Lucky Thompson death reported

[mikeweil]

Thread at Jazz Corner (mentioned in initial post) Edited August 4, 2005 by mikeweil

[mikeweil]

This cover photo on one of his last albums means a lot to me ...

[brownie]

Thread at Jazz Corner

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JC was first with the sad news. I rarely go there and stumbled on the item!

Then posted the news here and quoted the JC item.

AAJ later started a thread of its own which quoted my first post here but they did not mention where it came from and they also eliminated the JC mention.

http://forums.allaboutjazz.com/showthread.php?t=10521

Found this totally ridiculous!

I am not posting at AAJ these days and now intend to stay away from that Forum!

(sorry for taking this thread away from its original purpose!)

Edited August 3, 2005 by brownie

[Kalo]

One of my all-time favorites. Great on tenor and one of the finest soprano players of them all. His music lives on.

R.I.P. Lucky.

[Kalo]

The two great ones we lost this week together: Lucky Thompson and Al McKibbon

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Nice!

[Chuck Nessa]

Thread at Jazz Corner

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JC was first with the sad news. I rarely go there and stumbled on the item!

Then posted the news here and quoted the JC item.

AAJ later started a thread of its own which quoted my first post here but they did not mention where it came from and they also eliminated the JC mention.

http://forums.allaboutjazz.com/showthread.php?t=10521

Found this totally ridiculous!

I am not posting at AAJ these days and now intend to stay away from that Forum!

(sorry for taking this thread away from its original purpose!)

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One well meaning person posted a picture - it was not the real Lucky T. I sent him a PM. I hope it has been corrected.

[MartyJazz]

Here's a unique photo taken by a friend of mine (long deceased) circa 1954. I trust that I don't have to ID those present.

[Rosco]

Very sad news. Another legend gone but never to be forgotten as long as we have his wonderful music. RIP, Eli.

[Spontooneous]

Lucky was one of the first guys whose records I glommed onto as I was getting into jazz. (See, occasionally I can make good decisions.)

I've always felt sorry that he felt he had to leave the scene. Hope he found some peace in those years.

(Speaking of wrong photos, as Chuck was: A Lucky CD called "Good Luck in Paris 1956," on JazzTime 827217-2, has a photo of Don Byas, not LT, on the cover.)

[jazzbo]

Marty, that's one KILLER photo, thanks for posting it!

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Yes, VERY interesting photo - can you tell more about the photographer? Is there a box (or 73) of shots like this of jazz guys from that period?

Mike

[Kalo]

Here's a unique photo taken by a friend of mine (long deceased) circa 1954.  I trust that I don't have to ID those present.

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Nice photo!

Yes, VERY interesting photo - can you tell more about the photographer? Is there a box (or 73) of shots like this of jazz guys from that period?

Mike

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Good question.

[paul secor]

Thanks for all of the music music you gave us, Mr. Thompson.

[MartyJazz]

Yes, VERY interesting photo - can you tell more about the photographer? Is there a box (or 73) of shots like this of jazz guys from that period?

Mike

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I'm afraid that's it. My friend was more of an artist than a photographer. However, if I remember correctly he did organize a one time performance of the group shown in the photo (unsure who the drummer was for the date) at which time he took this shot. It hung on the wall of his apartment for the many years I knew him, his widow subsequently giving the photo to me. I have no doubt that Miles and everyone else (save Lucky) were laughing probably because of something my friend said at the time he took the picture. He had an incredible way of making you laugh right at the moment he took a photo.

[Ted O'Reilly]

Sad news. While Lucky has been silent for years, his music will live on in recordings. And: his horns continue to be played--Toronto musician Pat La Barbera owns and plays Lucky's tenor and soprano saxes. I've been trying to get him to make a record of LT's fine compositions, using LT's horns...

[DrJ]

Belatedly seeing this news. Another giant gone.

A sad, sad physical loss for all of us, but as others have said, his music is timeless and lives on. Hopefully he's at peace now.

Think I'll spin his Savoy dates with Milt Jackson tonight and have a drink in remembrance.

[catesta]

So sad.

RIP, Lucky.

[sidewinder]

Sad news.  While Lucky has been silent for years, his music will live on in recordings.  And:  his horns continue to be played--Toronto musician Pat La Barbera owns and plays Lucky's tenor and soprano saxes.  I've been trying to get him to make a record of LT's fine compositions, using LT's horns...

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Wow - wonder how Pat actually came to own the Lucky Thompson horns?

So may great LT sessions from the 40 and 50s in particular - the Milt Jackson Savoys, 'Walkin', the Oscar Pettiford sessions, the list is endless. An incredible musician.

I think he had left jazz for good even before I got into the music all those years ago but for many years I still hoped that one day he would return to active playing and touring. Hope he's now in peace.

[JSngry]

Call me crazy, but his last recordings - the Groove Merchant ones - are my favorites. There's a quality to them that I can readily neither describe nor find a parallel for.

[Jim R]

Spinning this one tonight...

[Spontooneous]

Call me crazy, but his last recordings - the Groove Merchant ones - are my favorites. There's a quality to them that I can readily neither describe nor find a parallel for.

Ain't crazy at all. Might as well end your recording career with an exclamation point.

[mikeweil]

Call me crazy, but his last recordings - the Groove Merchant ones - are my favorites. There's a quality to them that I can readily neither describe nor find a parallel for.

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I hear ya, Jim!

[brownie]

The New York Times has this obituary today.

August 5, 2005

LUCKY THOMPSON, JAZZ SAXOPHONIST, IS DEAD AT 81

By Ben Ratliff

Lucky Thompson, a legendary tenor and soprano saxophonist who took his place among the elite improvisers of jazz from the 1940's to the 1960's and then quit music, roamed the country and ended up homeless or hospitalized for more than a decade, died on Saturday in Seattle. He was 81.

His death was confirmed by his son, Daryl Thompson; the cause was not announced. Mr. Thompson was living in an assisted-care facility at the Washington Center for Comprehensive Rehabilitation in Seattle.

Mr. Thompson connected the swing era to the more cerebral and complex bebop style. His sophisticated, harmonically abstract approach to the tenor saxophone built off that of Don Byas and Coleman Hawkins; he played with beboppers, but resisted Charlie Parker's pervasive influence. He also played the soprano saxophone authoritatively.

"Lucky had that same thing that Paul Gonsalves had, that melodic smoothness," one of his contemporaries, the saxophonist Johnny Griffin, said in an interview. "He wasn't rough like Ben Webster, and he didn't play in the Lester Young style. He was a beautiful balladeer. But he played with all the modernists."

Mr. Thompson was born Eli Thompson in Columbia, S.C., on June 16, 1924, and moved to Detroit with his family as a child. After graduating from high school in 1942, he played with Erskine Hawkins's band, then called the 'Bama State Collegians; the next year he moved to New York as a member of Lionel Hampton's big band.

After six months with Hampton, while still very young, he swiftly ascended the ranks of hip. He played in Billy Eckstine's short-lived big band, one of the first to play bebop, which also included Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. He joined the Count Basie Orchestra in 1944.

In 1945 he left Basie in Los Angeles, and in 1945 and 1946 he played on, and probably created arrangements for, record dates for the Exclusive label, including those by the black cowboy star and former Ellington singer Herb Jeffries. When the Charlie Parker-Dizzy Gillespie sextet came through Los Angeles, Mr. Thompson was hired by Gillespie as a temporary replacement for Parker. Mr. Thompson was also on one of Parker's most celebrated recording sessions, for Dial Records on March 28, 1946.

Fiercely intelligent, Mr. Thompson was outspoken in his feelings about what he considered the unfair control of the jazz business by record companies, music publishers and booking agents. Partly for these reasons, he left the United States to live in Paris from 1957 to 1962, making a number of recordings with groups including the pianist Martial Solal. After returning to New York for a few years, he lived in Lausanne, Switzerland, from late 1968 to 1970. He came back to New York again, taught at Dartmouth in 1973 and 1974, then disappeared from the Northeast, and soon from music entirely.

Friends say he lived for a time on Manitoulin Island in Ontario and in Georgia before eventually moving west. By the early 90's he was in Seattle, mostly living in the woods or in shelter offered by friends. He did not own a saxophone. He walked long distances, and was reported to have been in excellent, muscular shape.

He was hospitalized a number of times in 1994, and finally entered the Washington Center for Comprehensive Rehabilitation.

His skepticism about the jazz business may have kept him from a career recording as a bandleader - "Tricotism," from 1956, and "Lucky Strikes," from 1964, are among the few albums he made under his own name - but he left behind a pile of imposing performances as a sideman. Among them are recordings with Dinah Washington in 1945, Thelonious Monk in 1952, Miles Davis in 1954 (the "Walkin' " session, a watershed in Davis's career), and Oscar Pettiford and Stan Kenton in 1956. His final recordings were made in 1973.

In addition to his son, Daryl, of Stone Mountain, Ga., Mr. Thompson is survived by a daughter, Jade Thompson-Fredericks of New Jersey; and two grandchildren.

Part of Mr. Thompson's legend came from the fact that he was rarely seen in public; at times it was hard for his old friends to find him. But the drummer Kenny Washington remembered Mr. Thompson's showing up when Mr. Washington was performing with Johnny Griffin's group at Jazz Alley in Seattle in 1993. Mr. Thompson listened, conversed with the musicians, and then departed on foot for the place where he was staying - in a wooded spot in the Beacon Hill neighborhood, more than three miles away.

[brownie]

The Seattle Times also had this obituary on Lucky Thompson in their edition today. Thompson spent the final years of his life in Seattle. The article has interesting reminiscences from several people - including ex-Duke Ellington trombone player John Sanders - who saw him there.

The article features what looks like a recent portrait of Lucky Thompson

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/loca...ws.xml&items=16

JAZZ GREAT ELI THOMPSON SOARED FOR 3 DECADES, FELL SILENT 

By Judy Chia Hui Hsu

Seattle Times staff reporter

Legendary bebop tenor saxophonist Eli "Lucky" Thompson, who scaled the heights of the jazz world, then gave up his instrument altogether, died last Saturday in Seattle. He was 81.

Mr. Thompson performed and recorded with jazz giants including Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis.

"Lucky Thompson is recognized as one of the great tenor saxophonists in jazz," said fellow musician John Sanders. "I would say he's comparable to Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Don Byas." Sanders played trombone in Mr. Thompson's octet in the early '50s and later played with Duke Ellington.

In three decades, Mr. Thompson made more than 100 recordings. Some of the standouts include "Lucky Strikes," released on the Prestige label; "Lucky Thompson Plays Jerome Kern and No More"; and "Tricotism."

Born June 16, 1924, in Columbia, S.C., Mr. Thompson grew up in Detroit.

A master of improvisation with a unique musical style, Mr. Thompson was also a talented songwriter. He started out as a sideman in various swing bands. A move to New York in 1943 led him to play in Billy Eckstine's band and the Count Basie Orchestra.

"He was just very exceptional when it came to harmony, plus he had that big, warm tone of the saxophonist of the '30s and '40s," said friend and jazz historian Kenny Washington. "He was so harmonically sophisticated and equipped that when the new music they called be-bop, which was just a little more challenging than the music of the swing era, came along, he was able to fit right in," Washington said. "Lucky Thompson was able to play in any key, to play fast just like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker — he had it all."

During the '40s, Mr. Thompson recorded with Parker and Gillespie in Los Angeles. In the early '50s, he returned to New York to form his own band.

Sanders recalls the octet's opening at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem and the pleasure of going to work every night. "I can only say that Lucky Thompson was respected and admired not only by jazz and dance ballroom fans but also by the musicians themselves," he said. "He was a gentleman — he was a professional musician of the first order."

In 1954, one of Mr. Thompson's most memorable performances was in a tune called "Walkin'" recorded on Miles Davis' record of the same name. "The way he starts from nothing and builds a solo from a whisper to a scream, that tenor-saxophone solo was a big influence on a lot of musicians," Washington said.

The artist moved to Europe twice — once in the late '50s to early '60s, when he began to play the soprano saxophone, and again between the late '60s and early '70s. He taught at Dartmouth from 1973 to 1974 — and then he was silent.

"He just stopped playing and dropped out of sight," Washington said. "He was seen in a lot of remote places, and it got to the point that he didn't really want to be bothered by society."

Mr. Thompson was the kind of person who didn't trust a lot of people, Washington said. "He called promoters parasites."

He saw the producers and record companies as "vultures," said friend and music aficionado Lola Pedrini. By the time Mr. Thompson arrived in Seattle, he had lost his car and all of his belongings, she said.

Mr. Thompson was homeless, first living in the Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market areas, then spending time in the Beacon Hill neighborhood, Pedrini said. Since August 1994, he resided in Columbia City Assisted Living. In the late '90s he was moved to the Washington Center for Comprehensive Rehabilitation, where he died.

When Washington first met Mr. Thompson in the early '90s, the musician "basically just lived off the land."

Mr. Thompson would walk to Jazz Alley to see old friends like Johnny Griffin and Tommy Flanagan when they came to play. "He was a strong but sensitive cat," Washington said. "He was like a gentle bear, and society and the music business, it just took him out."

Mr. Thompson expected excellence from fellow musicians, Pedrini said.

"Members of his band would sit waiting for him to make a mistake when he played. He didn't make a mistake," Pedrini said. "But he demanded that from the rest of the musicians that worked with him."

"He was paranoid," Pedrini said, "and it wasn't just something that happened in later life; he was always saying that people were taping him and that mics were hanging down."

Toward the end of his life, Mr. Thompson became "a hermit," Pedrini said. "He was a great human being. He was the most cordial, gracious, articulate, intelligent musician. He just had a paranoid part to him that kept him from being like the rest of the musicians in this world."

[bertrand]

The Washington Post had a very interesting, somewhat off-center obituary yesterday.

Bertrand.