RIP: Tuskegee Airman Herbert Hardesty dies at 91

Herbert Hardesty, a tenor sax player who was featured on many Fats Domino classics and collaborated with many jazz and R&B greats, has died. He was 91 years old.

Rhodes Funeral Home, which is arranging memorial services for Mr. Hardesty, confirmed his death.

Mr. Hardesty was born in New Orleans, where he heard and began playing the city's music from an early age as he grew up in the 12th Ward. According to an obituary provided by his family, Louis Armstrong gave Mr. Hardesty's stepfather a a trumpet, which was passed down to him. It was Mr. Hardesty's first instrument, and he took lessons from Prof. Valmore Victor and played in bands led by Papa Celestin and Chick Webb.

Mr. Hardesty enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1941 even though he was two years too young, and he landed in the Army band while stationed in Jackson, Miss. At the time, he played the trumpet thanks to that first introduction by Armstrong, but the band lacked a sax. Mr. Hardesty, however, agreed to learn to play it if one could be found. Within two days of receiving a saxophone, Mr. Hardesty was hard at work on the instrument that would come to define his career.

Mr. Hardesty eventually joined the Tuskegee Airmen and served with the 99th Flying Squadron in Morocco, Germany and Italy as a radio technician, according to the family obituary.

After returning home to New Orleans, another of Mr. Hardesty's friends proved instrumental to his music career.

At the time, Mr. Hardesty was performing in a band with Dave Bartholomew, the composer, band leader and producer who shaped Fats Domino's career. Bartholomew told Mr. Hardesty he was bringing the sax player in to record with "The Fat Man," according to Rick Coleman, who authored the Fats Domino biography "Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock and Roll" and who was a longtime friend of Mr. Hardesty.

Mr. Hardesty thought Bartholomew meant the radio personality known as the Fat Man.

"He didn't really know Fats Domino at the time. He was not famous," Coleman said Monday (Dec. 5). "Herbert said, 'We're going to record the Fat Man? Well, he's famous!,' thinking it was this radio show guy. He shows up and is like, 'It's not the Fat Man!'"

Still, Mr. Hardesty and Fats Domino seemed to jibe, and they recorded "The Fat Man" that day in 1949, which turned out to be Fats Domino's first national hit.

It was also the start of a long friendship and working relationship. Mr. Hardesty and Fats Domino went on to create together the original classic recordings of "Ain't That a Shame," "I'm Walkin'" and "Blue Monday," among others. The partnership also resulted in Mr. Hardesty moving to Las Vegas in the 1970s as Fats Domino booked so many gigs there.

Mr. Hardesty's skill on the sax took him elsewhere, as well. Over the years, he collaborated with Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Duke Ellington, Tom Waits and Dr. John, and he toured with the Count Basie Orchestra.

"These guys were involved in a lot of musical landmarks," Coleman said of Mr. Hardesty and Fats Domino. "They were always very down to Earth and not assuming about their place in history even though their place in history is very concrete."

Mr. Hardesty often returned home to perform at local events, including Fats Domino's famed farewell show in 2006 at Tipitina's. His last gig at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival came in 2013, when he enlisted Shannon Powell, Roland Guerin, Don Vappie, Gregory Davis, Roger Lewis and Kyle Roussel to assist.

In the last decade of his life, Mr. Hardesty was diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma, Coleman said, but he refused treatment as it might interfere with his ability to play music. He came through, however, and was able to play his sax until about two years ago.

"Never stop. Never stop," Mr. Hardesty told the Las Vegas Review Journal in 2013. "That's my life."

Mr. Hardesty is survived by his partner, Marty de la Rosa, and his children: Michael Hardesty, Kirk Hardesty, Shari Weber, Joe Givens, Tony de la Rosa, Mike de la Rosa and Leslie Echols, as well as 17 grandchildren and additional nieces and nephews.

Memorial services will be held at the D.W. Rhodes Chapel, 3933 Washington Ave., on Saturday (Dec. 10). Viewing will begin at 10 a.m. with a funeral service to follow at 11 a.m. Interment will be at Mt. Olivet Cemetery.