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 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). Listeners were asked to vote and the victorious modernists invited to return to the studios on 8 November. Barry Ulanov had organised a battle of the bands, split along traditional versus modernist lines, for a radio shoot-out in September 1947. 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.Īn intriguing broadcast from this period brings the trumpeter together with Charlie Parker and Lennie Tristano, in unusual circumstances. 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). 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. 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. 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. I'm interested in beauty' - and the importance of personal expression, both of which he found in profusion in Navarro's playing. 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. 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. He was always primarily concerned with arranging and, increasingly, composition. 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 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.ĭameron is not a virtuoso soloist in the Powell manner. 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. 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. 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 addition, he was chafing against the restrictions of the big-band format, which he felt allowed him insufficient opportunity to develop musically. 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.
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