The newest episode of I Love Jazz airs this Thursday, December 13 at 8 pm and features legendary Jazz musician Hamiet Bluiett‘s performance from this summer’s Whitaker Music Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden. To get you in a “jazzy mood” for the show’s  premiere, I would like to share a background of Bluiett’s life-long love affair with jazz, written by HEC-TV producer Taunia Allen Mason:

Seeing the baritone saxophone as a 10 year-old child was love at first sight for Hamiet Bluiett. “I fell in love with the way it looked.” His devotion for the baritone would shape his music career. In 2011 Bluiett was widely hailed by today’s Jazz critics to be one of the best baritone saxophone players in the world.

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Last fall I Love Jazz caught up with the legend at Jazz on Broadway in Alton, Illinois near his hometown of Lovejoy, where in his early days Bluiett studied piano and clarinet before attending SIU at Edwardsville to study flute. He taught himself the baritone saxophone, quickly mastering the instrument. Bluiett’s love affair with the bari sax took him to New York to perform with some of the best musicians the industry could offer. He hit the ground running landing gigs with Sam Rivers, Latin Jazz artist Tito Puente, African drummer Babatunde Olatunji, virtuso bass player Charlie Mingus, and R & B artist Aretha Franklin.

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Bluiett, along with Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, and David Murry, formed the World Saxophone Quartet (WSQ). “I just wanted to do everything with that horn.” He toured the world with a leading band, making a number of recordings with the WSQ and as a solo artist. However, the fast-paced lifestyle would take a toll on him physically. In 2002 he returned to his hometown of Lovejoy to heal. “I have damage,” he said. “Collateral damage of being a musician.” Ten years later, Bluiett is restored with no intentions of slowing down. He has since returned to New York playing what he calls “Bluiett Music.” With no boundaries, the 71 year-old tours the world playing the instrument he fell in love with as a young boy. But with all of his performances, recordings and accolades his greatest achievement is “getting to be this old.”