Musician and Educator Andrew Goodrich Dies at 80

Andrew Goodrich, a musician, educator and early civil rights activist, died October 19, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. He was 80. Goodrich, who recorded for Delmark Records, was born in Memphis is 1938, where he performed on Beale Street and befriended local musicians such as B.B. King and Hank Crawford. After playing with his high school and college bands, he both taught music and played professionally.

Goodrich performed with Cannonball and Nat Adderley and poet Langston Hughes at the first Jazz and Poetry concert at Fisk University in 1958, and received a Best Saxophonist award at the Notre Dame Jazz Festival in 1968 and ’69. He also performed at the White House in 1981. His first jazz album, Natch’l Natch’l, was released in 1976 and his second, Motherless Child, was cut for Delmark in 1997. That was followed by 2002’s Too Muckin’ Fuch.

Goodrich taught as a public school music teacher in Memphis and Nashville and served as the director of the Office of Minority Group Programs at the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges in Washington, D.C.; as an administrative director for student affairs at the University of Maryland; and as an associate professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois. Goodrich was also an activist who worked within the areas of justice and equality as a member of the NAACP.

Originally Published October 24, 2008