Jazzman Leon Breeden, leader of North Texas’ ‘One O’Clock Lab Band,’ dies at 88

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Leon Breeden, longtime director of the University of North Texas’ jazz program who made its One O’Clock Lab Band internationally famous, has died. He was 88.

Longtime friend Richard Cox said Breeden died Wednesday in a Dallas hospital of complications from an abdominal infection.

Breeden led the jazz program and One O’Clock Lab Band from 1959 to 1981. It became the first college band to perform at the White House by presidential invitation in 1967 and it began to tour internationally.

The band was named for its rehearsal time.

Among Breeden’s students were future jazz pianist and composer Lyle Mays and veteran studio musicians and sidemen ‘Blue’ Lou Marini and Marvin Stamm.

-- Associated Press