the telephone, I was blown away by how great he had become, and how disciplined a musician he had turned into.”
Mr. Bennett credited that blossoming not only to Johnson, for whom he named the tune “Ode to Mari-Jo,” but also to study in the 1960s with another technically brilliant, harmonically sophisticated player, Phineas Newborn Jr.
Thereafter, Mr. Bennett became a peripatetic jazz artist, moving restlessly from residencies in Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam and his hometown.
Throughout, Mr. Bennett faced struggles making a living as a jazz musician. He gave up the music business entirely for about a decade, starting in the late 1970s.
Though he returned to music in 1988, releasing several critically acclaimed albums, he bristled at the way jazz musicians were treated–or ignored–in Chicago and across the U.S.
“I’ve left this city so many times and swore to God I’d never come back,” he told the Tribune in 1998. “I’ve sworn I would never come back to this country. But when you’re away, the longer you stay away, the magnet gets stronger. I can’t explain it.”
Mr. Bennett’s small but impressive discography includes “Sleeping Giant” on the Chicago-based Southport label; “Simplexity,” a substantial trio date that was his third album on Candid; and “Reaching for a Star,” a sumptuously arranged recording on Madonis.
Mr. Bennett is survived by his wife, Terri; a companion, Nikki Buckman; five children; and two grandchildren.
A public memorial will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday at the Ramada Inn Lake Shore, 4900 S. Lake Shore Drive.
