Death of Melba Liston

On April 23, 1999, Melba Liston died at age 73 in California, marking the end of a singular career in jazz history. Sources identify her death in the Los Angeles area, with some specifying Inglewood, California. In her later years she had suffered a series of strokes which curtailed her trombone performance but did not silence her creative voice; she continued to write and shape arrangements with the aid of a computer.

By the time of her death, Liston was celebrated as a trailblazing trombonist, arranger, and composer, and as one of the very few Black women to achieve enduring status as a jazz instrumentalist rather than as a singer. She had worked with Gerald Wilson, Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones, Clark Terry, and especially Randy Weston, for whom she crafted some of the most adventurous large-ensemble settings of the late 20th century.

Her passing underscored how long she had remained under-recognized despite her enormous influence. Within the jazz community, her death prompted renewed efforts to document her legacy, leading to tribute recordings, scholarly theses, and institutional recognition such as her NEA Jazz Masters honor. The date April 23, 1999 thus stands as a sentinel moment when the jazz world began to reckon more fully with Liston’s contributions and with the broader erasure of women instrumentalists, inspiring later generations to reclaim her story and ensure that women’s work in jazz arranging and composition is more visible.