Louie Bellson: Blazing, Bombastic and Beautiful [From the Archives with Revisions]

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

In all the years I’ve been around Jazz musicians, I have never met a kinder more nobler soul that Louie Bellson.

- the editorial staff at JazzProfiles

Although his illustrious career is detailed in any number of places including his own website, Louie Bellson’s name is not the subject of a dedicated chapter in any of the major anthologies on Jazz drumming.

Come to think of it, for that matter, neither is Joe Morello, although Joe does get his own chapter in Georges Paczynski’s Une Histoire de la Batterie de Jazz, Tome 2, while Louie has to share one with another former Ellington drummer, Sam Woodyard, in which the focus is on Skin Deep [which Louie composed.] Duke used it as a wowie, zowie drum solo intended as crowd pleaser.

Along with Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich, Louie is often mentioned as part of what Duke referred to as “The Big Three,” but I suspect that this is more to do with Ellington’s habit of hyping things up than with any real recognition of Louie’s skills as a drummer.

Over the years, I got to know Louie a bit and I’ve never been around anyone who visibly enjoyed playing drums more than Louie Bellson.

When he sat down behind the monster, double bass drum kit that he preferred [and perfected], he just exuded energy and enthusiasm.

Louie was a well-schooled drummer with lots of technical skills and an uncanny knack of seeming to ride over a set of drums, almost as though he was barely touching them. He speed was blazingly fast, but unlike Buddy Rich, he rarely generated any power to go along with his lighting-fast stick control. He touched the drums instead of striking them.

When he did produce the sound of power in his solos, it generally came from coordinating the double bass drums with single stroke rolls on the snare drum and tom toms. Once he got those big bass drums going [he used two, 30” diameter bass drums], it sounded like artillery rounds were being fired off as a commemorative salute.

Louie generated his speed from the finger control method of playing drums in which the rebound from the stick is employed along with very relaxed wrists to perpetuate movement on and around the drum heads. The stick is tapped back down instead of being banged or slapped into the drum.

Louie was not a big guy; if anything he was slight and a bit demure, but boy, get him behind a set of drums and he “lit up like a Christmas tree.”

“Who cares about winning polls. I’ve got my own big band and we’re having fun.”

“Who do I like in today’s Jazz drummers? I like ‘em all. I always learn something from every drummer.”

“What type of stick do I use? I use a variety of ‘em: different lengths; different beads; different weights. Keeps your hands more sensitive and responsive.”

All these responses and many more like them came from Louie’s answers to questions at drum clinics. He was usually mobbed afterwards with everyone coming up to give him a hug and to thank him.

“Sure, sure,” he would say: “Hey, does anyone want to try the double bass drums? Don’t be afraid [everyone was because hardly anyone had that kind of coordination]. It’s easy. Just sit down and just do it.”

When one of us would try playing the two bass drum kit, he’d always say - “Beautiful, beautiful” - no matter how badly we messed them up.

Louie Bellson had blazingly fast hands, used his feet to “detonate” bass drums bombs” while all the while wearing a beautiful smile on his face.

He was revered by drummers and just about every musician he ever worked with because he was an excellent drummer but never lorded his talents and abilities over anyone. Jazz cats come in all “shapes and size.” Some have incredible technical skills while others just get by on their instruments with a strong will and deep feelings. Louie didn’t care as long as you loved the music and were honestly yourself while trying to play it.

In all the years I’ve been around Jazz musicians, I have never met a kinder more nobler soul that Louie Bellson.

Len Lyons and Don Perlo put together this brief synopsis about Louie and his career in their Jazz Portraits: The Lives and Music of the Jazz Masters:

Louis Bellson - also “Louie” - Louis Paul Balassoni [1924 - 2009]

[Ed. note. - Luigi Paulino Alfredo Francesco Antonio Balassoni]

‘Bellson, an excellent technician and all-around musician, can power a big band with his driving beat, or tastefully accompany small combos and vocalists. He pioneered the use of twin bass drums during the mid-1940s, sparked the languishing Ellington Orchestra from 1951 to 1953, and during the 1970s led his own big band, for which he composed and arranged. Modest and gregarious, Bellson solos little for a drummer of his virtuosity and easily slips in and out of diverse environments: jazz clubs, TV, educational clinics, and orchestras.

The son of a music-store proprietor, Bellson learned to tap-dance as a boy, which he credits with developing his sense of time and rhythm. He was soon proficient on drums and won several competitions, including one sponsored by an early idol, Gene Krupa. Bellson worked for Benny Goodman in 1943 and again in 1945-46. In 1946, with Ted Fio Rito's commercial band, he inaugurated the use of two bass drums, which increases the drummer's ability to propel a large group. Bellson then replaced Buddy Rich, with whom he is often compared, in the Tommy Dorsey band (1947-49).

The subsequent period with Ellington, however, established him as a major talent. Bellson was a precise yet fiery drummer and a capable composer, adding to the band's book "Hawk Talks," "Ting-a-ling," and "Skin Deep," which showcased an extended drum solo.... In 1953 Bellson left the Ellington band to further the career of his new wife, Pearl Bailey.

Bellson accompanied Bailey, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Tatum and various small combos. He rejoined Ellington (1965—66), served as Bailey's music director, and composed for various bands. During the mid-1970s, Bellson organized a Los Angeles—based group for which he wrote many brassy, extroverted pieces - The Louie Bellson Explosion.  In addition to performing, Bellson has been a popular visiting instructor at college percussion seminars and clinics.”

The distinguished Jazz author, critic and historian Leonard Feather offers a slightly different recap of Louie’s career, as well as, an elaboration of Louie’s Big Band Explosion in these introductory paragraphs that are excerpted from his insert notes to The Louis Bellson Explosion [Pablo/Original Jazz Classics - OJCCD-728-2]:

“Louis Bellson lives in two worlds, enjoying the best of both. By this I do not refer to his dual life as a drummer and composer, or composer and bandleader, but rather to his simultaneous occupancy of past and present. There is no better evidence than this new album of his ability to draw on early experiences while infusing his orchestra with a spirit that is contemporary in the best sense of the word.

Louis, of course, paid lengthy dues as a sideman, with Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Count Basie, and most notably Duke Ellington. But because of his qualifications as an all-around musician, he probably was destined from the start to be a leader.

Historically, it is interesting to note that he undertook this role on records for the first time with a Los Angeles session for Norman Granz's Clef label in 1953.

Throughout the 1950s he continued to record for Granz, in addition to touring with Jazz at the Philharmonic. With his appearance in combos on several recent Pablo albums, and particularly with the return to records of his own orchestra via this flourishing new company, the wheel has come full circle.

Writing some years ago about Louis's juggling of multiple careers, I noted that he had found a successful solution to the problems posed by any attempt in the post-swing era to organize a big band. Instead of keeping an ensemble together on a year-round basis, he draws on a pool of important Los Angeles-based musicians who can be counted on to constitute a firm foundation. A key figure has always been trombonist Nick Di Maio, who has doubled as manager for the bands since the 1950s. Di Maio is one of a half dozen members of the present unit who play regularly in Doc Severinsen's band on the Tonight show, as does Louis himself whenever he has a little spare time in town.

Several of the sidemen have credentials that include long associations with Bellson. Cat Anderson was a colleague back in the Ellington days. Pete Christlieb, the powerhouse tenor player, now 30, was 22 when he began working with Louis. His section-mate, composer Don Menza, moved to Los Angeles in 1969 and started gigging with the band almost immediately. A more recent addition is Richard "Blue" Mitchell, the poised and expressive trumpeter who had put in long stints with Horace Silver, Ray Charles, and John Mayall before undertaking a cross-Canada tour with Louis in 1974. The two keyboard occupants who share duties here, Nat Pierce and Ross Tompkins, have worked separately with Louis for several years off and on.

To fortify the rhythm section, it was decided to enlist the services of Dave Levine and Paulo Magalhaes, whose additional percussion work was scattered through the two sessions.

All these elements, along with the band's characteristic esprit de corps in the brass and reed sections, come into focus from the opening track.”

For the following video montage, I have selected the closing track from The Louis Bellson Explosion [Pablo/Original Jazz Classics - OJCCD-728-2], about which, Leonard provides these insights:

“La Banda Grande, by Jack Hayes [a long-established orchestrator, conductor and composer for films who has been collaborating with Bellson since they met at an Academy Awards broadcast in the 1960s when both were working for Henry Mancini] and Bellson, is characterized by Louis as "a Chick Corea type Latin thing." Along with contributions by [Blue] Mitchell and [Pete] Christlieb, and a brief spot for [guitarist] Mitch Holder, there is a joyous samba groove that brings out the value of that extra percussion as Louis plays off against Dave Levine and Paulo Magalhaes.

"We really got a good feeling in the studio," says Bellson, "with the help of a natural set-up. The band was arranged just the way we would be in a nightclub, which enabled us to relax; and the engineer got a great sound. John Williams was fantastic both on acoustic and on electric bass. In fact, I'm very happy about the way the whole album turned out."

What Bellson could not add, because bombast is not his style, is that no band of first-class musicians, directed by an instrumentalist so gifted and so unanimously respected, is likely to go very far wrong. "Working for Louis was a ball," somebody remarked to me after a recent gig with the band. I can't remember which sideman said it, because over the years some similar phrase has been echoed by just about everyone who has worked for him. If you don't care to take my word for it, the performance itself offers eloquent proof.”

—Leonard Feather

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

Louie Bellson [1924-2009]

Writing for The Independent, Steve Voce has kindly allowed JazzProfiles to reprint the obituaries of many of the by-gone stars of Jazz's early years who deserve a remembrance.

“Although he was with Duke for only a couple of years, Louie Bellson must be regarded as the last of the great Ellingtonians, for he had a lasting effect on the band. He replaced Sonny Greer, who had been the drummer in the Ellington band since it began in the Twenties, and he brought in a new and powerful style that brought Ellington’s music out of the almost classic style of the Forties into the new, more aggressive sounds of the Fifties.

Bellson’s long experience in guiding the bands of Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman from the drum chair flowered into maturity with Ellington. His then unique device of using two pedal-operated bass drums gave the band a new power, and yet his playing was always tasteful. He had firm control of the bands and guided them with an amazing technique.

Were it not for the almost supernatural Buddy Rich, Bellson could have been considered to be the very greatest big band drummer. But where Rich was flashy, Bellson was more subtle and complemented the music of the bands in which he played; when Rich played, brilliant though he was, he tended to crowd out the other musicians. In addition, Bellson was perhaps the only man who could play a 15-minute drum solo and sustain the rapt attention of an audience throughout.

The list of the big bands for which Bellson played covered a wide range of the very best in jazz. He changed the character of each of them for the better, and as well as Ellington’s, they included the bands of Benny Goodman – whom he joined when he was 17 – Tommy Dorsey, Harry James and Count Basie, as well as the many fine bands that he later led himself.

As a boy, Bellson spent much of his time in his father’s music store in Moline, Illinois, where over the years he learned to play most of the instruments in stock. But it was the drums that attracted him most, and he was still in school when he developed the technique of using two bass drums at once, one for the left foot and one for the right. He had tap-danced at a local nightclub with the barrelhouse pianist Speckled Red and he thought that this helped him to play the two bass drums with such dexterity.

In 1940, when Bellson was 16, he won a nationwide drumming contest sponsored by Gene Krupa, an idol of swing fans. The Second World War caused a shortage of band musicians and as a result Bellson was swept straight from high school into the Ted Fio Rito band when it passed through Moline. From here, Benny Goodman hired him late in 1942. Three years in the Army interrupted his progress, but he returned to Goodman in 1946. Although not the most famous of his bands, the Goodman band of this time was to have a powerful effect on big band style.

Goodman was a perfectionist. “He taught me how to listen, how to play in a big band, and how to swing. He wanted the sections playing in tempo on their own,” Bellson said. “He needed them to keep time without relying on the rhythm section. We’d have to sit through the entire rehearsal until Benny added the bass, drums and piano.”

When work in the Goodman band dipped, he moved to Tommy Dorsey’s band. Goodman and Dorsey were both, in their separate ways, monsters. Goodman was mindlessly cruel, whereas Dorsey’s sadism was usually calculated. But even amongst such a great band of musicians Bellson’s talent was outstanding and Dorsey valued him highly. Bellson, a slight man, had a huge appetite. Dorsey would show him off to friends by taking him to a restaurant and ordering half a dozen T-bone steaks, which Bellson would swiftly devour.

In 1950, business slowed for Tommy Dorsey and Bellson joined the resurgent Harry James band. He became friends with Juan Tizol, a valve trombonist who had previously been with Duke Ellington.

“We would play before 3,000 at the Hollywood Palladium,” recalled Bellson, “but I remember some of those navy and air force bases where we played to 14 or 15 thousand people.”

Then, in 1951, came what became known as the “Great James Raid”. “The phone rang in Tizol’s flat,” Bellson remembered. “It was Duke and he asked Juan to rejoin the Ellington band and to bring Willie Smith, Harry’s alto-sax star, and me along with him.” This was to tear the heart out of James’s band, but he took it in good part and wished the musicians well.

On the face of it, things didn’t look good for Bellson. He was the only white musician in a black band – then a serious problem – and not only were there no band parts written for a drummer, but most of the music existed mainly because the musicians knew it by heart. Also, the band was about to embark on a tour of the Deep South. “We’re going to make you Haitian,” said Ellington, and that was how Bellson was described to avoid trouble.

Bellson brought an original composition with him that became a permanent part of the Ellington repertoire and took the band’s big band sound into a new dimension. “Skin Deep”, a drum solo set in the band which covered two sides of a 78 record, became a huge hit. Soon after, Bellson wrote another seminal hit, “The Hawk Talks” (Hawk was Harry James’s nickname).

Whilst he had been with James, Tizol and his wife had often told Bellson stories of the singer Pearl Bailey and said that he should meet her. “When we were in Washington DC with the Ellington band this young lady came up and said, ‘Well, I’m Pearl,’ and I said ‘Well, I’m Louie.’ Four days later we got married in London.”

Bellson left Ellington early in 1953 to become Pearl Bailey’s musical director, although he returned to Duke on special occasions over the years. In 1954 he began a long association with Norman Granz, appearing in Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic, sometimes in duet with Buddy Rich. Over the years, Granz teamed Bellson with Oscar Peterson, Lionel Hampton, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and a host of other luminaries.

The drummer joined Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey for a year in 1955 and made a Scandinavian tour with Count Basie’s band in 1962. That year, he also composed a jazz ballet called The Marriage Vows. He rejoined Ellington from 1965 to 1966 and then moved back to Harry James in 1966.

From 1967 he led his own big band based in North Hollywood and this included ex-Ellingtonians and many of the jazz stars from the Los Angeles studios. During the Seventies he also taught at jazz workshops in a variety of universities.

He was shattered when Pearl Bailey died in 1990, but picked himself up, and in 1991 met Francine Wright, a computer engineer, and they were married in September 1992. In 1993, Bellson travelled to New York where he assembled a potent big band of leading musicians to perform and record Duke Ellington’s seminal “Black, Brown and Beige” suite.

“There were ordinary nights when the music was very good,” said Bellson. “But there were others when you had to pinch yourself and ask if it was real. How do you explain that? You don’t. I had moments like that with Duke and Benny and also with Tommy Dorsey and with my dear late wife Pearl.

Steve Voce

Louie Bellson, drummer, bandleader, composer: born Rock Falls, Illinois 6 July 1924; married 1952 Pearl Bailey (deceased) (two daughters), 1992 Francine Wright; died Los Angeles 14 February 2009.

The following video features the Louie Bellson Big Band Explosion of Herbie Hancock’s Chameleon.  

Chameleon is a remarkable illustration of the adaptation for Jazz purposes, through skillful arranging (by Bill Holman), of a work with jazz/rock combo origins. After starting out in a manner not unlike the original Herbie Hancock version, it gradually shifts colors; the horns come in, Blue Mitchell makes a muted statement, and the brass section contributes to a massive and beautifully conceived buildup.

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.

Joe Lovano Leaps In With Little Willie [From The Archives]

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

“ … His solos display the spontaneity of an ear player, but behind them is the urbane sophistication of a conservatory-trained musician with twenty years experience interpreting difficult charts in big bands ranging from Woody Herman to Carla Bley. Fully conversant with the harmonic vocabu­lary of Coltrane, Shorter and beyond, he is able to navigate complex structures with an uncannily relaxed rhythmic facility and big furry sound at the most intense outer partials. …” – Ted Panken, WKCR, NYC

There is nothing quite like Jazz that’s made in-performance.

You can get an idea of what’s involved in the process of Jazz creation and how monumentally complex it is to pull off well with a reading of the following observations by Ted Gioia [the paragraphing has been modified for added emphasis]:

"If improvisation is the essential element in Jazz, it may also be the most problematic. Perhaps the only way of appreciating its peculiarity is by imagining what 20th century art would be like if other art forms placed an equal emphasis on improvisation.

Imagine T.S. Eliot giving nightly poetry readings at which, rather than reciting set pieces, he was expected to create impromptu poems - different ones each night, sometimes recited at a fast clip; imagine giving Hitchcock or Fellini a handheld camera and asking them to film something - anything - at that very moment, without the benefits of script, crew, editing, or scoring; imagine Matisse or Dali giving nightly exhibitions of their skills - exhibitions at which paying audiences would watch them fill up canvas after canvas with paint, often with only two or three minutes devoted to each 'masterpiece.'

These examples strike us as odd, perhaps even ridiculous, yet conditions such as these are precisely those under which the Jazz musician operates night after night, year after year."

Is it any wonder, then, that Ted has entitled the book from which this excerpt is taken - The Imperfect Art: Reflections of Jazz and Modern Culture.

It’s even more remarkable to consider these factors while listening to tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano’s double CD Quartets: Live at The Village Vanguard.

Recorded over about a one-year interval from 1994-1995 and involving two, different groups, the consistently high level of improvisation that Joe and his cohorts establish on these in-performance recordings is astounding.

See what you think with a viewing of the following video tribute to Joe.

The audio track is Little Willie Leaps by Miles Davis and features Joe on tenor with Mulgrew Miller on piano, Christian McBride on bass and Lewis Nash on drums. It was recorded at the Village Vanguard in NYC on Sunday, January 22, 1995.