Lucky Thompson: Complete Parisian Small Group Sessions, 1956 - 1959 - Featuring Martial Solal

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Lucky Thompson has left behind a tremendously varied recorded legacy. His last recordings were made in 1972 and he ceased public performance two years later. Rumors about his demise have circulated  for years, as they have about his whereabouts. Thompson moved from city to city, and one point lived in the Canadian wilderness, growing his own food. He has been in Seattle. Washington since the early 90's. and has shown up at local jazz clubs to hear fellow tenormen Johnny Griffin and Stanley Turrentine. The British writer Mike Hennessey recently wrote an article originally published in the Italian Musica, and published this quote from Thompson: "You know. I lost my interest in music. I had to run from place to place at the mercy of people who manipulated me but I never rejected music; it constitutes a great part of my soul." Luckily for us, we can still experience the sensation of hearing new music from Thompson with the issuing of this beautiful music for the first time in the States. It comes from a fascinating period in the evolution of a great American artist.”

— Loren Schoenberg, insert notes to Lucky Thompson: Lucky in Paris, HighNote HCD-7045]

“The interplay between Lucky Thompson and Martial Solal raises the level of … [these] recordings to the sublime.”

— Loren Schoenberg

What I have been referring to as the Fresh Sound “Jazz in Paris” series of recent CD releases continues to delight and amaze me not only for the quality of the music on these discs, but also because they have introduced me to many, excellent French modern Jazz musicians whose existence I was not aware of previously.

Although its focus is on the music of an American living in Paris, Lucky Thompson: Complete Parisian Small Group Sessions, 1956 - 1959 - Featuring Martial Solal Volumes 1 and 2 is another magnificent offering in this category as issued by Jordi Pujol on his Fresh Sound label [FSR -CD 933/1-933/2]. Each volume is a double CD which finds tenor saxophonist Eli “Lucky” Thompson in the company of many of the best musician on the French Jazz scene of the mid-to-late 1950s, with the work of the outstanding pianist Martial Solal featured on many of these tracks.

Lucky Thompson [1924-2005] had never been accorded the praise he deserved in the United States, despite the fact that in the 40s many prominent critics and musicians considered him the finest tenor-saxophone player to appear in Jazz since the emergence of Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. He never found work easily in his own country, maybe because he expressed his views too forcibly about the various rackets going on behind the glittering facade of the musical profession. It got so bad that by the 1950s Lucky was practically ignored by most record labels, which deliberately passed over his name time and time again rather than employ him.

This was the situation in 1956. when he decided to move to Paris — like Don Byas and several others before him—hoping for better things in Europe where his name meant something to Jazz critics and collectors. In the months after his arrival in Paris, Lucky appeared on more record sessions than he had in the previous several years in the States. These Parisian recordings [1956-1959] went a long way towards proving Lucky Thompson's stature in Jazz; they show that his neglect was uncalled for, and that he was a superb fountain of finely-embroidered Jazz improvisation.

More about these “must have” four discs is contained in the following insert notes to the boxed set as written by Jordi Pujol. For order information via the Fresh Sound website, please go here.

“Eli Thompson was born in June 1924 in Columbia, South Carolina. His family, like many other African-American families, felt that opportunities in the South were limited and so they moved North, first to Ohio and then to Detroit. Once, during Eli Thompson's boyhood in Detroit, his father bought sweaters for him and his brother. On the fronts of the sweaters was sewn the name "Lucky." The neighborhood kids quickly turned the emblem into a nickname for Eli. A week later, the sweater was ripped in a football game. That's the way Lucky's "luck" ran through all his live.

Lucky loved music "ever since I can remember," but he didn't get an instrument until he was 15. "Before then I'd fool around with anything I could get hold of. I'd had eyes for a saxophone since I was 8, but my folks weren't very foresighted, and they thought I didn't know what I wanted. So, in effect, I learned how to play sax before I ever got one. I say 'I learned' but actually, I'm still learning," he said in 1957. Lucky studied tenor saxophone with Bobby Byrne's father and clarinet with Francis Hellstein of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and a little later harmony and theory with John Phelps. His first work came late in 1942 and early 1943 when he toured with the Alabama State Collegians, a group led by the Trenier Twins (CIiff and Claude), which included jazzmen like trumpeters Joe Morris and Willie Cook, and altoist Sonny Stitt. After returning to Detroit, he played in the band of drummer Benny Carew, alongside Wardell Gray and Hank Jones. Then, in the summer of 1943, he moved to New York, where after working out his union card he worked with Lionel Hampton. Still, the unfriendly attitude he encountered deeply disillusioned him. After playing briefly in the Ray Parker band, he was employed by Big Sid Catlett to play in his quartet at the Cobra club.

Lucky Thompson acquired a reputation among musicians, and so Hot Lips Page hired him for what would be Lucky's first recordings, with the trumpeter's sextet, in March 8, 1944. Following a brief stint with Lucky Millinder's band, in the summer of that same year Lucky went on tour with Billy Eckstine's orchestra which included the cream of musicians: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Howard McGhee, Leo Parker, Art Blakey and Sarah Vaughan. Because its musical conception was too advanced for the time, this Eckstine ensemble did not meet the expected success and had to be dissolved. Lucky Thompson then went to play with Slam Stewart, and recorded again with Hot Lips Page and with Erroll Garner before joining Count Basie's band in November. By then, Lucky was already the best tenor saxophonist of his generation, and playing with Basie placed him at the forefront of jazz. He toured with him until the last band's successful engagement at the Hollywood Plantation in October 1945.

Lucky then decided to settle in Los Angeles, becoming one of the most prolific jazz recording soloists in the city in one of the busiest periods of his long career. In December, when the Dizzy Gillespie Sextet was engaged to play at Billy's Berg, Lucky was hired to play in the group alongside Charlie Parker, Milt Jackson, Al Haig, Ray Brown and Stan Levey. Despite playing with the fathers of bebop, he never found himself devoted to any particular style, and even back then, Lucky was already playing his own way.

In style, Lucky was one of the most singular tenor players in jazz. He grew up at a time when modern jazz was in its embryo stages; consequently he was able to listen to and absorb the best elements of two schools of tenor playing, the swing school of Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Don Byas and the new modern jazz school evolving with Lester Young. From Hawkins he look the melodic style of phrasing, and the way of making his improvisations always direct and emotionally expressive. From Lester he took the pure, smooth tone, giving his improvisations a lightness, a delicacy of delivery. Lucky was an immaculate technician, a quality that helped his ideas always come through in a facile manner— they are never expressed in a ponderous way. He had a lot to say and ample means for saying it. Most of all, he was possessed of a tremendous swing. Of the younger generation of tenor-saxophone players, only the work of Wardell Gray equaled Lucky's for constant swing and richness of invention.

Early in February 1945, he was one of the first black musicians who joined Boyd Raeburn's progressive orchestra. During the following two years Lucky appeared sitting in on literally dozens of sessions of the most diverse artists: Charles Mingus, Slim Gaillard, Wilbert Baranco, Charlie Parker, Earle Spencer, Jimmy Mundy, George Handy, Lena Home, Phil Moore, Louis Armstrong, Ike Carpenter, Benny Carter and many others. One of his finest recorded solos from this period was How High the Moon with Dodo Marmarosa for the Atomic label.

He moved back East at the end of 1947 to try the local clubs again, and went into the Three Deuces where George Shearing was playing as a

single. "When I came back," Lucky mentioned in an interview, "the club owners were hiring the leaders and picking all the men as well. I didn't go for that, but the majority of the musicians were catering to the owner's wishes. Anyway I worked with Shearing for a while and then both of us played with Oscar Pettiford and J. C. Heard."

Lucky began to run up against opposition. Always outspoken concerning the many injustices which he felt were ruining the jazz scene, the tenorman found that he was gradually being left out of all recording sessions and club engagements.

In February 1948 he went to Europe to perform at the jazz festival in Nice along with Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, Barney Bigard, Jack Teagarden, Arvell Shaw, Sid Catlett, and a Mezz Mezzrow unit with Baby Dodds. Lucky went alone because of a suddenly restricted budget, and he played with a Swiss and a Belgian band. "They were limited in the things they could play, but if I could get that kind of enthusiasm from American musicians, it would be a great thing," he said.

Upon returning to the U.S.A., Thompson was engaged without great success in small cabarets; he played what he could and where he could. In 1949, the situation worsened and Lucky Thompson refused more and more to follow the modes of the moment. "I thought having played in Europe would be an asset for me when I got back, but it wasn't. I jobbed around until the summer of 1948 when I got so tired of fighting, I went home to Detroit to rest. I came back to New York after a while and worked wherever I could at whatever I could."

Early in 1949, Lucky was asked to join an all-star band led by Oscar Pettiford at a club then called the Clique, which later became the site of Birdland. Included were Fats Navarro, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Kai Winding, Milt Jackson, Kenny Clarke, and Bud Powell. "There was such a clash of temperaments," Thompson recalled. "We could have really developed an organization, but the idea of doing that seemed to be a joke to many of them. After a couple of weeks, I gave up the idea of writing for that band.

"Through 1949, I knocked around here and there. As for records, a man would sometimes give me his card when he heard me at a gig but when I went to his office, he'd say: 'I liked what you were doing, but this is what I want you to do.' It seemed an insult, however, to make honking records, just as it is for a musician to do a strip-tease on the stage.

"I went back to Detroit again and worked in the Chrysler plant for about four months in 1949. A verbal contract got me to return to New York for a date at the Royal Roost. The contract wasn't lived up to, and when I fought for my rights in the union, the union advised me to take a settlement.

"I lost all around, and as a result of my bucking the club owner, the word got around I was difficult, and from 1949 to 1954, I was never given a gig in a major jazz club in New York City. It wasn't until 1954 when Miles Davis had to have a tenor for a Birdland date that I played in one of those clubs. He called me, and I went on with him to Basin Street. But that was the first time in five years."

The next couple of years he freelanced, but he had to battle for every job.

"Some of the bands I played in were the saddest I'd ever heard.

Occasionally we'd have to back some of those lousy bird groups. You know what I mean, the Larks or the Blue-jays or whatever they're called. You couldn't call them singers or artists or musicians.

"Meanwhile, I decided to try to continue my writing. I had started writing seriously on the coast in '46 and once while working a couple of theaters out there with Sarah Vaughan and George Treadwell, they heard a couple of my songs and liked them. In fact, Sarah recorded my tune While You Are Gone for Columbia in 1949.

"I was supposed to have written the arrangement for that record date, but the disc was on the street before I knew anything about it. I put the song in with one of the publishers that Columbia suggested I deal with, but nothing happened after that record so I decided to open my own publishing firm."

Lucky worked hard at building his firm, Great Music, from 1949-51, but again there were obstacles. "It seemed useless for me to try to perform on my horn; they had me locked up in so many ways, so I tried this. I put everything I had into the publishing business and tried always to pick the right artist for each song. But I had never realized until then that most artists have so little to do with their own affairs.

"I became discouraged with publishing, too, after a while. But I still have the firm in my home in East Elmhurst, N. Y., and some of my songs have been recorded in recent years."

Though the writer of a number of fine ballads, he found that recording companies deliberately discouraged artists from using his songs, or tried to avoid giving him the composer credits for a number. So he kept on freelancing, recording only very occasionally through the auspices of some sympathetic session supervisor such as John Hammond; a man idolised by many musicians, but hardly known at the time outside the realm of his professional colleagues.

From 1951 to 1952, Lucky worked briefly with Count Basie and Lucky Millinder again, among other gigs, and then he went into the Savoy ballroom with a small band in 1952 for two weeks opposite Basie. Lucky poured all his money into this combo, buying new uniforms and stands and working up a new book.

"The musicians had a will to learn and excelled their own abilities," Thompson mentioned. "We were back at the Savoy four or five times in the next two years and used it as a kind of base of operations. Although the band was creating a lot of interest during that time, and the Basie band was a great publicity agency for us, only one agent made any offers."

The Savoy ballroom and Lucky split in 1953 after a dispute. That year Lucky did eight sides for Decca of which six were released but with practically no promotion. Lucky continued to gig around and continued to represent himself, rather than being booked by an agent. "I've never found an agent," he said, "who offered to represent me in the fashion I wanted.

"The success I achieved at the Savoy had no bearing elsewhere. Magazines, newspapers, radio and television are particularly interested in records. Our records were never used. I've been recording for big companies, but you could always ask for records at a drop-off from New York, you would not have found any. It does not matter if you are a good musician or if you have made good records if the Syndicate has not decided to push you, you will remain in the harbor."

He recorded a number of discs with studio formations led by Jack Teagarden, Oscar Pettiford and Jimmy Hamilton, but Lucky found it difficult to get a stable job. He continued to express his views candidly about the various rackets going on behind the glittering facade of the musical profession, so much so that in the early 1950's Lucky was practically ignored by most record labels, which deliberately passed over his name time and again rather than employ him.

This was the situation when in early 1956 he decided to move to Paris, hoping for better things in Europe, as it had happened for Dicky Wells, Bill Coleman, Don Byas and several others before him. So on February 17th, 1956 he arrived in Paris, with the hope of finding a more favorable audience for his playing.

Then newly arrived from the United States, Lucky Thompson was sought by Charles Delaunay, Robert Aubert and Kurt Mohr for an interesting interview with him for the French magazine Jazz Hot about his opinion on the problems that hammered jazz in the United States.

"In America you can see that those who control the musical world come to impose on the musicians the way of playing and the repertoire they have to interpret, as they manage to impose on the public what it is to love or not," stated Lucky. "In the United States, you can choose between two commercial proposals: the musical striptease of 'Rhythm and Blues' or the excesses of the cool school. Some of them are really to be pitied, especially those who think that you cannot play 'cool' music without resorting to the influence of stimulants or even drugs while the best stimulant a musician finds, on the contrary, in his love of music, in the esteem of his partners and in the appreciation of the public.

"But do you think it makes sense for some of these cool musicians to perform on stage, in front of an audience, without showing the slightest sign of emotion, playing as if for themselves, as if they do not care for listeners, not even deigning to smile when this audience applauds them. I consider that a musician does not have the right to make fun of the public. Especially since, very often, it is only an attitude that these musicians seek to give themselves."

Antoine Robert pointed out: "You have just branded a whole class of musicians under the term 'cool' school. 1 would like to know if this condemnation applies to all modern musicians and if musicians like Art Blakey, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan or Jimmy Raney are involved in this category."

"Obviously not," replied Lucky, "and I regret not having specified it right away, because obviously this can lead to misunderstanding. The term 'cool' of course applies to many of these imitators, who have taken from their masters only their external signs, without generally understanding their music or their message."

And asked about racial segregation in his country, Lucky replied, "racism has always more or less existed among musicians. But not so determinedly, it seems to me, nowadays. This comes from the fact that the Pharisees of jazz always try to deny colored people the paternity of jazz. On the other hand, the musicians of color realize that, since the beginning of jazz, their music has been exploited in such a way that they only get the minimum profit and even try to take them out the privilege of having been its creators.

"Since this music has become an international language adopted throughout the world, one sees that segregation is going on even in the music itself. Thus the Rhythm and Blues, which until now has been practiced for and by the blacks, has recently extended its field of action, and in order to confer more dignity on this kind of music, it has been thought necessary to call it henceforth the Rock 'n' Roll."

His plans were to stay in France until the end of March, before joining Dizzy Gillespie's orchestra for a tour of the Middle East and India. From his arrival in Paris, he was called to be featured and leader of several recording sessions for various labels, and was the star of a great number of concerts in Paris, in the provinces and abroad, in particular with drummer and bandleader Gerard "Dave" Pochonet, who was considered one of the best French jazz drummers. Pochonet had played as a sideman and as a leader of his own group for many visiting Americans: Bill Coleman, Hazel Scott, Dizzy Gillespie, Mary Lou Williams, Jonah Jones, Don Byas, Buck Clayton, Emmett Berry, etc. He had been also associated with some of the best European musicians such as Django Reinhardt, Bobby Jaspar, Andre Persiany and Henri Renaud.

His first date took place on the late to early hours of February 21 to 22nd, 1956 for the Ducretet-Thomson label. With him here we find trumpeter Emmett Berry, the forceful stylist who played for many years with Count Basie and with Johnny Hodges' small group, and who came to Europe shortly before Lucky in a little group led by pianist Sammy Price. Emmett had a fire and swing sufficient to complement Lucky's own power very well. Supporting these two Americans was a rhythm trio led by pianist Henri Renaud — considered by many as the best modern jazz composer, and certainly the best accompanist in France. Dave Pochonet on drums and the Belgian bassist Benoit Quersin completed the unit.

Thompson contributed several compositions to the session, including Thin Ice, based on altered I Got Rhythm changes, which is played without the piano, with Quersin playing a fine accompaniment to the frontline improvisation; a minor-key blues titled A Minor Delight with Berry using a cup mute; a fast blues Takin' Care o' Business, and One Cool Night, so called because of the temperature in Paris on the night of the session. The star of the date was Lucky, offering an unfailing source of imaginative and rhythmic strength, and limning a full-blown solo on the ballad Medley [Sophisticated Lady, These Foolish Things]. Emmett Berry also contributed with Blues for Frank, a twelve-bar tune, dedicated to his fellow trumpeter Frankie Newton, on which Emmett is the only horn, showcasing his improvising skills and warm feeling, but because Thompson is not heard, and due to the time constraints on CD-1, we decided to include this track as a bonus at the end of CD-4.

Lucky decided to cancel his tour with Gillespie and stay in France.

In the following two months, he appeared on more record sessions in Paris than he had in the previous several years in the States. There are too many highlights for detailed comment. The tasty standards and casual originals provide a variety of tempos and moods, and Lucky shows that his neglect had been uncalled for, and that he was a superb fountain of finely-embroidered jazz improvisation, in a style more inspired by the Hawkins-Byas school than that of Lester Young. Comfortable on all tempos, these sides strongly indicate how underappreciated this master of the tenor and pioneer of the soprano sax was.

Lucky was accompanied in these 1956 sessions by some of the best French jazz musicians, as Henri Renaud, Jean-Pierre Sasson, Guy Lafitte, Pierre Michelot, Michel Hausser, Michel de Villers, William Boucaya, Christian Garros, Fernand and Charles Verstraete, and in particular pianist Martial Solal, who revealed all his capacity for individualized invention. Much of the success of these sessions derives from the seemingly instinctive rapport that Solal established with Thompson, his uncanny ability to complement Lucky's often complex shiftings and turnings.

According to Lucky, Solal "is one of the most outstanding pianists I have ever heard."

When British baritone saxophonist Harry Klein, a replacement in the Stan Kenton band for Jack Nimitz, had to return to London as a result of the illness of his mother, Lucky switched to baritone and joined Kenton for the four Parisian concerts at the Alhambra, on April 30 and May 1st, 1956, and remained with the band for the rest of its European tour. He returned to New York on May 11, but right before leaving he still recorded an album with the Dave Pochonet eight-piece orchestra for the Swing label. Lucky left Paris, but with the idea of returning the following year.

In New York, Lucky continued to play with Kenton, now on tenor, recording with the band the excellent album "Cuban Fire". In his comeback home he was acclaimed by the critics for having triumphed in France, and the recording offers came in for him both as leader and as a sideman with groups directed by Oscar Pettiford, Lionel Hampton, Quincy Jones, Louis Armstrong, Milt Jackson, Ralph Sharon, and singers like Johnny Hartman, Dinah Washington.

On June 1957, Lucky flew back to France, and recorded once again extensively in Paris, as a featured soloist with such different groups as the quartet of American pianist and singer Sammy Price, which included, Sasson, Michelot and Pochonet; with orchestras conducted by Martial

Solal, Kenny Clarke, and Eddie Barclay, who played some good Quincy Jones arrangements and at the time was also living and working as an arranger in Paris.

On the September 26th recording we can hear Lucky in a quartet session led by the great American drummer Kenny Clarke, who along with Solal and bassist Pierre Michelot, formed the best possible rhythm section available in Paris at the moment. The three men provided an irresistibly swinging support for Lucky, who adopted a feather-light tone, playing well shaped, flowing statements on three bop tunes, Now's the Time, The Squirrel, and Four, and a swing classic, Stompin' at the Savoy. But the focus here is in Solal, who displays some of his best piano on this set, with solos of consistent, pulsating interest, while Clarke is a natural swinging gas, and Michelot keeps a solid, steady beat.

In December 1958, Lucky arrived once again in Paris, to play at the Blue Note, and soon entered in the studio again with a group directed by Dave Pochonet, with Michael Hausser on vibes and the always excellent Martial Solal. On the two session dates recorded for the label Symphonium, we find another of the gems of this collection, We'll Be Together Again, one of those ballads that makes you believe everything Lucky is saying.

No less impressive is Lucky's solo on Soul Food, on which he blows with easy wailing and depth of emotion, only accompanied by the fierce conga drums of Gana M'Bow. Both men met again on Brother Bob, but this time Lucky is featured on soprano, in a demonstration of his valuable contribution to the evolution of this instrument in jazz.

In France, Lucky's work gave him some of the credit which he had failed to receive for his playing in America. He created music of great beauty but failed to come to terms with a system he perceived as avaricious, exploitative, and run by people he characterized as "vultures." Unwilling to make the moral and esthetic compromises he saw the music business as demanding from him, he chose to become a private person, much to the regret of his many admirers — colleagues and listeners alike.

These Parisian 1956-1959 recordings should go a long way towards proving Lucky Thompson's stature in jazz, and not only as a instrumentalist but also as a prolific and inventive composer. His ballad One Last Goodbye is a great example of both facets. A major jazzman who had so little of the rewards his work deserved. His name meant something exemplary in jazz to critics and collectors.”

—Jordi Pujol

I realize that most of this music has been made available before in other formats, but nothing rivals this Fresh Sound boxed set in terms of having it all in one place and be able to follow it chronologically because it provides a comprehensive overview of Lucky’s playing and his music and, in so doing, it offers a platform for understanding Thompson’s genius.