Eaton’s relationship with the noted Ramsey Lewis was what initially propelled Mr. He moved to Chicago where he would eventually hook up first with the Ike Cole Trio and then the Ramsey Lewis Trio. Eaton played in a jazz group at Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial, which became Tennessee State, in Nashville while earning his Bachelor of Music degree and where he pledged Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc. Eaton would go on to say that, of all the instructors he encountered as he rose through the ranks of the top bass players in the world, no one taught him more than John Springer. Eaton said he didn’t know what he thought was in the case, “for all he knew it could be a body.” But when Springer showed him it was a bass, and played it for him Mr. Eaton his relationship with the bass began when he saw a bass case in the car of John Springer, a music instructor at Fairfield Industrial High.
Eaton was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1979 and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 2008 and over the course of his career wrote more than 300 songs performing with some of the greatest names in music including Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughn.Įaton was born in Fairfield on Augand began as a child musician, mastering his mother’s piano, the trumpet, and the saxophone.Īccording to Mr. He saved my mama and my siblings from the worst of the worst and promised to protect and love us forever and ever. who married a woman that made heads turn all over the world. “He met my mama and said she was the ‘baddest woman’ he’s ever laid eyes on and he’s a guy outta Fairfield Ala. Eaton’s daughter, wrote her father was “our Superman.
In a Facebook post on Sunday, Kwani Dickerson Carson, Mr. The Eaton’s were approaching their 44th wedding anniversary in August. He was the greatest husband, the greatest bass player in the world, even if I wasn’t married to him.” “He was just a wonderful man who treated me like a queen and took care of ,” said his wife Myra Eaton. Cleveland “Cleve” Eaton, the Hall of Fame jazz legend from Fairfield (Ala.), died on Sunday morning.