MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The Memphis music scene has lost another great one. Stax announced Tuesday, May 23, 2023, that saxophonist Floyd Newman has passed away at the age of 92.
A member of the ‘Memphis Horns,’ Newman was the first member invited to be a part of B.B. King’s first band, according to the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. He got his start playing the Plantation Inn Nightclub in West Memphis with blues and jazz greats like Willie Mitchell, Isaac Hayes, and more.
Stax said it was Newman who first brought Hayes to Stax Records in 1962, where Hayes spent his career making hit songs.
A bandleader and high school band instructor, Stax said Newman donated his saxophone to the museum in 2018, which his father bought him in the late 1940s at a Beale Street pawn shop.
Newman received a degree from Rust College in Holly Springs. Mississippi, and was a band instructor and guidance counselor for Memphis City Schools at Humes and Northside High Schools.
Newman received a Brass Note on the Beale Street Walk of Fame in 2014, and in 2018, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris proclaimed Nov. 1 ‘Floyd Newman Day.’
A cause of death was not released.
