DIED
One Easter Sunday, when he was 3, Alvin Batiste slipped away from his family to follow a group of musicians on a parade route--a fitting start for a founder of New Orleans' modern-jazz scene. A versatile clarinetist-composer for greats from Ray Charles to Cannonball Adderley, Batiste drew national attention in the '80s as a member of the innovative band Clarinet Summit. The bebop master died of an apparent heart attack hours before he was to perform alongside Wynton Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. He was 74.
He was no Olivier, but in the 1950s Gordon Scott, a Las Vegas lifeguard turned...
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