Med Flory

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American jazz saxophonist and bandleader, and television and film actor, who co-founded Supersax, a musical ensemble that won a Grammy Award. Flory played in the bands of Claude Thornhill and Woody Herman in the early 1950s before forming his own ensemble in New York City. In 1955, he relocated to California and started a new group, which played at the 1958 Monterey Jazz Festival. In the late 1950s, he played with Terry Gibbs, Art Pepper, and Herman again, playing both tenor and baritone saxophone. He was cast in twenty-nine episodes from 1956 to 1957 of the ABC variety show, The Ray Anthony Show. In the 1960s, Flory was less active in music, working in television and film as an actor and screenwriter; his credits include Wagon Train, The Rifleman, Ripcord (twice), Rawhide (twice), Gunsmoke (twice), and so forth. In the mid-1960s Flory worked with Art Pepper and Joe Maini on transcriptions and arrangements of Charlie Parker recordings, and in 1972, he co-founded Supersax, an ensemble devoted to Parker's work. Supersax's debut album, Supersax Plays Bird, won a Grammy Award. Flory died of a heart ailment on 12 March 2014 in North Hollywood, California, at the age of 87. Link to Wikipedia biography