Chief Bey, born James Hawthorne Bey, (April 17, 1913 - April 8, 2004) was an American jazz percussionist and African folklorist.
Born in Yamassee , South Carolina, he moved with his family to Brooklyn and then to Harlem, where he began playing drums and singing in church choirs. In the 1950s, he performed in an international tour of Porgy and Bess starring Leontyne Price and Cab Calloway. He also began a busy recording career performing on Herbie Mann's At the Village Gate (1961), Art Blakey's The African Beat (1962), as well as albums by Harry Belafonte, Pharoah Saunders and others. He took his stage name after joining the Moorish Science Temple of America, a Muslim sect. He taught the shekere, a West African percussion instrument, at the Griot Institute at Intermediate School 246 in Brooklyn.
He died of stomach cancer at the age of 90.
His widow, Barbara Kenyatta Bey (born Barbara Ann Coleman in Harlem on June 9, 1944), a priestess of the Yemaja religion, collapsed at his funeral and died on April 17. April 17th would not only have been Bey's 91st birthday, but the couple's 31st wedding anniversary.
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