A sonic exploration and tonal analysis of contemporary creative music in a myriad of improvisational/composed settings, textures, and expressions.
Welcome to Sound Projections
I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
Thus this magazine will strive to critically question and go beyond the conventional imposed notions
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'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual
artists and ensembles do cretively to challenge and transform our ingrained ideas and attitudes of what
music is and could be.
So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay
homage to the endlessly creative and uniquely magisterial dimensions of MUSIC in all of its guises and expressive identities.
Saturday, June 13, 2020
Fats Navarro (1923-1950): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, producer, and teacher
The story begins in Key West, Florida where Theodore "Fats" Navarro, Jr. was born
on September 24, 1923. It is said that he was of mixed Cuban-Black-Chinese parentage,
but the details are unclear. His father was Theodore Navarro, Sr., a barber by trade,
so to avoid confusion the son was known as "Cody" by the family. His mother was Miriam
(nee Fernandez) and there were two daughters, Elisabeth and Delores. At some point, the
parents were divorced and his mother remarried a Reverend Williams. The couple had
several more children together, so Navarro had many half siblings.
Sister Elisabeth in later years spoke of him as a good natured and well mannered person
who looked on the positive side of life. He was known as an excellent sponge diver who
could hold his breath under water for several minutes.
His musical training began early with piano lessons at age six, but he did not start taking
music seriously until he took up the trumpet at age thirteen. Once he became committed
to music, he devoted himself to studying and practicing his trumpet. When his mother saw that
he was serious and would stick to it, she bought him a better quality instrument. He also
studied tenor sax and played it well enough to briefly work in the Walter Johnson band in Miami
while still in high school. (Many years later during his prime, he was known to sit in
from time to time at jam sessions on tenor just for fun.)
Apparently Navarro did not care much for Key West. He was once quoted as saying "I didn't
like Key West at all. I'll never go back." So, after graduating Frederick Douglass High
School, he joined Sol Albrights's band in Orlando, traveled with him to Cincinnati, took
further trumpet lessons from an Ohio teacher, and soon went on the road with Snookum Russell's
Indianapolis-based orchestra.
The Big Band Years
Russell's group, a well regarded "territorial" band in the 1940s,
proved to be a valuable training ground for Fats. It was a place to
develop, experiment, and make mistakes that no one would remember
before heading on to the national stage. Such stars an J.J. Johnson
and Ray Brown also had paid their dues there. Fats stayed with Russell for
about two years (1941-42) and became its feature trumpet soloist. At
that time, his style was strongly influenced by the great Roy Eldridge
and his (Fats') second cousin, the wonderful trumpet stylist Charlie Shavers.
He was yet to hear and incorporate Dizzy Gillespie's and Charlie Parker's
ideas. There is no recorded evidence of his work with Russell.
His next stop was with Andy Kirk and his Kansas City-based "Clouds of Joy."
Here he met and forged a lasting friendship with trumpeter Howard McGhee.
Maggie, as he was known, was a few years older than Fats and was an important
influence in his development. Unfortunately, there is very little recorded evidence
of his work with the Kirk band due mainly to a musicians strike against the
record companies. What recordings that do exist do not feature many Fats solos,
and due to the similarity in their styles at the time, it is hard to tell who is
soloing at various points (see Session 1-3 and 8 of the discography). There is
no doubt, however, that McGhee was the feature trumpet soloist with the band.
His secondary role in the Andy Kirk band explains the much quoted story
recounted by Billy Eckstine describing how Fats moved over to his band.
Dizzy Gillespie left my band in Washington, D.C. He told me to go over
to hear Andy Kirk, because there was a fellow with Kirk named Fats
Navarro. 'Take a listen to him,' said Dizzy, 'he's wonderful!' So I
went out to the club, and the only thing Fats had to blow (because
Howard McGhee was the feature trumpet player) was behind a chorus number.
But he was wailing behind this number, and I said to myself, 'This is
good enough; this'll fit.' So I got Fats to come by and talk it over,
and about two weeks after that he took Dizzy's chair, and take it from
me, he came right in ... Great as Diz is ... Fats played his book
and you would hardly know that Diz had left the band. 'Fat Girl' played
Dizzy's solos, not note for note, but his ideas on Dizzy's parts and the
feeling was the same and there was just as much swing.
The fact that Navarro accepted Eckstine's invitation is easily explained;
Eckstine's band was both commercially successful, due mainly to "Mr. B's"
romantic vocals, and perhaps the most musically advanced. Besides Charlie
Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, the band included at one time or other during
a brief four year span a lineup of future stars that is unprecedented in
all of jazz: Kenny Dorham, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Gene
Ammons, Lucky Thompson, Bud Johnson, Frank Wess, Charlie Rouse, Sonny
Stitt, Leo Parker, Cecil Payne, Tadd Dameron, Jerry Valentine, Tommy
Potter, Art Blakey, and Sarah Vaughan were some of the more notable to
pass through the band.
Unfortunately, few of the recordings give any impression of this. The
record companies were mainly interested in the commercial potential of
Eckstine's rather conventional ballads. There are only a handful of
examples
of Navarro's work with the band on the many recordings that were made
(see
Sessions 4-7 and 9,10 of the discography). After an eighteen month stay,
the rigors of road travel and the lack of opportunities to play his
music
led Fats to leave the Eckstine band and remain in New York City. There
would
be a period of brilliance and increasing musical maturity over the next
three
years. It was the summer of 1946 and Fats was about to enter his most
productive period. He was now twenty two years old and already a
trumpet virtuoso.
The New York Scene
New York City has been a major center of jazz development through most of jazz's history, and the 1940s was a particularly fertile period. Both the Harlem and 52nd Street musical scenes were a hotbed of jazz activity. Due to the economics of the big band and the change from a mainly dancing to a listening music, big band jazz gave way to the small jazz combo format consisting usually of a rhythm section of piano, bass and drums, and from one to three "front line" feature soloists. (There were a few notable exceptions such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Woody Herman, Lionel Hampton, and Stan Kenton, but for the most part the big band era was over.) The small combo format was ideal for Navarro. He was able to give full expression to his ideas and soon developed a reputation as a major force on modern trumpet rivaling that of Dizzy Gillespie. As a result, he was much sought after for recording dates as a feature sideman by such jazz greats as Kenny Clarke (Session 11 and 12), Dexter Gordon (Session 25), Coleman Hawkins (Sessions 14 and 24), Benny Goodman (Session 34), Bud Powell (Session 45), and particularly, Tadd Dameron (Sessions 20, 35, and 43). He also appeared as a feature soloist on many "all-star" or "dream band" engagements, including a JATP concert at Carnegie Hall.
Lesser known artists could gain instant credibility for their recording dates by including him. He recorded under his own name on several occasions as well. Altogether he appears on about 150 sides during this period that have unequivocally established his place in the history of the music. Regardless of the musical surroundings, he invariably recorded well.
A critical listening of his recorded work seems to reveal that he was at his peak in the fall of 1947. He no doubt would have continued making remarkable recordings in the winter and spring of 1948 had it not been for a musicians strike against the record companies, which lasted nine months. So, despite uncertain health and stamina, he once again was on the road in the Spring of 1948 with the Lionel Hampton Band (Sessions 26-31).
Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, Navarro got involved with drugs. It's unknown when, where or under what circumstances, but it would relentlessly plague him for the remainder of his short life. He followed the path of many other jazz musicians of the time in this regard, but unlike some, he was never able to overcome it.
Tadd Dameron Group
After returning from the road with Hampton, he settled down again in New York City as a semi-permanent member of the Tadd Dameron group. His association with Dameron was probably the most productive musically. They seemed to be in sympathy with one another. The Dameron influence brought a more lyrical feeling to his playing to go along with his breathtaking technical facility and his high note ability which he used sparingly but with great effect. Navarro was the feature soloist with Tadd's group, which also included at various times Wardell Gray, Allen Eagar, J.J. Johnson, Ernie Henry, Milt Jackson, Curley Russell, Nelson Boyd, and Kenny Clarke. The group gigged mostly around New York City and was often at the Royal Roost.
Based largely on his recordings and club appearances with Dameron, Navarro achieved considerable popularity with the jazz public and was highly admired by both critics and fellow musicians. He also was a Metronome jazz poll winner for 1948 which led to an appearance on a Metronome All Stars recording date (Session 42). It would have been a natural step for him to form his own group, but he showed no inclination to do so. Perhaps the need to have a steady paycheck to support his drug habit was a determining factor. But in 2016 Sonny Rollins mentioned that Navarro said to him that he was planning to form his own group and wanted Rollins to join the new group. It's hard to tell whether this was a serious plan or just a way of Navarro letting Rollins know that he liked is tenor playing.
The Final Years
In addition to his drug problems, Navarro also contracted tuberculosis, which is usually a slow developing malady. The combination of his drug habit, the TB, and a less than robust constitution led to a sharp decline in his health and a curtailing of his musical activity over the last seventeen months of his life. He nevertheless went on the road one last time with the Jazz at the Philharmonic tour for about seven weeks in February and March of 1949 (see Session 44). He had only two studio recording dates in 1949, one in August on a Bud Powell date (Session 45) and one a month later with the little known tenor saxophonist, Don Lanphere (Session 46). He plays beautifully on both, but without the usual power and range. In fact, as far back as January you can hear him struggling to hit a high note on Casbah (Session 43) which would have been child's play a couple of years earlier. Perhaps as a way of compensating for his diminished physical condition, his play seemed to become more intricate. He utilized more double time passages than on past recordings, but always within the musical context.
The last recordings are a bit of an enigma (Sessions 47-51). These were private records done live at Birdland that featured Charlie Parker and Bud Powell. Fats holds his own throughout, while playing several long and interesting solos. His exciting solo on The Street Beat is one of his longest on record. The dates of Spring of 1950 given for these performances, however, are hard to reconcile with the poor condition of his health. He has been described as coughing uncontrollably and appearing physically emaciated during this period, which does not jibe with the high quality of his play. In the long run, it does not matter.
Theodore "Fats" Navarro died on July 6, 1950 at Metropolitan Hospital on Welfare Island, New York (now Roosevelt Island). The funeral took place in Harlem on July 13th. Among the attendees was Charlie Parker. He is buried at Rosehill Cemetery in Linden, NJ. Funeral and burial expenses were paid for by bandleader Andy Kirk. He was survived by his wife, Rena (nee Clark) (1927-1975), daughter, Linda (1949-2014), grandson Amilcar Navarro, and thousands of jazz lovers around the world.
In recognition for his important contribution to jazz, Fats Navarro was inducted into the Downbeat Magazine Jazz Hall of Fame in 1982.
Prepared by Stuart A. Varden, Ed.D.
Professor of Information Technology, Emeritus
Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems
In 2001, musicologist and author A.B. Spellman and Murry Horwitz
of the American Film Institute shared their impression of Fats on NPR.
After playing “The Fats Navarro Story,” Horwitz said, “He was a truly,
brilliant talent, who died to tuberculosis.” The album, Horwitz added
“is a comprehensive reflection of five short years, during which he
recorded prolifically.” And Spellman said, “That’s why we are including
this collection in NPR’s Basic Jazz Record Library.” “It’s our good fortune that between 1945 and 1950, Navarro recorded
with many of the major soloists of the era, as well as almost all of the
beboppers,” Spellman said to Horwitz. “So when you get this set, you’re
also getting the rare recordings of the Billy Eckstine Orchestra, and a
fairly comprehensive cross-section of the best bebop musicians.” Some jazz authorities may take exception to Spellman’s comments on
the differing styles of Gillespie and Fats. “Although Fats Navarro and
Dizzy Gillespie were contemporaries, there were key differences that set
them apart,” Spellman told Horwitz. “Fats was a much better
technician—his sound was fuller, his diction more crisp; his range more
secure. He wasn’t as bold as Gillespie, so he could be more meticulous
in the structure of his solos. He also had an attacking, pianistic
phrasing that was firm, but seductively beautiful.” In my opinion both possessed an intuitive understanding of bebop and
the various advances of jazz modernity, especially their lyrical and
expressive qualities on ballads. Fats died in New York City on July 6, 1950, five days after
performing with Parker at Birdland. In 1982, he was inducted into the
DownBeat Hall of Fame. And in 2002, friends and family members dedicated
a headstone for his grave at Rose Hall Cemetery in Linden, New Jersey.
The event of the dedication was sponsored by the Jazz Alliance
International while the day of it was proclaimed as Fats Navarro Day by
the mayor of Linden. During the ceremony, Linden High School Choir
performed “Amazing Grace,” while trumpeter Jon Faddis played Navarro’s
“Nostalgia.” The night of the same day, 14 trumpeters joined a stellar
rhythm section to honor the Navarro songbook at the Jazz Standard in
Manhattan. Faddis, who assembled the section under musical direction
from Don Sickler, was accompanied by drummer Billy Drummond, bassist
Peter Washington, and pianist James Williams.
Fats Navarro played beautiful melodies with a fat, sweet tone and every note sounded like he meant it.
He was one of the first great bop trumpet virtuosos.
Fats Navarro was born on September 24 , 1923 and died on July 7,
1950. His recent ancestors were Cuban, African, and Chinese. He was
born in Key West Florida and began piano lessons at the age of six. At
the age of thirteen, Fats [Theodore] began to study trumpet and he
studied both trumpet and tenor saxophone in high school. After
graduating from high school, Fats Navarro left for Orlando where he
joined Sol Albright’s band and traveled to the midwest.
He
joined Snookum Russell’s big band, based in Indianapolis and spent a
couple of formative years in that big band. He became the lead trumpet
soloist in the band and played in a style similar to the style of
Roy Eldridge.
Perhaps Navarro’s saxophone background also contributed to his playing
style with more woodwind style runs and fewer brass style arpeggios
than most other trumpeters.
After Russell’s band he moved on to
Andy Kirk and his “Clouds of Joy” which was Kansas City based. He sat
second chair to and was greatly influenced by Howard McGhee in that
band. During this timethe legendary Billy Eckstine big band was in
existence. When
Dizzy Gillespie
left that band, he recommended Fats to Eckstine to take his place.
Fats accepted and according to Billy Eckstine, the transition from Dizzy
Gillespie to Fats Navarro was so smooth that one could hardly notice
Dizzy Gillespie had left the band. Eckstine said that while Fats did
not copy Dizzy’s solos note for note, his feeling was the same and
there was just as much swing as there was with Dizzy. “Fat Girl" Navarro
left Eckstine after about a year and a half for small combo work in New
York.
In the context of a small combo, Fats was able to develop
and showcase his virtuoso playing on the trumpet. He recorded with
such luminaries as Kenny Clarke, Dexter Gordon,
Coleman Hawkins
, and most particularly Tadd Dameron. He played on scores of great
recordings in New York in 1947 as a featured sideman and he
unfortunately also developed a heroin addiction. Navarro already had a weak constitution which was being further weakened by tuberculosis. The addition
of a heroin addiction would lead to his quick, untimely death. When
the 1948 recording strike ended Navarro was again cutting recordings,
most often with Tadd Dameron. He was winning jazz polls as the best
trumpet player and generally considered the peer of Dizzy Gillespie. Both
Gillespie and Navarro developed their styles based to a large degree on
the style of Roy Eldridge. Unlike Eldridge, Navarro did not crack his
notes and did not place as much emphasis on chance taking and high note
pyrotechnics. Compared to Dizzy Gillespie, he played more in the middle
register
and less in the upper register [although he could play very high when
he wanted to]. Navarro’s tone was bigger and sweeter than Gillespie’s tone and his playing style a little more deliberate and less
flashy.
Fats sat in and greatly contributed to many of the
legendary jam sessions at Minton’s Playhouse during the early
development of bop. Miles Davis was also at many of these sessions.
According to saxophonist Jimmy Health, “Fats ate Miles up every night.
Miles couldn’t outswing him, he couldn’t outpower him, he couldn’t
outsweet him, and he couldn’t do anything except take that whipping on
every tune.”
In 1949, his health rapidly declined and his
recording dates became less frequent and his playing less forceful
although still quite brilliant. He died in July of 1950.
His career was not long in length and his recordings not
well-known except to jazz aficionados. His influence on players after
him was nevertheless extensive. The great Clifford Brown adopted,
extended and refined Navarro’s style in his own tragically short career.
And largely through Clifford Brown, the trumpet playing of Fats
Navarro had an effect on almost every jazz trumpeter after them.
Recommended: Fats Navarro Story
Theodore “Fats” Navarro (trumpet) was born on September 24, 1923 in Key West, Florida and passed away on July 6, 1950 in NYC, New York at the age of 26.
Navarro was born in Key West, Florida, to Cuban-Black-Chinese
parentage. He began playing piano at age six, but did not become serious
about music until he began playing trumpet at age of thirteen. He was a
childhood friend of drummer Al Dreares. By the time he graduated from
Douglass high school he wanted to be away from Key West and joined a
dance band headed for the midwest. He worked with Andy Kirk during
1943-1944, and replaced Dizzy Gillespie with the Billy Eckstine big band
during 1945-1946. Tiring of the road life after touring with many bands and gaining
valuable experience, including influencing a young J. J. Johnson when
they were together in Snookum Russell’s territory band, Navarro settled
in New York City in 1946, where his career took off. He met and played
with, among others, Charlie Parker, one of the greatest musical
innovators of modern jazz improvisation, but Navarro was in a position
to demand a high salary, and did not join one of Parker’s regular
groups. He had short stints with the big bands of Lionel Hampton and Benny
Goodman, continued working with Dameron, made classic recordings with
Bud Powell (in a quintet with a young Sonny Rollins) and the Metronome
All-Stars, and a 1950 Birdland appearance with Charlie Parker was
privately recorded. He also participated in small group recording
sessions with Kenny Clarke, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Coleman Hawkins,
Illinois Jacquet, and Howard McGhee. He also developed a heroin
addiction, which, coupled with tuberculosis and a weight problem (he was
nicknamed “Fat Girl”) led to a slow decline in his health and death at
the age of twenty-six. In Charles Mingus’ somewhat counter-factual autobiography Beneath the Underdog,
Navarro and Mingus strike up a deep friendship while touring together.
Navarro was hospitalized on July 1 and died in the evening of July 7,
1950. His last performance was with Charlie Parker on July 1 at
Birdland. The Epitaph on Fats Navarro grave stone reads: “I’d Like To Just Play A Perfect Melody, All The Chord Progressions Right, The Melody Original And Fresh – My Own.” Navarro was survived by wife Rena (née Clark; 1927–1975) and daughter
Linda (born 1949), who currently lives in Seattle, Washington.
“Fats was a spectacular musician because, in a
time when cats arrived on the scene with nothing, he came on with
everything: he could read, he could play high and hold anybody's first
trumpet chair, he could play those singing, melodic solos with a big
beautiful sound nobody could believe at the time, and he could fly in
fast tempos with staccato, biting notes and execute whatever he wanted
with apparently no strain, everything clear. And every note meant
something. You know, there are those kinds of guys who just play a lot
of notes, some good, some bad. Fats wasn't one of those. He made his
music be about each note having a place and a reason. And he had so much
warmth, so much feeling. That's why I said he had everything.”--Roy
Haynes The story begins in Key West, Florida where Theodore
“Fats” Navarro was born of mixed Cuban-Black-Chinese parentage on
September 24, 1923. His musical training began early with piano lessons
at age six, but he did not start taking music seriously until he took up
the trumpet at age thirteen. He became well grounded in the
fundamentals of music during his high school years. He also studied
tenor saxophone and played briefly with Walter Johnson's band in Miami.
After graduating high school, he joined Sol Allbrights's band in
Orlando, traveled with him to Cincinnati, took further trumpet lessons
from an Ohio teacher, and soon went on the road with Snookum Russell's
Indianapolis-based orchestra.
Russell's group, a well regarded “territorial” band in the 1940s, proved to be a valuable training ground for Fats.Such
stars an J.J. Johnson and Ray Brown had paid their dues there. Fats
stayed with Russell for about two years (1941-42) and became its feature
trumpet soloist. At that time, his style was strongly influenced by the
great Roy Eldridge and his (Fats') third cousin, the wonderful trumpet
stylist Charlie Shavers. He was yet to hear and incorporate Dizzy
Gillespie's and Charlie Parker's message. His next stop was with Andy
Kirk and his Kansas City-based “Clouds of Joy.” Here he met and forged a
lasting friendship with trumpeter Howard McGhee. Maggie, as he was
known, was a few years older than Fats and was an important influence in
his development. From the Andy Kirk band, Fats accepted Billy
Eckstine's invitation to join up as Eckstine's band was both
commercially successful and perhaps the most musically advanced. Besides
Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, the band included at one time or
other during a brief four year span a lineup of future stars that is
unprecedented in all of jazz: Kenny Dorham, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon,
Wardell Gray, Gene Ammons, Lucky Thompson, Bud Johnson, Frank Wess,
Charlie Rouse, Sonny Stitt, Leo Parker, Cecil Payne, Tadd Dameron, Jerry
Valentine, Tommy Potter, Art Blakey, and Sarah Vaughan were some of the
more notable to pass through the band. Unfortunately, few of the
recordings give any impression of this. The record companies were mainly
interested in the commercial potential of Eckstine's rather
conventional ballads. There are only a handful of examples of Navarro's
work with the band on the many recordings that were made. After an
eighteen month stay, the rigors of road travel and the lack of
opportunities to play his music led Fats to leave the Eckstine band and
remain in New York City. There would be a period of brilliance and
increasing musical maturity over the next three years. It was the summer
of 1946 and Fats was about to enter his most productive period. He was
now twenty two years old and already a trumpet virtuoso New York
City has been a major center of jazz development through most of jazz's
history, and 1940s was a particularly fertile period. Both the Harlem
and 52nd Street musical scenes were a hotbed of jazz activity. Due to
the economics of the big band and the change from a mainly dancing to a
listening music, big band jazz gave way to the small jazz combo format
consisting usually of a rhythm section of piano, bass and drums, and
from one to three “front line” feature soloists. (There were a few
notable exceptions such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Woody Herman,
Lionel Hampton, and Stan Kenton, but for the most part the big band era
was over.) The small combo format was ideal for Fats. He was able
to give full expression to his ideas and soon developed a reputation as a
major force on modern trumpet rivaling that of Dizzy Gillespie. As a
result, he was much sought after for recording dates as a feature
sideman by such jazz greats as Kenny Clarke,Dexter Gordon, Coleman
Hawkins, Benny Goodman, Bud Powell, and particularly, Tadd Dameron. He
also appeared as a feature soloist on many “all-star” or “dream band”
engagements, including a JATP concert at Carnegie Hall. His
association with Dameron was probably the most productive musically.
They seemed to be in sympathy with one another. The Dameron influence
brought a more lyrical feeling to his playing to go along with his
breathtaking technical facility and his high note ability which he used
sparingly but with great effect. Navarro was the feature soloist with
Tadd's group, which also included at various times Wardell Gray, Allen
Eagar, J.J. Johnson, E Henry, Milt Jackson, Curley Russell, Nelson Boyd,
and Kenny Clarke. The group gigged mostly around New York City and was
often at the Royal Roost. Navarro achieved considerable popularity
with the jazz public and was highly admired by both critics and fellow
musicians. He also was a Metronome jazz poll winner for 1948 which led
to an appearance on a Metronome All Stars recording date.It would have been a natural step for him to form his own group, but he showed no inclination to do so. Navarro,
who spoke Spanish, used to jam at several Latin clubs in New York City.
He recorded a Tadd Dameron original entitled “Jahbero,” based on “All
the Things You Are,” with Afro-Cuban bongo player Chino Pozo (Chano's
cousin).Then, in early 1949, he recorded “Casbah,” another Dameron piece
based on “Out of Nowhere, “featuring Afro- Cuban percussionists Diego
Ibarra and Carlos Vidal Bolado. In late 1949, Navarro recorded a
bop-mambo entitled “Stop” composed by tenor saxophonist Don Lanphere
which was based on “Pennies From Heaven.” Somewhere along the way,
Fats contracted tuberculosis, which led to a sharp decline in his
health and a curtailing of his musical activity over the last seventeen
months of his life. He nevertheless went on the road one last time with
the Jazz at the Philharmonic tour for about seven weeks in February and
March of 1949. He had only two studio recording dates in 1949, one
in August on a Bud Powell date and one a month later with the little
known tenor saxophonist, Don Lanphere. The last recordings in 1950, were
private records done live at Birdland that featured Charlie Parker and
Bud Powell. Fats holds his own throughout, while playing several long
and interesting solos. Navarro left a legacy of about 150 recorded
sides of phenomenal consistent quality. In 1982, he was elected by the
International Jazz Critics into the Down Beat Hall of Fame. He was a
major influence on Clifford Brown and through him Navarro has indirectly
influenced so many of the trumpeters playing today as Benny Bailey, Lee
Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Sam Noto, Woody Shaw and even Roy Hargrove. Theodore “Fats” Navarro died on July 6, 1950 in a New York City hospital. Excerpts from an original text by Stuart Varden, a true Fats Navarro fan.
“Fats was a spectacular musician because, in a time when cats arrived on the scene with nothing, he came on with everything: he could read, he could play high and hold anybody's first trumpet chair, he could play those singing, melodic solos with a big beautiful sound nobody could believe at the time, and he could fly in fast tempos with staccato, biting notes and execute whatever he wanted, with apparently no strain, everything clear. And every note meant something. You know there are those kinds of guys who just play a lot of notes, some good, some bad. Fats wasn't one of those: he made his music be about each note having a place and a reason. And he had so much warmth, so much feeling. That's why I say he had everything.”
- Roy Haynes, drummer and bandleader
Fats Navarro was dead before the LP era began, officially as a result of latent tuberculosis, although the disease was abetted by heroin addiction, the real cause of his decline. His recorded legacy came entirely from the days of 78 rpm releases, and from a variety of preserved broadcasts which make up around a third of the surviving recordings on which he is heard. Even from that limited source, however, there has emerged a general consensus among musicians, critics and listeners that the trumpeter stood alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis as the most significant performer on that instrument in early bebop.
Born Theodore Navarro of mixed black, Chinese and Cuban descent in Key West, Florida, on 24 September 1923, he played both piano and tenor saxophone as a youth but by the age of seventeen he was already touring in dance bands as a trumpeter. One such band dropped him off in Ohio in 1941, where he studied briefly before hooking up with the respected Indianapolis-based territory band led by Snookum Russell. In 1943, he joined Andy Kirk's nationally-known outfit, where he partnered Howard McGhee in the trumpet section, but his big breakthrough to prominence came in 1945, when singer Billy Eckstine brought him into his historically crucial bebop-inspired big band as principal trumpet, replacing Dizzy Gillespie, who left to form his own unit.
Dizzy took Eckstine along to hear Navarro (who was variously known as Fats, Fat Boy or Fat Girl, from his high voice and effeminate manner as well as his girth) play with Kirk's band, and it didn't take long for the singer to make up his mind. As he recalled later for Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff's oral history of jazz, Hear Me Talkin to Ya, he “... went with Dizzy to the club where the band were playing, and the only thing Fats had to blow (because Howard McGhee was the featured trumpet player) was behind a chorus number. But he was wailing behind this number, and I said to myself, 'This is good enough; this'll fit.'
So I got Fats to come by and talk it over, and about two weeks after that he took Dizzy's chair, and take it from me, he came right in. Fats came in the band, and great as Diz is - and I'll never say anything other than that he is one of the finest things that ever happened to a brass instrument - Fats played his book and you would hardly know that Diz had left the band. 'Fat Girl' played Dizzy's solos, not note-for-note, but his ideas on Dizzy's parts, and the feeling was the same and there was just as much swing.”
He joined the band in January 1945, and remained with Eckstine until the autumn of 1946, when the punishing touring schedule proved too much for his already failing health. In addition, he was chafing against the restrictions of the big-band format, which he felt allowed him insufficient opportunity to develop musically. The remainder of his all-too-brief career - he died on 7 July 1950 - was spent as a freelance musician, and was given over to working with a variety of small bop groups in New York, mostly at the behest of other leaders. In that time, he left a legacy of around 150 recorded sides (including airshots) of remarkably consistent quality, a curtailed body of work which is nonetheless one of the most significant in jazz. His future employers would include swing-era giants like Coleman Hawkins and Benny Goodman, and such leaders of the bebop movement as Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke and Dexter Gordon and other important figures like Illinois Jacquet and Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis. He cut an important co-led session with Howard McGhee in 1948, but his most significant partnership was the one he forged with pianist and arranger Tadd Dameron.
The earliest of his post-Eckstine small-group sessions came under the leadership of drummer Kenny Clarke, in a band which also featured a second trumpeter, the very youthful Kinny Dorham (later known as Kenny). Clarke had been the drummer most associated with the initial development of the bebop style, and if Max Roach and Art Blakey were to make even more important contributions, both would acknowledge Clarke's lead in the evolution of the form. The band cut two sessions, the first on 5 September 1946, as Kenny Clarke and His 52nd Street Boys, and the other as The Be Bop Boys the following day.
Gil Fuller, best known for his work with the Dizzy Gillespie big band, was included as arranger on both sessions, working with nine and eight-piece bands respectively, and his influence is clearly apparent in the well-groomed charts. The solo honours go to Navarro and pianist Bud Powell, and both are heard at greater length than usual on the second set of four tunes, recorded at double length for release over two sides of a 78 rpm disc.
Unfortunately, the original acetates have never been found, which means the re-mastered versions now available also have to preserve the fade in the middle, made to accommodate the change of side. 'Fat Boy' is dominated by a lengthy saxophone chase, but its nickname-sake gets in a spicy solo before the scramble begins. He is heard to even better advantage on 'Everything's Cool' and 'Webb City', where he and the pianist are allocated more generous space. These two could usually fire each other's playing, although it was often achieved in adversarial fashion in a relationship which had its dark side, as Leonard Feather's famous account in the sleeve note for The Fabulous Fats Navarro (Blue Note) will confirm.
“I remember one night during a jam session I was running at the Three Deuces on 52nd Street for which I had booked both Fats and Bud Powell, the tension between the two was aggravated as Bud chided Fats between sets. At the beginning of the next set Fats reached the bursting point. While the audience looked on in silent, terrified tension, he lifted his horn and tried to bring the full weight of it crashing down on Bud's hands. He missed, thank God, but the strength in the blow was enough to buckle the horn against the piano; Fats had to borrow a trumpet to play the set.”
That doesn't sound like the Fats described by Dizzy: 'He was sweet. He was like a little baby. Very nice.' Or by Tadd Dameron: 'He was pretty quiet, soulful, sensitive. He never found himself, really. He was always searching. I don't know what he was looking for - he had it!' The incident is testimony, perhaps, to how difficult and provocative a partner Powell could be, but Feather ends the story by pointing out that the incident bailed to affect the close friendship and mutual admiration between Bud and Fats'.
Even in these early recordings, it is possible to hear how mature a stylist he had become by the mid-1940s. In an interview with Barry Ulanov for Metronome in 1947 he claimed to be uncomfortable with describing his music as bebop, a term he disliked, but set out both his artistic creed and affiliation: 'It's just modern music. It needs to be explained right. What they call bebop is really a series of chord progressions. None of us play this bebop the way we want to, yet. I'd like to just play a perfect melody of my own, all the chord progressions right, the melody original and fresh - my own.' Interestingly, his definition foregrounds melody and harmony rather than rhythm, and that is clearly reflected in his playing. Although he spiced up his work with a sprinkling of accents borrowed from the examples of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, in general he takes something of a conservative approach to rhythmic accentuation, flowing easily and smoothly along the beat at any tempo.
Navarro was back in the studios again before the end of 1946 but the eight sides he cut with Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis and His Beboppers in December are less impressive overall. At this stage, Davis was a hard-blowing, stereotypical middle-rank tenorman steeped in the honking Harlem jump-band tradition, and his riff-based compositions (all eight titles are credited to him, most of them built on the 'I Got Rhythm' changes) are functional rather than memorable. A solid rhythm section led by pianist Al Haig helps the sessions swing in meaty fashion, but their continuing musical interest lies in Navarro's contributions. Those are every bit as cogent and well-focused as his work elsewhere, both in the ensembles (employing both a cup-mute and the open horn) and when featured as a soloist - 'Stealin' Trash' and 'Red Pepper' offer typically sure-footed examples.
Coleman Hawkins made a very different tenor partner that same month. The saxophonist was intrigued by the new generation of beboppers, and Fats is heard on two selections from a session which also featured J.J. Johnson, Milt Jackson, and a rhythm section of Hank Jones, Curly Russell and Max Roach. The diverse musical influences meet in a half-way house between swing and bop, territory in which the trumpeter is entirely at home. He is heard in crisp, idiomatic fettle in the ensemble on “I Mean You', and takes a brief, punchy solo on 'Bean and the Boys'.
In January of 1947 he cut a rare session under his own name for Savoy, as Fats Navarro and His Thin Men. It marked the beginning of what was to be the most fruitful of his musical partnerships, with pianist and arranger Tadd Dameron. The band also featured Leo Parker on baritone saxophone rather than the standard alto or tenor, providing a conspicuous contrast of styles as well as sonority in the front line. Gene Ramey on bass and Denzil Best on drums completed the quintet which cut four tunes in the session.
If Navarro profited from the association with Tadd Dameron, so did the pianist. Dameron was born in Cleveland on 21 February 1917 (he died in 1965), and had cut his teeth on writing arrangements for a number of big bands - Dizzy Gillespie would give the premiere of his large-scale composition 'Soulphony' at Carnegie Hall the following year. Navarro was Dameron's most productive collaborator in a rather stop-start career fragmented not only by the struggle to maintain a band for any sustained period of musical development, but also by a spell in prison for drug offences from 1958.
Dameron is not a virtuoso soloist in the Powell manner. He played what is sometimes dismissively described as 'arranger's piano', concentrating his attentions on developing the harmonic form and structure of the composition. He was always primarily concerned with arranging and, increasingly, composition. Fontainebleau recorded for Prestige in 1956 may be the peak of his achievement, and one of the most successful through-composed jazz works ever written. In another 1947 interview with Barry Ulanov, also for Metronome, Dameron stressed his preoccupation with a beautiful sound - 'There's enough ugliness in the world. I'm interested in beauty' - and the importance of personal expression, both of which he found in profusion in Navarro's playing. These qualities - always allied with a surely developed sense of overall form and attention to harmonic structure - are what lifts the whole session out of the casual blowing ethos of much of the earlier small-group material featuring the trumpeter. It was a more refined approach that was much to his liking, given his own palpable concern with the clear articulation of form within his solos. He played with a sweetness and richness of tone unmatched by any of the other bop trumpeters, and was less reliant than Gillespie and his imitators on sheer speed or dramatic flourishes of sustained high-register playing, although entirely capable of brilliantly effective use of either in building and releasing tension within a solo.
Navarro's burnished tone and his liking for carefully shaped melodic lines perhaps owe something to his admiration for swing-era players like his third cousin, Charlie Shavers, or Freddie Webster, who was also an acknowledged influence on the early development of Miles Davis. It came allied to a technical mastery of the horn which allowed him to cope with the furious tempos of bebop without ever losing his sense of poised equilibrium. His lyrical sensibility found a fine foil in Dameron, as is already clear even at this early stage.
Fats follows Parker in the solo rotation on all four tracks, and produces something engagingly different on each occasion. On ‘Fat Girl', he switches from muted horn in the introduction and ensemble chorus to deliver a delightfully relaxed, gracefully executed solo on open horn. His fleet, sharp-edged contribution to the Indiana'-based 'Ice Freezes Red’ is outdone for speed by his flying but fully controlled whirl through 'Goin' to Minton’s’ and 'Eb-Pob' allows him to show off his high-note chops at a more moderate tempo in a solo which follows a beautifully sculpted line of mounting tension, mid-way climax and gradual release. Dameron guides and prompts under all of the horn action, in what is the beginning of a beautiful (if often troubled) friendship, and takes a proficient but unambitious chorus on 'Eb-Pob', a blues with an added bridge and a title which is an anagram of bebop.
Navarro may have been an amiable, sensitive guy, but he developed the junkie's sly cunning as well. Dameron recalls a sequence of resignations from the band, followed by a return at a slightly higher salary each time as the trumpeter played on the leader's high regard for his work and his prowess scared off potential replacements. In Jazz Masters of the 40s, Ira Gitler reports Dameron's recollection that “I used to try to get other fellows to play with me, and they'd say, ‘Oh, is Fats in the band? Oh, no!’ It got to the point where I had to pay him so much money that I told him he should go out on his own. I said, "Once you start making this kind of money, you need to be a leader yourself." But he didn't want to quit. He didn't have security because of his habits.' Eventually, and inevitably, given that Dameron was never either notably overburdened with work or pulling down top dollar, Navarro priced himself out of the band altogether.
The trumpeter cut a second session under his own name for Savoy later in 1947, this time with Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone and a Dameron-led rhythm trio with Nelson Boyd (bass) and Art Blakey (drums). The session, recorded on 5 December, yielded a fine example of his style at a more deliberate tempo and gentler mood in 'Nostalgia', built on the chord progression of the standard 'Out Of Nowhere'. (Oddly, the trumpeter's studio legacy includes no ballads, although his style seems well suited to that form.)
Fats plays sweetly lyrical solos on both takes, using a muted horn; the construction of both solos is very similar, suggesting that his melodic conception for any given tune was firmly fixed in his mind when he came to commit his thoughts to the recording process. That view is partially borne out by other alternate takes, both from this session and elsewhere, in that while they reveal an acute attention to telling shifts of detail, they do not possess the kind of radical take-to-take revisions evident in Charlie Parker's legendary alternates. That consistency has led some to wonder whether the trumpeter may actually have pre-planned his improvisations before going into the studio. It seems more likely, however, that they simply indicate a firm grasp of what he wanted to produce on any given melody and progression, and perhaps provide further evidence of his concern with finding the right form and structure for the specific context in which he was playing.
Sandwiched in between his own Savoy sessions, Navarro recorded two others in 1947 in which Dameron led the band, the first for Blue Note on 26 September, and the second for Savoy on 28 October. The Blue Note recording featured the core of the band which played on Navarro's subsequent December date for Savoy discussed above, with Ernie Henry added on alto saxophone and Shadow Wilson in for Blakey in the drum seat, and will be considered shortly, along with the subsequent Blue Note sessions of 1948-49. Dameron's writing on tunes like ‘A Bebop Carol' (based on 'Mean to Me') and the amiable stroll of 'The Tadd Walk' for the Savoy session is typically sophisticated, while the trumpeter is in fine form in his contributions to the set, which also featured vocalist Kay Penton on two tunes.
Shortly after this session, Navarro cut a date under the leadership of tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, also for Savoy, with another Dameron-led rhythm section featuring Nelson Boyd (bass) and Art Madigan (drums). Navarro is heard on three of the four tunes they laid down and makes notable solo contributions to 'Dextrose', where his tone and sinuous line is characteristically lovely, and 'Index', where he opens his solo with a breath-catching extended, unbroken phrase which is a model of controlled technique and creativity.
An intriguing broadcast from this period brings the trumpeter together with Charlie Parker and Lennie Tristano, in unusual circumstances. Barry Ulanov had organised a battle of the bands, split along traditional versus modernist lines, for a radio shoot-out in September 1947. Listeners were asked to vote and the victorious modernists invited to return to the studios on 8 November. The original line-up had featured Dizzy Gillespie, but for the celebration broadcast Navarro was in the trumpet chair (with his regular partner in the Dameron band, Allen Eager, on tenor saxophone). His feature, 'Fats Flats', based on his own 'Barry's Bop', based in turn on 'What Is This Thing Called Love?', is a beautifully poised piece of bop trumpet work of the kind we would by now expect from him, and he makes an equally dazzling contribution to 'KoKo'. The date has been issued on Spotlite, under the title 'Anthropology, and provides a fascinating comparison of styles when compared with Gillespie's contribution to the original session, preserved on the Lullaby in Rhythm album from the same label, worth hearing in any case for the explosive playing of Navarro and Parker, and the additional interest of Tristano's presence. The album is filled out with three poorly recorded cuts from the Dameron band, with the trumpeter marked absent.
While their work for Savoy is very fine, the Navarro - Dameron combination arguably achieved their greatest studio performances in the music they recorded for Blue Note. The September 1947 session already mentioned was followed by another on 13 September 1948, and a third on 18 January 1949. They have been collected as The Fabulous Fats Navarro in two volumes on both LP and CD, and subsequently made available in an indispensable two-CD set, The Complete Blue Note and Capitol Recordings of Fats Navarro and Tadd Dameron, which also includes Dameron's recordings of 21 April 1949 with Miles Davis, and important Navarro material with Howard McGhee and Bud Powell, as well as a version of 'Stealing Apples' cut with Benny Goodman.
In addition to these classic studio takes, a valuable series of live broadcasts from the Royal Roost in 1948 has been preserved on both LP and CD in a Milestone album as Fats Navarro featured with The Tadd Dameron Band. The material includes Dameron classics like 'Good Bait', 'Dameronia', “Tadd Walk’ and 'Our Delight', as well as Navarro's own 'Eb-Pob', Charlie Parker's 'Anthropology' and Gershwin's 'Lady Be Good'. It is particularly valuable in preserving Navarro's thoughts on the relaxed, strolling theme of what is probably Dameron's best known bop tune, 'Good Bait'. It is heard in two quite distinctive takes on this set, but was not included in any of their studio sessions together. The trumpeter features on about three-quarters of the material on the album, and while the music-making (and the recorded sound) is not quite as finely focused as in the studio recordings, it has the benefit of on-stage spontaneity and longer playing time, and anyone interested in either musician should seek it out alongside the Blue Note material. In his sleeve note for the album, Stanley Crouch quotes drummer Roy Haynes's succinct appraisal of Navarro's qualities, which seems worth reiterating here.
“Fats was a spectacular musician because, in a time when cats arrived on the scene with nothing, he came on with everything: he could read, he could play high and hold anybody's first trumpet chair, he could play those singing, melodic solos with a big beautiful sound nobody could believe at the time, and he could fly in fast tempos with staccato, biting notes and execute whatever he wanted, with apparently no strain, everything clear. And every note meant something. You know there are those kinds of guys who just play a lot of notes, some good, some bad. Fats wasn't one of those: he made his music be about each note having a place and a reason. And he had so much warmth, so much feeling. That's why I say he had everything.”
Navarro never found a sweeter context to display those manifold qualities than the Dameron band, and the pianist found a soloist who could provide both the beauty and the grasp of form he needed, and do so at the highest level of creative improvisation.
The four tunes cut at the session of 26 September 1947 all have an alternate take. In the case of 'The Chase', the marked improvement in Charlie Rouse's tenor solo alone would demand the choice of the master take for release, even if everyone else were not also in slightly sharper form. Navarro turns in two strong, beautifully judged solo performances, each of which confirms his complete command of both horn and music at a fast tempo, as well as emphasising his signature tone, the fat, immaculately poised trumpet sound justly described by fellow trumpeter Joe Newman as 'one of those big butter sounds'.
Dameron had a good ear for a memorable, catchy theme, and his compositions provided plenty of scope for his soloists to develop their conceptions. In 'The Squirrel', a blues said to have been inspired by the pianist watching a squirrel in Central Park one day, the originally released take captures the ebullient spirit of the piece more fully than the slightly under-characterised alternate, and the ensemble choruses are more developed. Navarro builds his solo with a precise concern for tension and release, and a hint of the New Orleans trumpet tradition in his rolling phrases and skittering glances off the high notes at each of its peaks. The opulent 'Our Delight' is one of Dameron's best-known tunes, and both takes here find Navarro playing with a very clear conception of precisely what he wanted to say.
The trumpeter nails each of his solos conclusively, with only minor embellishments in the melody from take to take, and both are gems of lucid construction and creative phrasing. The session's final tune, 'Dameronia', with its Monk-ish echo of 'Well, You Needn't' in the theme, is another of the pianist's best. In the alternate take, Navarro uses the final note of the saxophone solo as a launch pad to roar in with a dramatic descending opening phrase, and builds a robust, muscular solo statement from it. He thinks better of that approach in the released take, opening in very different fashion, then turning in what is arguably his most functional, least memorable solo of the session.
The combination's next Blue Note session took place just under a year later, on 13 September 1948, shortly after the band began their residence at the Royal Roost. Only the leader and Navarro remain from the first recording. Allen Eager, a Dameron regular, and Wardell Gray shared tenor duties, with Curly Russell on bass and Kenny Clarke behind the drums. Cuban percussionist Chino Pozo (a cousin of the better-known Chano Pozo) contributed conga drum on two takes of 'Jabhero,’ and Kenny Hagood laid down a smooth vocal on a single take of “I Think I'll Go Away'. Dameron's chord progressions are always fascinating, and Navarro is in great form on all three of the purely instrumental tracks. They possess all the virtues we have already heard in his two previous recordings with the pianist, but, perhaps more overtly than in any of the other studio sessions, the different takes reveal him thinking hard about the detail of his performances. In the alternate takes of 'Jabhero' and 'Lady Bird', for example, he tries out double-time passages which are not included in the two released takes, while on 'Symphonette', a swinging riff tune, he interpolates some hard and fast rapid-note bop phraseology into the released take, but smooths them out considerably on the alternate.
The Dameron - Navarro studio sessions for both Savoy and Blue Note represent an important continuum in the development of bebop, as well as in the respective careers of both players. Their final visit to the studio was a Capitol session with a ten-piece band on 18 January 1949, which might have been historic (it preceded the first of the so-called 'Birth of the Cool' sessions by a couple of days), but did not yield fully satisfactory results on the two tracks in which the trumpeter is featured. There is plenty to enjoy on both 'Sid's Delight' and 'Casbah' nonetheless, but it marked the end of the Dameron - Navarro association. By the time the pianist returned to the studio to finish the session in April, he had Miles Davis in the trumpet chair.
Navarro's next studio venture remains an intriguing one. It re-united Fats with his old section-mate from the Andy Kirk band, Howard McGhee, a fine bop trumpeter from Oklahoma who cut his teeth in the big bands of Charlie Barnet and Kirk, then gigged with Coleman Hawkins before forming his own small band in Los Angeles in 1945. The Blue Note session took place on 11 October 1948, and featured the two trumpeters with Ernie Henry (alto sax), Milt Jackson (piano), Curly Russell (bass) and Kenny Clarke (drums). Jackson also played what became his main instrument, vibes, on two takes of Navarro's 'Boperation' (the second of which was not issued until its appearance on the Complete disc), while McGhee switched to piano.
In the sleeve notes for the various releases of The Fabulous Fats Navarro the order of the trumpet soloists is wrongly identified. In ‘The Skunk', a raunchy blues, Navarro follows Henry, while McGhee follows Jackson, and in the celebrated 'Double Talk', it is Navarro who leads the solos and trading exchanges each time. It is odd that both Leonard Feather and (at least according to Feather's sleeve note) Alfred Lion should be similarly mistaken in identifying two players with, as this fine session makes clear, such distinctive styles.
Stylistic identification can be a treacherous business, though, as Dizzy, Fats and Miles Davis demonstrated on another famous session earlier that year. The Metronome All-Stars recording on 3 January 1948 featured all three trumpet stars on 'Overtime', which Dizzy later described in his autobiography in these terms: 'I know each one of them sounded like me because we played on a record together, the three of us, and I didn't know which one was playing when I listened ... I didn't know which one of us played what solo because the three of us sounded so much alike.' Davis, in a remark quoted by Jack Chambers in Milestones I, concurs, but adds the caveat that when he and Fats played together 'We'd sound alike, but when we played separately, we didn't sound alike'. Certainly, the short solos on 'Overtime' do not reveal anything of the considerable individuality of the three players.McGhee's Eldridge-inspired approach, however, is definitely distinct from Navarro's.
In the Blue Note session, they push each other in constructive fashion, and nowhere more so than on 'Double Talk', another extended piece intended to occupy two sides of a 78 rpm release, but with the side-fades erased. The faster alternate take is the more uninhibited of the two, but the trumpet-playing from both men is scintillating on each version, with the closing sequences of sixteen, then eight, then four-bar traded choruses providing some particularly compelling responses.
Fats was back in the studio on 29 November 1948, this time at the behest of Ross Russell's Dial label, for a session accompanying the smooth vocal stylist Earl Coleman, a baritone in the popular sweet-toned style of the period. The band also featured Don Lanphere's tenor saxophone, and Max Roach on drums. The trumpeter is heard in restrained but tasty solo spots on 'Guilty' and 'Yardbird Suite', and provides a pretty if dimly-recorded obbligato (the word literally means 'necessary', and refers in music to an independent instrumental part which complements the principal melody, as distinct from an accompaniment) to Coleman's vocal lines on 'A Stranger In Town' and 'As Time Goes By'. He is caught in more characteristic manner, however, on two sizzling instrumental takes of Denzil Best's fiery 'Move' laid down by the quintet. (Guitarist Al Casey, who expanded the group to a sextet for the vocal items, sat these out.) You can practically hear their joy in being able to flex their muscles after the sweet stuff and they dig in hard on both takes, with Navarro in fleet, exuberant form, and the subtle differences he introduces in each take again gives the lie to any suspicions of preparation.
The other genuinely significant session in Navarro's discography is the one he cut with Bud Powell's Modernists for Blue Note on 8 August 1949, in a band which also featured the 18-year-old Sonny Rollins on tenor, Tommy Potter on bass, and drummer Roy Haynes. The four quintet cuts - the pianist's own 'Bouncing With Bud', 'Wail' and 'Dance of the Infidels', plus Monk's '52nd Street Theme' - laid down that day are classics, with Powell hitting sustained peaks of creativity he could not quite carry off into the two slightly routine trio cuts which completed the session, and Navarro soaring in characteristic fashion. It is almost possible to feel the crackling electric tension running between these two, especially on the charged master takes, and while Rollins acquits himself well, he is not yet the focus of attention he would soon become. The session is something of a template for the classic Blue Note horns-plus-rhythm style of the succeeding decade, as bebop transmuted into the less fluid, less frenzied derivation which would be labelled hard bop. Navarro would not survive to make a contribution to that development.
[References include Ira Gitler, Jazz Masters of the 40s, Carl Woideck’s insert notes to The Complete Blue Note and Capitol Recordings of Fats Novarro and Tadd Dameron [Blue Note CDP 72438 33373 2 3], Kenny Mathieson, Giants Steps: Bebop and the Creators of Modern Jazz, 1945-1965, Barry Kernfeld, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Leonard Feather insert notes to The Fabulous Fats Navarro [Blue Note CDP 7 815322] and Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.]
By I Oct. 10, 2002Trumpeter Theodore “Fats” Navarro died more than a half
century ago at the tender age of 26. He was buried in an unmarked grave,
number 414, at the Rose Hill Cemetary in Linden, N.J. Fats was gone, but not forgotten.
On an unseasonably warm day this past September, a small group of
family, friends and fans gathered at that grave site to dedicate a
headstone for Fats Navarro’s final resting place. A choir from Linden
High School sang “Amazing Grace” and trumpeter Jon Faddis played
Navarro’s “Nostalgia.”
Navarro earned his nickname for the fat tone he got out of the trumpet.
He began playing trumpet at the age of 13, and began touring at a very
early age with Dance bands around his home state of Florida and beyond.
He joined Andy Kirk’s Band in 1943 before Billy Eckstine hired him in
1945. But he is best known for his Bebop explorations with the likes of
Coleman Hawkins, Bud Powell, Roy Haynes, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins,
and especially Tadd Dameron.
“Fats played with a lot of humor, subtle humor,” said Faddis. “He loved
to quote from popular songs. He had a very powerful drive He was alway
developing and working on his skills as a musician. Last night I was
talking with Clark Terry and Clark said that Fats could be a little
competitive. There was a trumpet player in Billy Eckstine’s band, a lead
trumpet player, named Hobart Dotson. And Fats would tell him, and I’m
quoting Clark Terry, ‘Man, you go out and play what you’re gonna play
because the note you end on is the note I’ll start on.’
Navarro died young due to a combination of tuburculosis and heroin addiction.
“Fats death at a very young age, at the age of 26, teaches us and
reminds us to take very good care of ourselves,” Faddis added. “Too many
our great musicians, jazz musicians, masters died too soon and didn’t
have the things they needed to have in place. Which is why we’re here
today, some 52 years later. As a trumpet player I just wonder sometimes
what his music might have been like if he had lived a longer life.”
“I would just like to recite something that my father, a methodist
minister, told me many years ago,” said trumpeter Donald Byrd. “He used
to tell me about the words to pass, to pass by and to pass on. To pass
is to perish. To pass by is to pas many of the road of life. Most
importantly though, is what we pass on. Fats passed on a great deal to
us all.”
“He was appreciated by the musicians,” said jazz critic Ira Gitler. “The
jazz critics acknowledged him. But there were great things ahead, if he
hadn’t died young. His legacy is marked by all the trumpet players who
came behind him and were influenced by him like Clifford Brown. From
Clifford it branched out to Donald Byrd, to Woody Shaw to Freddie
Hubbard, Booker Little. Today, you hear people like Roy Hargrove still
being influenced by Fats. He was a tree and the branches were many.”
The headstone dedication kicked off a day of tributes honoring Navarro.
The Jazz Alliance International, a non-profit organization dedicated to
expanding audiences for jazz, sponsored a symposium on the history jazz
at Linden High School in honor of Navarro. The mayor of Linden
proclaimed it Fats Navarro Day.
That night in another JAI-sponsored event, 14 trumpeters joined a
stellar rhythm section to honor the Navarro songbook at The Jazz
Standard in Manhattan. Assembled by Faddis, with musical direction from
Don Sickler, the talent served as a Who’s Who of New York trumpeters
backed by Billy Drummond on drums, Peter Washington on bass and James
Williams on Piano.
As jams sessions go, this was a classic. Trumpeters came out in groups
of four-to-six at a time, eliminating the question of how they could
pull this off with so many horns at once. Sickler’s arrangements for
the event helped to give the tunes beautiful and cohesive heads. Then it
was up to the soloists.
Tom Harrell, Brian Lynch, Jeremy Pelt and Sickler took their shots on “Barry’s Romp.”
Fats Navarro • Prime Source • 1975 • Blue Note Records; Recorded 1947, 1948 & 1949 in New York City
The Selections:
The Tracks:
A1. Our Delight (Alt. Master) A2. Our Delight A3. The Squirrel (Alt. Master) A4. The Squirrel A5. The Chase (Alt. Master) A6. The Chase A7. Dameronia (Alt. Master) A8. Dameronia B1. Lady Bird (Alt. Master) B2. Lady Bird B3. Jahbero (Alt. Master) B4. Jahbero B5. Symphonette (Alt. Master) B6. Symphonette C1. Double Talk C2. Double Talk (Alt. Master) C3. Boperation C4. The Skunk (Alt. Master) C5. 52nd Street Theme D1. Dance Of The Infidels D2. Dance Of The Infidels (Alt. Master) D3. Wail D4. Wail (Alt. Master) D5. Bouncing With Bud (Alt. Master) D6. Bouncing With Bud D7. Bouncing With Bud (Alt. Master)
The Players:
The Tadd Dameron Sextet (A1 - A8) Tadd Dameron - Piano Fats Navarro - Trumpet Ernie Henry - Alto Sax Charlie Rouse - Tenor Sax Nelson Boyd - Bass Shadow Wilson - Drums The Tadd Dameron Septet (B1 - B6) Tadd Dameron - Piano Fats Navarro - Trumpet Wardell Gray - Tenor Sax Allen Eager - Tenor Sax Curly Russell - Bass Kenny Clarke - Drums Chino Pozo - Bongos The McGhee/Navarro Boptet (C1 - C4) Fats Navarro - Trumpet Howard McGhee - Trumpet Ernie Henry - Alto Sax Milt Jackson - Piano & Vibes Curly Russell - Bass Kenny Clarke - Drums Bud Powell's Modernists (C5, D1 - D7) Bud Powell - Piano Fats Navarro - Trumpet Sonny Rollins - Tenor Sax Tommy Potter - Bass Roy Haynes - Drums
The Record:
Navarro Showing Them How It's Done.
While
Theodore "Fats" Navarro died young, leaving us a limited body of work
to appreciate, his true lasting legacy is the influence he had on the
trumpeters that would come after him in the heyday of modern jazz in the
1950s and '60s. Fats directly influenced the sound and style of
Clifford Brown (another legend who left us too early), who in turn
heavily influenced Freddie Hubbard, Donald Byrd and Lee Morgan, three
cats who are the biggest names on the trumpet (along with that guy named
Miles) from jazz's golden age. It would not be incorrect to say that as
far as the jazz trumpet style and sound we know and love, all roads
lead back to Fats Navarro. Most of Fats highly regarded work
comes from his time working in other musician's groups, his early death
in 1950 at the tender age of 26 from a mix of tuberculosis, hard living
and drug addiction didn't leave him time to show what he could
accomplish leading his own groups. Prime Source focuses on what
is generally considered his finest period - the years 1947 to 1949 -
when he worked with Tadd Dameron and Bud Powell, as well as in a group
he co-led with his close friend and mentor Howard McGhee. Dameron is an
extremely underrated figure in the history of jazz, most readers will
know him from a single piece of work: the Mating Call album
that he made with Coltrane. In fact, he was one of the most influential
composers and arrangers of the bop era and, in addition to Fats, his
bands at various times showcased such up and coming talents as Miles
Davis, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray. The first two sides of Prime Source are
devoted to Fats' time with Dameron (one a sextet, the other a septet)
and even a cursory listen immediately shows why his playing became so
influential. This is bop music for sure, often with blazing fast
solos, but just listen to his attack on the horn and it is easy to see
why the young trumpeters that followed him were so interested in
sounding like him [listen to "Our Delight" above]. The Dameron groups
here feature some other future talents that would later go on to make
names for themselves, including a young Charlie Rouse, whose solos on
these recordings are a joy to hear.. The music is vibrant and fun, and
showcases young musicians stepping out of the shadows of the precise
"territory bands" they had been part of and into the exciting world of
improvisation. The resulting energy of the group is often electric.
The second set of music on Prime Source takes
us to the McGhee/Navarro Boptet, from a set of recordings made in 1948.
Howard McGhee was, along with Dizzy Gillespie and Navarro, considered
to be the finest of all the bop trumpet players, and was himself a large
influence on the development of Navarro's sound. He is largely a
forgotten figure in modern jazz, but nonetheless an important one, due
in large part to his friendship with Navarro. The music on display here
is great fun, check out "Double Talk" above, with the two friends
trading complex solos at the start and end of the tune (Fats goes first
both times). With the addition of Milt Jackson on vibes and Kenny Clarke
on the drums, we have the makings of a great sextet, one that it would
have been interesting to hear record more. Prime Source ends
with the music that introduced many present-day jazz fans to
Navarro: his time spent with the great Bud Powell, the music from which
would eventually make it onto a 12-inch Blue Note LP as The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol 1 in
1955 (it was originally released as a 10-inch LP in 1952, collecting
tracks from 78rpm releases from 1949 and 1951). When the tracks on Prime Source were
recorded the group was known as Bud Powell's Modernists, and if you are
unfamiliar with this groundbreaking music, you should go grab a copy
right away (in 2001 Rudy Van Gelder remastered volumes 1 and 2 of The Amazing Bud Powell from
scratch and released them as a single CD, it is well worth your time
until you can track down a vintage copy). The quintet with Fats is
incredible stuff, with a young Sonny Rollins, Roy Haynes and Tommy
Potter playing alongside Powell, just listen to the classic track "Wail"
above to hear the a prime example of essential bop music played at it's
very finest. The Vinyl:
Prime Source was
part of the "Blue Note Re-Issue Series" released in the mid-1970s that
contained either music that had never been released, or as in this case
collected important music by a singular artist in one place. The vinyl
is certainly not anything to write home about, it is standard issue thin
vinyl characteristic of that time period. One thing to note is that
Blue Note was smart enough not to re-issue the music in faux-stereo,
rather leaving it all in the original mono. The sound is crisp,
especially the solos, but this is a mid-'70s release of music from
nearly thirty years prior on mid-grade vinyl, so keep that in mind to
get an idea of the overall sound. There is no mention of which source
tapes were used, and certainly nothing about any remastering of any
sort. This type of jazz music wasn't exactly flying off the shelves in
1975, so it is easy to see why United Artists (who owned Blue Note
during this time) wouldn't be throwing a ton of time and resources
towards it's release. All that said, it is a very enjoyable listen
and for many of us it is the only way to get much of this music - at
least the first three sides - on vintage vinyl. Add to that the fact
that these "Blue Note Re-Issue Series" can be had at bargain basement
prices even in near mint condition (I snagged this one for $8), and it's
clear that if you come across a copy you should snag it. It's an
essential piece of not only Blue Note and bop's history, but also an
important part of what inspired the next generation of musicians (many
of them on Blue Note) to become the type of musicians they would
become. Prime Source is an apt title for this music, it can
rightfully be viewed as a historical document, but once you get to know
the music within it's one hell of fun ride as well.
Theodore "Fats" Navarro (September 24, 1923 – July 7, 1950) was an American jazz trumpet player. He was a pioneer of the bebop style of jazz improvisation in the 1940s. He had a strong stylistic influence on many other players, including Clifford Brown.
Life
Navarro was born in Key West, Florida, of Cuban,
African, and Chinese descent. He began playing piano at age six, but
did not become serious about music until he began playing trumpet at the
age of thirteen. He was a childhood friend of drummer Al Dreares.[1]
By the time he graduated from Douglass High School, he wanted to be
away from Key West and joined a dance band headed for the Midwest.
Navarro gained valuable experience touring in bands, including Snookum Russell's territory band, where he met and influenced a young J.J. Johnson. Tiring of the life on the road, Navarro settled in New York City in 1946, where his career took off.[2] He met and played with, among others, Charlie Parker.[3]
But Navarro was in a position to demand a high salary and did not join
one of Parker's regular groups. He also developed a heroin addiction,
tuberculosis, and a weight problem. (He was nicknamed "Fat Girl" due to
his weight and high speaking voice.) These afflictions led to a slow
decline in health. Navarro was hospitalized on July 1, 1950 and he died
five days later on July 6 at the age of twenty-six. His last performance
was with Charlie Parker on July 1 at Birdland.[4] Navarro played in the Andy Kirk, Billy Eckstine, Benny Goodman, and Lionel Hampton big bands, and participated in small group recording sessions with Kenny Clarke, Tadd Dameron, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet, Howard McGhee, and Bud Powell.
Death
Navarro died of tuberculosis and heroin addiction in New York City on July 6, 1950,[5][6]
and was survived by wife Rena (née Clark, 1927–1975) and his daughter
Linda (1949-2014). He was buried in an unmarked grave, number 414, at
the Rose Hill Cemetery in Linden, New Jersey.[6] In 1982, Navarro was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame.[7] In September 2002, friends and family members dedicated a
headstone for Fats Navarro's grave. The event of dedication was
sponsored by the Jazz Alliance International while the day of it was proclaimed as Fats Navarro Day by the mayor of Linden.[6] During the ceremony, Linden High School Choir performed "Amazing Grace", while trumpeter Jon Faddis
played Navarro's "Nostalgia". The night of the same day, 14 trumpeters
joined a stellar rhythm section to honor the Navarro songbook at the Jazz Standard in Manhattan. Faddis, who assembled the section under musical direction from Don Sickler, was accompanied by drummer Billy Drummond, bassist Peter Washington, and pianist James Williams.[6]
Discography
1943
Andy Kirk - "Fare Thee Well Honey" c/w "Baby, Don't You Tell Me No Lie" (Decca 4449)
1944
Andy Kirk and his Orchestra Live at the Apollo 1944-1947 (Everybody's EV 3003)
Andy Kirk - Andy's Jive (Swing House (E) SWH 39)
The Uncollected Andy Kirk - Andy Kirk and his Twelve Clouds of Joy (Hindsight (E) HSR 227)
Andy Kirk and his Orchestra (no details) (Caracol (F) CAR 424)
1945
Andy Kirk and his Orchestra (no details) (Swing House (E) SWH 130)
THE MUSIC OF FATS NAVARRO: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH FATS NAVARRO:
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
Fats Navarro 
