{"id":101,"date":"2005-08-19T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-19T08:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/?p=101"},"modified":"2005-08-19T01:05:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-19T08:05:00","slug":"ave_lucky_thompson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2005\/08\/ave_lucky_thompson\/","title":{"rendered":"Ave Lucky Thompson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Years before his death at the end of July, disillusionment, indigence, homelessness and mental illness stilled Lucky Thompson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tenor saxophone. His life began to unravel in the sixties. In the early seventies, he played little, then stopped. Kind strangers who admired his music saw after him in his last years.<br \/>\nI never knew Mr. Thompson, never saw him in live performance, but his work reached me from the first time I heard it on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/redirect?link_code=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;tag=rifftidougram-20&amp;creative=9325&amp;path=tg\/detail\/-\/B000067FUO\/qid=1124428832\/sr=1-1\/ref=sr_1_1?v=glance%26s=music\"target=\"_blank\">Charlie Parker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 1946 Dial recordings<\/a>. On \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Moose The Mooche,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yardbird Suite,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ornithology\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A Night in Tunisia,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Thompson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s solos suggested elements of Coleman Hawkins and Don Byas, but the surge and thrust of his invented lines and the swagger in his delivery\u00e2\u20ac\u201dparticularly on the master take of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tunisia\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u201dset him apart from other tenor players. He was not, srictly speaking, one of the early bebop artists, but his playing fit perfectly with theirs. Later, I went back a step to 1944 to listen to Thompson on Count Basie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/redirect?link_code=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;tag=rifftidougram-20&amp;creative=9325&amp;path=tg\/detail\/-\/B000059RI2?v=glance%26s=music%26vi=samples#disc_1\"target=\"_blank\">\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Taps Miller\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Avenue C\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> and found that he was a fully formed soloist at twenty, mixing smoothness and roughness in perfect balance.<br \/>\nIf I were to recommend essential Thompson recordings to people unfamiliar with him, I would start with the Parker Dials, then refer them to the 1954 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/redirect?link_code=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;tag=rifftidougram-20&amp;creative=9325&amp;path=tg\/detail\/-\/B000000YBY\/qid=1124429364\/sr=2-1\/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1?v=glance%26s=music\"target=\"_blank\">Miles Davis <em>Walkin<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 <\/a>session on Prestige, which has some of Thompson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s greatest solos. Of his own albums, I suggest <em>Tricotimsm <\/em>(1956) on Impulse! and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/redirect?link_code=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;tag=rifftidougram-20&amp;creative=9325&amp;path=tg\/detail\/-\/B000000YAU\/qid=1124429816\/sr=2-1\/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1?v=glance%26s=music\"target=\"_blank\"><em>Lucky Strikes<\/em> <\/a>(1964) on  Prestige. <em>Tricotism <\/em>includes bassist Oscar Pettiford and pianist Hank Jones, with both of whom Thompson had special rapport. The album is hard to find.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.musicstack.com\/item\/70923320\/thompson,lucky\/tricotism\"target=\"_blank\"> Here <\/a>is one possible source. Jones, with bassist Richard Davis and drummer Connie Kay, is also on <em>Lucky Strikes<\/em>. In it, Thompson plays soprano saxophone in addition to tenor, and the album may well be his masterpiece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Years before his death at the end of July, disillusionment, indigence, homelessness and mental illness stilled Lucky Thompson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tenor saxophone. His life began to unravel in the sixties. In the early seventies, he played little, then stopped. Kind strangers who admired his music saw after him in his last years. I never knew Mr. Thompson, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-101","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}