I always think of George Lewis as a reluctant jazz idol. He achieved fame largely by accident. Unlike the other great New Orleans clarinettists – Johnny Dodds, Jimmy Noone, Barney Bigard, Sidney Bechet, Albert Nicholas, Irving Fazola – he didn’t take part in the migration North during the 1920s and so missed out on the first great blossoming of jazz music. The received wisdom is that those who remained in New Orleans just weren’t good enough to make it in Chicago and New York. Lewis was never even picked up on any of the field recordings which issued records in the 1920s by the New Orleans bands of Sammy Morgan, the Jones-Collins Astoria Eight and others. He first appeared on record in 1942 following Bill Russell’s visit to New Orleans to record the newly rediscovered Bunk Johnson. As it turned out, Bunk, who was never backward in blowing his own trumpet, made less of an impact in the long term than the shy and unassuming Lewis.
I heard George Lewis and his band live in Glasgow in 1958, and it was
a memorable occasion. For me it was a kind of defining experience. It
allowed me to accept that it was unnecessary to play with the technique
of Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw to participate in the great art form that
is jazz. George Lewis was essentially a limited technician. But what he
lacked in technical fluency he made up for in emotional urgency and sheer
enthusiasm. To see Lewis in full flow, his vigorous knee-flap threatening
to lift him off the stage, was to experience the full meaning of jazz as
joyous entertainment.
Lewis’s style is essentially simple but effective. He seldom deviates from the notes in the basic chords of a tune, and his use of chromatics tends to be confined to scalar runs. In ensemble passages he relies on having a strong trumpet lead which leaves lots of space for his fills, and a trombone which is sparse enough to keep out of the way while adding to the rhythmic thrust. His tone is attractive, especially in the lower register, but his pitching is often suspect in the upper reaches of his instrument’s range. His infrequent alto saxophone playing and his singing tend to sound amateurish. However, his bands always swing, although unlike the bands of such as King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton, it is a driving rather than a lifting swing. In the end, his appeal is largely emotional rather than intellectual, and therein lies his success and the reason for his influence on the traditional jazz boom of the 1950s. It is just very easy to enjoy his music.
When it comes to selecting George Lewis’s best recordings, the problem
is that there are just so many of them to choose from. During his period
of maximum popularity in the 1950s, just about every note he played seems
to have been preserved on record. My personal favourites would include his
recordings made in New Orleans in 1943, which include the famous accelerating
‘Climax Rag’; the sides he cut with Bunk Johnson in New York in 1945; several
of the trio records, including ‘Burgundy Street Blues’; and some of his 1955
Blue Note tracks with Alton Purnell on piano and a band which had Kid Howard
on trumpet and the ever-present Jim Robinson on trombone.
On my one and only trip to New Orleans I was able to visit many streets made famous by jazz tunes. My hotel was in Rampart Street, parallel to Basin Street and Burgundy Street. Just a couple of blocks away was Bourbon Street and, cutting a swathe through the French Quarter, was Canal Street. However, it was standing on St Philip Street, the home of a modest man who never sought fame but became the dominant figure of the New Orleans Revival, that I felt most closely in touch with the life and music of that magical city.
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