Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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THOMPSON, Lucky

(b Eli Thompson, 16 June 1924, Detroit; d 30 July 2005, Seattle WA) Tenor sax; also soprano later. A unique stylist, a disciple of Don Byas with a softer tone and a personal sense of time. He worked for Lionel Hampton, Don Redman '44, Count Basie '44-5; recorded for Dial on the West Coast '46 with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in Dizzy's Tempo Jazzmen, also in a Parker septet; played with Boyd Raeburn; led a band at the Savoy Ballroom; worked in R&B recording, songwriting, publishing; came back to jazz mid-'50s. He played on Miles Davis's classic 'Walkin' ' session April '54, on Jo Jones Special on Vanguard c.'55, joined Milt Jackson on tracks for Ballads And Blues on Atlantic, The Jazz Skyline on Savoy with Hank Jones, Kenny Clarke, Wendell Marshall on bass, both early '56; left for Europe the next month.

Recordings included Paris 1956 on Swing and Brown Rose in Paris with Martial Solal on Xanadu; back in the USA, with Jackson on Atlantic again on Plenty, Plenty Soul '57; returned to Europe until '62, taking up soprano in the late '50s: John Coltrane gets credit for reviving the soprano, but Thompson was already a modernist on the instrument. Lord, Lord Am I Ever Gonna Know? on Candid was recorded '61 in Paris with Solal, Kenny Clarke, Peter Trunk on bass. Three LPs on Prestige included Lucky Strikes! '63 with Hank Jones, Richard Davis and Connie Kay, also Happy Days '65 with Tommy Flanagan; there were two LPs on Rivoli. 

Back in Europe '68-71 Thompson recorded for MPS. Body And Soul '70 on Ensayo with the Tete Montoliu trio was almost retrospective, made in Barcelona, reissued in the USA on Nessa in 1978, the ten tracks including 'Blue 'N Boogie' reprised from the Davis session, 'What's New?' from the Savoy/Jackson session, but this time on soprano, and another take on 'The World Awakes' from 1956, one of his best tunes, a blues that he turned into something unique. He taught at Dartmouth '73-4 and made two LPs on Groove Merchant, but became disillusioned and faded away from music. When Uptown released a two-CD set New York City, 1964-65 in 2009, comprising an octet concert in an off-Broadway theatre, with Hank Jones and trombonist Benny Powell (b 1 March 1930; d 26 June 2010), and a nightclub set with just a rhythm section, the writing and playing on both sets was described as outstanding, both including 'The World Awakes'.

Other bits and pieces included tracks made for Urania '54, later on a Fresh Sound CD as Accent On Tenor Sax, and there were a couple of others on Fresh Sound; two albums on ABC-Paramount '56 were reissued on Impulse as Dancing Sunbeam, then on CD as Tricotism with Jimmy Cleveland and Oscar Pettiford. The list wasn't long enough for Thompson's many fans. He suffered from Alzheimers in later years.