New Orleans sax player Elliott “Stackman” Callier has died

Elliott “Stackman” Callier, a saxophonist who split his life between New Orleans and Portland and spent decades as one of the city’s most in-demand horn men, died August 21 in New Orleans. He was 83.

Callier was born January 12, 1943, into a musical family, his father played saxophone alongside Billy Eckstine. He started out on piano and violin before switching to his father’s instrument. He graduated from Booker T. Washington High School, whose music program at the time also produced saxophonists Fred Kemp and Frederick “Shep” Sheppard, and came up under the influence of bandleader Clyde Kerr Sr. and saxophonist Nat Perrilliat.

He played his first parade with the Olympia Brass Band, then spent his early years working New Orleans clubs like Dorothy’s Medallion Inn and Mason’s Las Vegas Strip, and playing with the Seminoles, the band led by brothers Earl and Willie Tee Turbinton.

His path then took an unusual detour: Callier served in Vietnam, and afterward played professional football in Canada for several years before coming back to music and New Orleans.

Once he returned, Callier became a mainstay of New Orleans’s professional music scene, touring for years as part of Fats Domino’s horn section alongside Herb Hardesty and Roger Lewis, and working steadily with bandleader and arranger Wardell Quezergue. He also performed with the Preservation Hall Band and was a regular session player at SeaSaint Studios, contributing to countless New Orleans recordings over the decades.