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Artist
Lucky Thompson
12+ albums
jazzsaxophonebebopHard Bopswing
about
Eli (Lucky) Thompson (June 16, 1924 in Columbia, South Carolina – July 30, 2005 in Seattle, Washington) was an African American jazz tenor and soprano saxophonist. He is considered to have, alongside Steve Lacy brought the soprano saxophone out of obsolescence, playing it in a more advanced boppish format, which inspired John Coltrane to take it up in the early 1960s. After playing with the swing orchestras of Lionel Hampton, Don Redman, Billy Eckstine, Lucky Millinder, and Count Basie, he worked in rhythm and blues and then established a career in bop and hard bop, working with Kenny Clarke, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Milt Jackson. Thompson was an inspired soloist on Stan Kenton's record "Cuban Fire", and he himself recorded many albums during the mid-1950s. He appeared on Miles Davis's historic hard bop Walkin' session. He lived in Lausanne, Switzerland in the late 1960s and recorded several albums there including "A Lucky Songbook in Europe". He taught at Dartmouth College in 1973 and 1974, then left the music business completely, as a consequence of the racial discrimination and treatment he received from record companies and clubs. Born in Columbia, SC, on June 16, 1924, tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson bridged the gap between the physical dynamism of swing and the cerebral intricacies of bebop, emerging as one of his instrument's foremost practitioners and a stylist par excellence. Eli Thompson's lifelong nickname -- the byproduct of a jersey, given him by his fa
