Ed Wiley Jr., 80, jazz saxophonist with deep Philadelphia ties, dies

Ed Wiley Jr., 80, the honking "Texas tenor" jazz saxophonist who scored a top 10 hit in 1950 with "Cry, Cry Baby" and whose six-decade career began as a sideman behind such blues vocalists as Big Joe Turner, Big Mama Thornton, and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, has died.

Mr. Wiley, who was born in Houston and lived nearly 50 years in the Philadelphia area - raised seven children in Levittown and resided in Yardley until February - died Monday, Sept. 27, in Raleigh, N.C.

This year, he moved to Garner, N.C., where he performed Sept. 25. After attending a church service the next morning, he fell in a gravel parking lot.

"He slipped and bumped his head," his son Ed Wiley III said Friday. "It was a bizarre thing." Mr. Wiley initially seemed fine but later slipped into a coma.

Born in 1930, Mr. Wiley made his name in the Houston music scene in the late 1940s after serving in the Coast Guard. His brash, forceful playing was influenced by fellow Lone Star State horn-blowers Arnett Cobb and Illinois Jacquet.

In a 1995 interview, he said his Texas tenor style was "an aggressive approach to whatever type of tune you were doing. It's a big sound, as soulful as can be." Playing a carnival circuit without amplification, "you had to really dig deep down into your horn and get some volume."

In the '40s and '50s, Mr. Wiley played on sessions for the Mercury and the Sittin In With labels, backing performers such as Peppermint Harris, Smokey Hogg, and Teddy Reynolds, the vocalist on "Cry, Cry Baby," which held on to a spot in the Billboard Top 10 for four months.

Collaborating with singers such as Jackie Brenston and Harvey Fuqua (later of the Moonglows), the sax man was a pivotal player in the early '50s, when black R&B musicians were playing hard, aggressive music that sounded strikingly similar to what would soon be dubbed rock and roll.

Mr. Wiley moved first to Baltimore and later to Philadelphia after marrying singer Maye Robinson, a native of Chester, in 1954.

Mr. Wiley "moved seriously into jazz," his son said, during the '50s. He worked with players such as Philadelphia organist Shirley Scott, and his playing began to show the influence of bebop.

He bought a house in Levittown in 1964, and gave up the road, working as a machinist for Crown, Cork & Seal while taking regional gigs backing Sound of Philadelphia acts such as Billy Paul and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes.

Mr. Wiley recorded infrequently in the '70s and '80s, then returned to jazz in the '90s. Of his most recent album, About the Soul, in 2006, Inquirer jazz critic Karl Stark wrote: "You know from the first bars that tenor saxophonist Ed Wiley Jr. is the real deal."

Mr. Wiley is survived by his former wife, Maye; sons Matthew, Ed III, and Bryan; daughters Charmaigne Stargell, Lovette Sumner, and Veretta Tillman; a sister; 11 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Services were held Friday in Garner. Details of a Philadelphia memorial service were pending.