Frank Wess | In Count Basie band, 91

Frank Wess, 91, who helped anchor the saxophone section of the Count Basie Orchestra in the 1950s and '60s and who pioneered the use of the flute in jazz during a career that spanned more than 70 years, died Oct. 30 in New York.

His longtime partner and common-law wife, Sara Tsutsumi-Wess, said he died in a taxicab on his way to dialysis for a kidney ailment.

Mr. Wess began his career in Washington, where he moved from Oklahoma in 1935. He had temporarily stopped playing until he heard a group of students jamming during lunch hour at Dunbar High School. One of the students was Billy Taylor, who switched from saxophone to piano after hearing Wess play.

"He's the reason I don't play tenor saxophone," Taylor, who died in 2010, told the Washington Post in 2008. "Even in his teens, he was a remarkable player."

Mr. Wess, who studied classical music in his youth, received much of his early jazz training at Washington's U Street nightclubs, such as the Club Bali, Republic Gardens, Crystal Caverns, and Club Bengasi.

"You had to learn jazz in the streets," he told the Post. "If you played it in the conservatory, they'd throw you out."

In the mid-1940s, Mr. Wess was a member of singer Billy Eckstine's influential big band.

In his 11 years with Basie, Mr. Wess wrote several tunes and appeared on the classic April in Paris (1955) and Atomic Mr. Basie (1958) albums. - Washington Post