Obituaries - Nov. 27, 1999

John B. Brooks; Jazz Arranger, Composer

John Benson Brooks, 82, a jazz arranger, composer and songwriter who was closely identified with the “third stream,” a term that composer and conductor Gunther Schuller coined to describe the synthesis between jazz and classical forms. Born in Houlton, Maine, Brooks received instruction on several instruments from his mother, who had a scholarship to the Peabody Academy, and other musicians in her circle of friends. Brooks, a pianist, attended the New England Conservatory and Juilliard before starting his own band in Boston in the late 1930s. He went to work writing arrangements for Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey and Les Brown. His “Just as Though You Were Here,” featuring lyrics by Eddie DeLange, was recorded by Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra in 1942 with vocals by Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers. His most famous hit was “You Came A Long Way From St. Louis,” which was originally recorded by Ray McKinley and his orchestra. In the 1950s, his eclectic musical tastes resulted in a folk-jazz combo at a Town Hall Concert in New York that featured the Weavers. He also worked to unify folk, New Orleans, Kansas City, mainstream and avant-garde jazz into a single style. By the end of the decade, Brooks had devised his own method of composing and improvising with 12 tones. On Nov. 13 in New York City.

Owen E. Hague; Fighter Pilot With Tuskegee Airmen

Owen Earl Hague, 80, who served as a fighter pilot with the legendary Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. A native of Montgomery, Ala., Hague was the youngest of seven children. He joined the service in 1942 and received his training along with nearly 1,000 other African American aviators at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. They formed a unit of highly effective and highly decorated fighter pilots that escorted U.S. bombers on missions during the war. Not a single bomber was lost on the unit’s 200 missions. Hague also served as assistant to Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the commander of the Tuskegee Airmen. While in the service, Hague got a degree in accounting. After retiring in 1962 with the rank of lieutenant colonel, Hague got a master’s degree in accounting and then taught at Brooklyn College and Long Island University. After moving to Atlanta in 1989, Hague joined the Georgia state department of insurance as a financial auditor. The indignities of the segregated military he served in remained firm in his mind, his widow, Joan Smith-Hague, told the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. “I remember him talking about how they [The Tuskegee Airmen] would have to leave restaurants and take their meals in the back so that German prisoners of war could come in and sit,” she said. “To this day he became unsettled just thinking about that.” On Thursday of kidney failure in Atlanta.

John L. Howard; Painter of Coit Tower Murals

John Langley Howard, 97, best known for his murals in San Francisco’s Coit Tower, which were painted as part of a larger mural project in 1934. Part of an East Coast family of artists and architects, Howard came to California in 1904 when his father, John Galen Howard, became campus architect at UC Berkeley. The senior Howard designed Sather Gate, Wheeler Hall, the Campanile and several other monuments that still stand on the campus. John Langley Howard studied engineering at Berkeley but decided on a career in art. He was basically a self-taught painter, etcher and landscape artist. Appalled by the social horrors of the 1930s, Howard painted his Industry mural at Coit Tower, which his brother Henry Howard helped design. John Howard is portrayed in the mural crumpling a newspaper and grabbing a volume of the writings of Karl Marx off a bookshelf. The social-realist mural caused controversy in San Francisco when it was unveiled, with many of the city’s elite calling for its removal. In the course of a long artistic career, Howard lived in more than 20 places, ranging from Monterey and Greece to London, New York and Brownsville, Texas. Howard dabbled in Abstract Expressionism after World War II but found it didn’t reflect the kind of socially responsible art he wished to create. On Nov. 15 in San Francisco.