JazzWax

Who Was Eddie Fisher?

With the stunning deaths this week of Carrie Fisher on Dec. 27 and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, the following day, the media has been awash in articles on Star Wars, cocaine abuse, extra-marital affairs on the set of Star Wars, depression, Singin' in the Rain, Tammy and the Bachelor, drinking, Elizabeth Taylor and whether a mother can die of a broken heart one day after the death of her daughter. All but forgotten in this frenzy is Eddie Fisher, the former husband of Reynolds and the father of Carrie Fisher.

Who was Eddie Fisher, why was he considered special and how bright a light was he in the pop galaxy? To most people unfamiliar with his recording career, Fisher was a merely some singer who married Debbie Reynolds in 1955 and ran off with the couple's best friend, Elizabeth Taylor, in 1958. But if we table the tabloid stuff and just focus on Fisher's singing career, you'll find that he was a superstar and one of the most successful pop singers in the pre-Elvis 1950s. Between 1950 and the end of '55, Fisher had 47 charted pop hits. Not easy to do, considering Nat King Cole had 45 and Tony Bennett had 20 during the same period. But how could someone with an old-fashioned Broadway-toned voice and flat song choices come to dominate the charts back then?

While it may be hard to understand how a full-bore traditional crooner like Fisher could become cat-nip for millions of female record buyers while catching the eye of female movie stars, we'll need the historic context as well as clips to sort this out. In short, Fisher's success was hardly an accident, and he was every bit a vocal heavyweight in his day and a dazzling charmer. 

Born in Philadelphia in 1928, Fisher showed early promise as a singer. His first broadcast appearance was on WFIL-AM in Philadelphia, and he eventually performed on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts radio broadcast. In 1946, when he was 18, Fisher dropped out of high school in his senior year to become a professional big-band singer. By 1949, while in New York's Catskill Mountains singing at Grossinger's Resort, he was discovered by singer-comedian Eddie Cantor, who put him on his radio show. Fisher was quickly signed by RCA in 1950 at the dawn of the vinyl 45.

Those are the bare biographical bones. Interestingly, his big formal singing voice derived not from the casual style of Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra but from Al Jolson, a Fisher family favorite. Which is probably what caught Cantor's ear. Fisher also was strikingly handsome, relaxed and naturally affable in his early 20s. Viewing YouTubes of him back in the early 1950s, you find a perfect-pitch singer who made it look like a snap and put others at ease. Girls who Fisher somehow missed with his seductive voice were hooked on his smile and the crinkle in the corners of his eyes. In 1951, Fisher went into the Army and sang for the troops in Korea and Europe until his discharge in 1953. Then his career and fame surged.

The reason for his mass appeal, in a word, was television. Fisher had a perfectly wonderful voice, albeit one you'd more likely find in the male lead in a musical. But as television sets became more affordable for an expanding number of households, Fisher, unlike earlier crooners, had a connection with female viewers. Part of his appeal was a full head of hair, making him matinee-idol material. But he also carried himself well and seemed to have an emotional transparency that others did not. Nothing was an act. What you saw and heard was who he was.

But TV alone didn't make Fisher a star. Several other events helped set the gears in motion. One was the public's acceptance of the vinyl 45 and 10-inch long-playing albums. The new formats made pop singers hot properties starting in 1952. Where vocalists had once been sandwiched briefly between stretches of instrumental music, the tables had turned by the early 1950s, when singers became the center of attention on jukeboxes and turntables.

Even more important than television and convenient record formats was the virtual absence of Frank Sinatra. The singer's popularity plummeted in the early 1950s as Columbia bungled his career, packaging him no differently than it had in the late 1940s, except for the addition of creepy novelty tunes. By the end of 1952, he had hit commercial bottom and the label dropped him. It would be a year before Sinatra staged a comeback—not on records but in the movies.

Fisher and RCA were able to exploit the vacuum. If Sinatra's vocal personality then was that of a confused and bruised romantic in need of female mothering, Fisher was seemingly more confident and free of emotional baggage. There was something about his voice that made girls and young women feel safe to dream.

At the dawn of the '50s, during this unique period of male emotionalism in pop, Fisher and a handful of other new singers were dubbed "criers"—those who sang as if they were about to break down in tears. As reflected by record sales, girls seemed to like it that way. This group included Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine and even Tony Bennett (I Won't Cry Anymore), whose early sound clearly was Columbia's answer to RCA's Fisher.

A careful listen to Fisher's recordings in the early '50s and beyond reveals an excellent lyric baritone with a throbbing feel who wasn't in the business of transfixing female fans as much as providing them with a courteous male prototype with characteristics they'd want in their own boyfriends. In this regard, Fisher was what we would come to call a "new male," one who resets preconceived notions of masculinity. Sinatra had done the same in the mid-1940s, but by the early '50s, his audience had outgrown him. What would save Sinatra's career in 1954 was his ability to re-purpose swing at Capitol as a finger-snapping soundtrack to celebrate mid-life virility.

In 1956, after the arrival of Elvis—a Southern and more virile, anti-conformity male—Fisher became a square overnight. He continued to have charted hits in the 1950s, six in '56 and three in '57, but life as he knew it was over with a bang. Which surely led to his break with Reynolds and affair and marriage to Taylor. Before the election of Kennedy, before the space race and before the arrival of the Beatles, Fisher was a has-been, a generational date, not a keeper, and a singer doomed to be a pre-Elvis nostalgia act hoping to make aging women feel the way they once did while getting their first kiss. Unlike Sinatra and Bennett, Fisher never could remake himself. Middle age, for Fisher, came too soon for that.

Taylor divorced Fisher in 1964, and Fisher would go on to marry Connie Stevens (two years), Terry Richard (one year) and Betty Lin (from 1993 until her death in 2001). Fisher died in 2010, but for much of his life, he was an expiration date left to wonder whether he ever was relevant, why everything had changed so suddenly and what he could have done to be more relevant. The cruel irony, of course, is that Elvis signed in 'Nov. 1955 with RCA, Fisher's label. Fisher never had a chance.

But mocking Fisher's post-'55 career is too easy. For five years in the early '50s, Fisher's success was significant and his connection to the psyche of teenage women ran deep. Let's see why. To take this journey, suspend what you know about music after 1955. This was an innocent, eerie time, when parents still had iron-clad control over their kids, and young people spent much of their time trying to act and dress like adults. Even for young pop stars, you were on your way when you looked and sounded much older than your age. There was no unifying youth culture then, just adults and their kids on a tight leash. Here's Fisher's first hit, Thinking of You, in 1950, which went to No. 5...

Here's Fisher's first No. 1 hit, in 1952—Wish You Were Here...

Here's Fisher's second No. 1 hit, in 1953—I'm Walking Behind You...

Here's Fisher's third No. 1 hit, in 1954, I Need You Now, performed at the Hollywood Bowl that year. By then, Sinatra had outgrown his young audience and was being repositioned in the LP era for young adults. Fisher, by contrast, had a more relaxed, youthful confidence untouched by the Depression or World War II...

Here's Fisher with Louis Armstrong at the Hollywood Bowl in 1954. He wasn't as loose or as improvisational as Sinatra, but Fisher had soul (move the time bar up to 4:29 if you want the duet)...

Here's Fisher on his own TV special in 1954. Remember, he's only 26...

Here's Eddie Fisher with Perry Como in 1956 shortly after marrying Debbie Reynolds...

Here's Fisher with Reynolds on What's My Line? in 1956. Strangely, Fisher is more relaxed and camera-friendly than Reynolds. Also, notice what Fisher says at the end: "I always cry." Sensitivity as a badge of honor, which marked a dramatic change in the persona of pop stars (move the time bar to 15:15)...

Here's Fisher in 1961 singing Small World from Gypsy...

Here's Fisher in 1962 performing at New York's Winter Garden Theatre...

Fisher's career continued for some years. Here's Fisher with Dean Martin in 1966, who clearly had enormous respect for his voice and confidence...

And finally, to crystalize all I've said above, here's a fascinating TV segment from 1953, when Sinatra was at rock bottom and desperately in need of TV exposure. It offers a stylistic evolution of the crooner, from Rudy Vallee (1920s) to Bing Crosby (1930s), to Frank Sinatra (1940s) and Eddie Fisher (1950s)...

Jack and Don in the Studio

I know little about Newvelle Records, other than they seem to spend big producing high-quality vinyl jazz packages for well-off listeners with high-end stereo systems who appreciate superb recordings of great artists. You'll find more on Newvelle and its offerings here. Reader David Langner brought the label to my attention primarily for two videos the label taped of well-known artists recording in its studios. I thought I'd share them with you.

The first is an interview with drummer Jack DeJohnette on his history with the piano, intermingled with his recording of Return for a Newvelle solo release in 2015...

The second is the late pianist Don Friedman recording Strength and Sanity, a Booker Little composition, for a recent Newvelle album...

Joe Alterman: Comin' Home

If you're like me, you probably grow frustrated when you run out of early recordings by pianists such as Red Garland, Ahmad Jamal, Ramsey Lewis, Gene Harris and Les McCann. You know, pianists who listened to themselves as they played and loved more than anything to swing gently and move souls. These pianists had a healthy respect for space, they loved single-note improvised lines, they didn't rush songs along and they avoided jamming in as many notes as possible. Block chords were as tightly packed as they'd go, and they'd add them in just the right places, usually for textured contrast, after a period of single-note lines. [Photo above of Joe Alterman by Lisa Piernot]

Pianist Joe Alterman to the rescue. Joe, who recently relocated from New York to Atlanta, just released a new album, Comin' Home to You, that has all of the ear candy I mention above. It's hard to express exactly what Joe is doing to capture your attention, but much of it relies on taste, technique, a healthy respect for lyricism, a strong sense of what exactly made past piano greats special and his own gentle personality. On the album, Joe works in the trio format with bassist Nathaniel Schroeder and drummer Doug Hirlinger on some tracks and bassist Scott Glazer and drummer Justin Chesarek on the others.

Joe's song choices are interesting, all the more so when given a Moodsville feel. Tracks include I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Nina Never Knew, Les McCann's Fish This Week, Carole King and Gerry Goffin's Take Good Care of My Baby, Daryl Hall and John Oates' Sara Smile, and Stevie Wonder's Isn't She Lovely. Joe's two originals—Comin' Home to You and The Last Time I Saw You—are exceptional. He's a gorgeous songwriter. [Photo above of Joe Alterman with Ramsey Lewis]

This is one of those albums you put on and listen to repeatedly. You can't help it. It's inspiring music from an artist who hasn't forsaken jazz's roots but has brought it along into modernity. Festivals from Newport and Monterey to Rio and Nice should try to book Joe while they still can afford him. A most impressive album and a must own. [Photo above of Joe Alterman with Houston Person]

JazzWax tracks: You'll find Joe Alterman's Comin' Home to You here...

JazzWax clip: Here's Nina Never Knew, which will give you a sense of how the rest of this album sounds. Perfect for thinking, creating and just watching pop in the fireplace...

Nina Never Knew

7 Nancy Wilson Videos Clips

I'm convinced that one of these years, singer Nancy Wilson will be named a Kennedy Center Honoree. Her artful ability to pull jazz into the pop realm and the peerless way in which she proved that pop was open to African-American interpretation without losing an ounce of pop's appeal was remarkable. Here are seven video clips that remind us why Nancy is special...

Here's Nancy on TV's Jazz Scene USA in 1962, hosted by Oscar Brown Jr....

Here's Nancy on TV's Hollywood Palace in 1964. The camera work here is sensational...

Here's Nancy on TV's I Spy in 1966...

Here's Nancy in 1987 at Carnegie Hall with conductor Masahiko Satoh...

Here's Nancy at the Playboy Jazz Festival in 1991 with Art Farmer on trumpet and Benny Golson on tenor saxophone...

Here's Nancy in 1992 at the Huis Ten Bosch Jazz Festival in Nagasaki, Japan...

And here's Nancy in 2004 with the Boston Pops and John Williams...

More Bands on WGN-TV in '65

A few weeks ago, I posted on an appearance by Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Harry James' appearance on WGN-TV in 1964 and '65. Back then, WGN aired a series of shows that featured Swing-era big bands. Most of these bands were at the tail-end of their commercial careers, since their core market was in their 40s or beyond and younger audiences had completely abandoned this form of music. The following WGN video clips give us a glimpse into what was still miraculously tight, nimble instrumental groups functioning as one with a distinct musical personality: 

Here's Claude Thornhill's band...

Here's Les and Larry Elgart's band...

Here's Ralph Flanagan's band...

Here's Vaughn Monroe's band. Monroe was a trumpeter and valve trombonist turned singer in the pop era of the late 1940s...

Here's Stan Kenton's band...

And here's a bonus—Vaughn Monroe on Ronald Regan's 1960 TV show...

Julie London's Holiday Album

This holiday weekend at JazzWax, let's slip on the Julie London holiday album that never was. As most readers know, London remains one of my favorite female vocalists. She had a captivating, cool singing style that never felt forced. Her satiny delivery, taste and voicing was nocturnal and relaxed, and she routinely took on tough songs and aced them with a proud, detached strength and maturity.

You may recall that last year, I wondered why London had released only one holiday single—I'd Like You for Christmas (1957), written by husband Bobby Troup. Was keeping the Yule at arm's length London's decision (too square?) or Liberty Records' call (not a hip marketing move?)? Or perhaps she did indeed record a full holiday album but the reel is sitting in a temperature-controlled vault someplace mislabeled or misplaced and forgotten.

In a post several years ago, I decided to take matters into my own hands and create a London holiday EP album for you by corralling all of her winter-season recordings and calling it Julie London Wishes You a Merry Christmas. This year, it's only fitting to once again remove the Plexiglas cover from the JazzWax turntable and lower the stylus on a self-produced Christmas classic using the sole six seasonal songs she recorded:

Here's I'd Like You for Christmas...

 

Here's Warm in December...

 

Here's I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm...

 

Here's Sleigh Ride in July...

 

Here's November Twilight...

 

And here's The Thirteenth Month...

 

Fun Roundup of Holiday Videos

Window shopping at YouTube yesterday, I came across nine fun seasonal clips that I thought I'd share with you. Seasons greetings from New York, and have a wonderful holiday weekend one and all...

Here's a clever mash of the James Bond Theme and Carol of the Bells...

Here's the first film depiction of Santa in a silent movie from 1898...

Here's Lou Costello singing White Christmas in 1952 and the orchestra's response...

Here's a Christmas message from the Honeymooners...

Here's Nat King Cole singing The Christmas Song on the Danny Kaye Christmas Special in 1963...

Here's English singer Vera Lynn and the George Shearing Quintet on a British television special in 1977 on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas in the U.K. If you wish, move the bar to 9:17 for Shearing. George at his finest...

Here's Andy Williams and his brothers on one of his holiday specials...

Here's Dean Martin singing I'll Be Home For Christmas in 1967...

And here's Karen Carpenter singing Merry Christmas Darling in London in 1978 on Bruce Forsyth's Big Night, a TV show starring Forsyth, a famed British TV host (hence, Karen Carpenter's tag at the end of the song)...

5 Albums That Cast a Spell

There are jazz albums I can't stop listening to once I put them on. It's an emotional thing. My soul won't let me do it. The quality of the art is so overwhelmingly beautiful that removing the album would shatter the mood the artists are spinning. These albums include Bill Evans at Town Hall, Erroll Garner: Concert by the Sea, The Gerry Mulligan Songbook, Rollins Plays for Bird and Paul Desmond and Jim Hall's Glad to Be Unhappy.

If you think I'm being overly dramatic, I'm not. In fact, let's see how you do. Here are tracks from all five of these albums. Trust me, your feet are going to go up before your hand has a chance to reach the computer mouse. Or just listen to the albums one after the next in front of the fireplace this weekend:

Here's Paul Desmond and Jim Hall playing Stranger in Town in 1964 with Gene Cherico (b) and Connie Kay (d)...

Here's Gerry Mulligan's Venus de Milo with Lee Konitz (as), Allen Eager, Zoot Sims (as,ts), Al Cohn (bar,ts), Gerry Mulligan (bar), Freddie Green (g), Henry Grimes (b), Dave Bailey (d) and Bill Holman (arr) in 1957...

Here's Erroll Garner playing Will You Still Be Mine, from Concert by the Sea in 1955 with Eddie Calhoun (b) and Denzil Best (d)...

Here's Bill Evans at Town Hall in 1966 playing Who Can I Turn To, with Chuck Israels (b) and Arnold Wise (d)...

And here's a medley of Parker's Mood, I Remember You, My Melancholy Baby, Old Folks, They Can't Take That Away From Me, Just Friends, My Little Suede Shoes and Star Eyes, on Rollins Plays for Bird in 1956, featuring Sonny Rollins (ts), Kenny Dorham (tp), Wade Legge (p) George Morrow (b) and Max Roach (d)...

Dean Martin's Holiday Show

The Dean Martin Show first aired on NBC in 1965 and lasted nine seasons, until 1974. Martin's rugged good looks, enveloping manner, swinging vocals and self-deprecating sense of humor tapped into the psyche of the American adult viewer back then who was shunted aside by the youth market and left clinging to the 1950s. On Dec. 14, 1967, Martin hosted a holiday special of his weekly variety TV show. While there was plenty of cringe-worthy period humor that relied on alcohol excess and women in bathing suits, Dean could sing, and he was wonderful to watch (far better than listening to him on LP). Caterina Valente, one of his guests on this particular night, was always exceptional on variety shows. And perhaps best of all, you can hear the Les Brown Band, the show's house orchestra. This band could really swing. Here's Dino in December 1967...

Savoy Bop Sessions 1945-49

During the two decades that followed the end of World War II in 1945, independent record labels flourished. Many of these micro labels succeeded by specializing in specific types of music that the more bland-minded giants—RCA, Columbia and Decca—largely ignored. In the process, these small labels wound up establishing beachheads for new music genres and cornering the market for the genres' best musicians and singers.

Tiny specialty labels in the late 1940s, '50s and early '60s included Four Star (country), Sun (rockabilly), King (R&B), Atlantic (gospel-R&B), Vanguard (folk), Motown (soul-pop), Stax (Southern horn-based soul) and Philles (pop-rock). Perhaps the very first of these themed indie labels was Savoy, which gave bebop credibility and momentum at a critical time starting in 1945.

Savoy was founded by Herman Lubinsky (above) in late 1942, just after the start of the first of two American Federation of Musicians' recording bans. The bans prohibited union musicians from working for record companies, which in 1942 meant the Big Three—RCA, Columbia and Decca. But in 1943, a nearly bankrupt Decca agreed to pay royalties into a union fund earmarked for the hiring of unemployed musicians at union events, dozens of small labels emerged to take the same deal. To survive, they carved out unexploited niches in the recording market.

At first, Savoy's mission was rather aimless, recording forgettable sides in 1943 by no-name combos such as the Original Kings of Harmony and Teddy Tucker's Band. The following year, Savoy took a bolder step by recording Swing-era and blues stars such as "Hot Lips" Page, Don Byas, Teddy Wilson and Tiny Grimes. But this was a rather staid business move.

Savoy's bold shift arrived in early 1945 with the hiring of Teddy Reig (above, in 1948), who had a sterling eye and ear for a new form of jazz emerging in New York clubs. This music scrapped swing-band dance tempos for the inventiveness of individual musicians in small combos.

The new music was called "bebop" in 1946 by the jazz press. Its tempo was too fast for dancing, and only those musicians familiar with bebop's complex music theory could improvise with authority and flare. Making up fresh and flawless melody and harmony lines at breakneck tempos was akin to French chefs plating meals perfectly on the backs of pickup trucks barreling down a dirt road. Bebop's art rested on the articulation of gutsy ideas, blues sensibility, limber dexterity and a burning desire to stand out with passion and velocity. Audiences needed to be thunderstruck.

Much of the bebop recorded by Savoy starting in 1945 relied on the impeccable taste of Reig, who early on identified and appreciated the circus-like excitement and aggression of the new music and artists. Bebop wasn't just familiar melodies played fast. It was a deft interpretation and expression, a new language for fitting in and competing based on one's abilities and poetry, not one's race. [Photo above of Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray]

Bebop began in the early 1940s in the hands of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, who arrived at the same musical conclusions separately. By May 1945, bop had congealed when Gillespie and Parker recorded together for Savoy. Though other labels had recorded bop by then, including Guild, Musicraft and Continental, Savoy, through Reig, brought something special to the mix. With the Savoy sides, there was sophisticated wit and an intellectual hipness that transcended musical wheel-spinning and flamboyance. You could hear the soloist's burning drive and daring simmering within the grooves of recordings. 

Now, Mosaic Records has assembled all of Savoy's bebop sessions (sans Parker) in a new box—Classic Savoy Be-Bop Sessions 1945-49, a 10-CD set with a 32-page booklet with photos, liner notes by Bob Porter and Neil Tesser, and detailed discographical information. For too long, Parker has loomed large as bebop's godfather. Easily the form's most lyrical and breathtaking practitioner, Parker's work for Savoy has been endlessly documented. But as the new Savoy box shows, he wasn't the only bebop saint, not by a mile.

The new Savoy box features 216 tracks that have been warmly remastered, providing the listener with several marvelous narratives. There's the reveal of bebop's B-story thriving in Parker's shadow between 1945 and '49. There's the story of the label's and Reig's shrewd choices in musicians to record. But best of all is the chronological evidence of bebop's evolution from its birth at Harlem's after-hours clubs in the early 1940s to the style's saturation and waning with the arrival of cool jazz in 1949.

Under the auspices of Reig, Savoy's bop run (excluding the Parker recordings) began with Dexter Gordon in October 1945 and Kai Winding in December. But if Reig had hopes of turning Savoy into a Parker palace, those dreams were quickly dashed. Parker left for Los Angeles at the tail end of 1945 and didn't return until mid-1947, recording mostly for Dial. Reig was forced to amp up his search for bop's brightest lights. He found them in Allen Eager, J.J. Johnson, Stan Getz, Sonny Stitt, Kenny Dorham, Fans Navarro, Gil Fuller, Ray Brown, Eddie Davis, Serge Chaloff, Kenny Hagood, John Lewis, Leo Parker, Tadd Dameron, Howard McGhee, Brew Moore and Kenny Clarke, along with the dozens of accomplished bop sidemen who accompanied these session leaders. 

What you learn by listening to the Savoy bop recordings in chronological order is how loose and inventive the music became over time. At first, ensembles often played bop lines rigidly in unison before soloists took flight. But this attack became much more loose and peppery by 1946. You can hear this transition and freer approach in Eddie Davis's Just a Mystery in '46 and Fats Navarro's Eb Pob in '47. The Serge Chaloff Sextette upped the frantic ante while Dameron's sides and Navarro's Nostalgia introduced a cosmopolitan sheen. By 1949, J.J. Johnson's Goof Square and Brew Moore's Mud Bug had the smoothness of an automatic transmission. [Photo above of Tadd Dameron]

The box ends in mid-1949 with Fuller's dense orchestral bop session, which as remarkable as it sounded now seems like a rhinoceros ice-skating. To be sure, his arrangements were a miracle to play and hear. But by then, a new jazz revolution was underway, a drier, airier approach that critics would come to call cool jazz. The first of these recordings by Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh in March were captured in March '49.

Between 1945 and '49, jazz transitioned from the swing of collective bands to the daredevil skills of the soloist. Mosaic's new box and booklet document these critical four years brilliantly through the catalog of a single label. Remarkably, the music remains Jell-O bouncy and highly electrifying. It's also important to note that bebop in the mid-1940s threw open the doors to post-war modernity, blazing a trail for the action painting, abstract sculpture and non-hierarchical cubist architecture that would follow in the late 1940s and early '50s. Bebop taught artists who could hear the message that the individual mattered and would be rewarded for thinking highly of themselves, tapping into their feelings and taking creative chances. The recipe is all here in this box. [Photo above, from left, Dizzy Gillespie and Gil Fuller]

JazzWax tracks: You'll find Mosaic's Classic Savoy Be-Bop Sessions 1945-49, a 10-CD set here. And if you don't have Mosaic's The Complete Dial Modern Jazz Sessions, order it as well (here). Both are important jazz history lessons. You'll cry when the limited editions are gone and you held off.

JazzWax clips: Here's tenor saxophonist Stan Getz in July 1946 playing Running Water with Hank Jones (p) Curly Russell (b) and Max Roach (d)...

Running Water

Here's bassist Ray Brown with Dizzy Gillespie and Dave Burns (tp), John Brown (as), James Moody (ts), Milt Jackson (vib), Hank Jones (p) and Joe Harris (d), with Gil Fuller (arr), playing Smokey Hollow Jump in September 1946...

Smokey Hollow Jump

Here's tenor saxophonist Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis in December 1946 playing Red Pepper with Fats Navarro (tp) Al Haig (p) Huey Long (g) Gene Ramey (b) and Denzil Best (d)...

Red Pepper