James Chance, the singer, saxophonist and composer who melded punk, funk and free jazz into bristling dance music as the leader of the Contortions, died on Tuesday in Manhattan.
His brother, David Siegfried, said Mr.
Chance had been in declining health for years and succumbed to complications of gastrointestinal disease at the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center in East Harlem.
Contortions songs like “I Can’t Stand Myself” and “Throw Me Away” filled the rhythmic structures of James Brown’s funk with angular, dissonant riffs, to be topped by Mr. Chance’s yelping, blurting, screaming vocals and his trilling, squawking alto saxophone.
He was a live wire onstage, with his own twitchy versions of moves adapted from Brown, Mick Jagger and his punk contemporaries.
Persons:
James Chance, David Siegfried, Chance, Terence Cardinal Cooke, James Brown’s, Chance’s, Brown, Mick Jagger
Organizations:
Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center, Mr
Locations:
Manhattan, East Harlem, New York City