Biographical Note
Meredith "Med" Irwin Flory was born in Logansport, Indiana, on August 27, 1926. He was inspired to pursue music at an early age by his mother, Florence Flory, a voice teacher and organist. He began playing clarinet at age nine and continued to do so during his years at Logansport High School, where he graduated in 1944. Following a semester at Indiana University, Flory signed on with the U. S. Army Air Corps during the Second World War before later returning to the school to complete his bachelors degree in philosophy in 1950. He immediately moved to New York and joined up with bandleader Claude Thornhill, touring rigorously for several years throughout the country. During this time he met his future wife, Joan Barbara Fry, a singer with the band.
In 1956, Flory moved to California and immersed himself in the cool jazz movement on the West Coast. He joined Ray Anthony's band in 1955 and later performed with the likes of alto saxophonists Art Pepper and Joe Maini and bassist Buddy Clark, the latter with whom he founded Supersax in 1972. Flory was especially taken with the talents of Charlie Parker and began working on harmonized arrangements of Parker's signature tunes as early as 1956. Supersax, a nine-piece ensemble of five saxophones and rhythm section, made its live debut in North Hollywood in 1973. The band won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Performance by a Group in 1974 for its album Supersax Plays Bird and went on to record eight more, the last being Stone Bird in 1988.
Flory also developed a successful parallel career as an actor beginning in 1960 with his appearance on the television series Lawman. Despite having no formal training, he cultivated his talent into a variety of successful stints on the screen, including Bonanza (three episodes), Gunsmoke (two episodes), Lassie (ten episodes), and Daniel Boone (seven episodes). Altogether, Flory starred in more than one hundered productions, including several films, such as The Nutty Professor (1963). He enjoyed the duality of his music and screen careers, although the success of Supersax dictated many of his later professional engagements. Flory died of a heart ailment in Hollywood, California, on March 12, 2014.