Acclaimed Jazz Drummer Dies
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Acclaimed Jazz Drummer Dies
Famed big band and jazz drummer Louie Bellson has died.
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LOS ANGELES (February 17, 2009)--Big band and jazz drummer Louie Bellson has died at 84.

Bellson died Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications of Parkinson's disease after breaking a hip.

News of his death came from his widow, Francine.

Bellson was a master musician who performed with such greats as Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Benny Goodman, as well as with his late wife, Pearl Bailey, who died in 1990.

Bellson's career spanned more than six decades.

He performed on more than 200 albums with jazz giants including Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Oscar Peterson, Woody Herman, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong.

There are tentative plans for a Los Angeles-area memorial service, followed by a funeral and burial in his boyhood home of Moline, Ill.
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