Death Of A Great Jazzman

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31880, 7 January 1969, Page 8

Death Of A Great Jazzman

TSj/

TOM BETHELL

in the "Financial Times." Reprinted by arran qemei

George Lewis, one of the last great exponents of traditional jazz, died on New Year’s Day in New Orleans at the age of 68. He had no living equal as a jazz clarinettist, and he played his last job three weeks ago in Preservation Hall, the centre for traditional jazz in New Orleans.

I was lucky enough to be there for the final set. He was playing with the Kid Thomas Band—first “Big Lunch Blues,” then “My Blue Heaven,” and the last song from him, “Till We Meet Again.” He was one of the last of an extraordinary line of Negro musicians from New Orleans, who included Jelly Roll, Bunk Johnson, Louis Armstrong, and Johnny Dodds. He was first discovered at the time of Bunk Johnson’s celebrated reappearance on the jazz scene in 1942. Bunk had played in the very earliest jazz hands at the beginning of the century, but he had been in retirement for some years when he was retrieved from the ricefields of Louisiana by a few jazz enthusiasts. They gave him a new trumpet and a new set of false teeth, and recorded him for the first time. For this recording, Bunk chose George Lewis as his clarinettist. These two continued to play together, and in 1945 they first came to public attention when they played at the Stuyvesant Casino in New York. People had not heard this sort of music before, and the band became a centre of controversy. Decca and R.C.A. made recordings, but little came of

it. Bunk retired, and died a I few years later, George went : back to New Orleans, and in 1 betwen playing, took up his old job as a stevedore. i The revival of traditional I jazz had already taken place 1 in New Orleons, but it had ’ not taken place elsewhere in I the world. After Bunk’s 1 death George Lewis was ] largely responsible for the spread of this music through- i out America and Europe. 1 From 1952 devoured the U.S. I with his own' band, and at | about the same time English i musicians started making i their own pilgrimages to New ; Orleans. Ken Collyer was the first, followed a few years 1 !

later by Chris Barber, and in 1957 Lewis himself came to England to play with Collyer. This was to be the first of many visits to Europe. When he next returned in 1959. this time with his own band, he was met at Paddington by a huge crowd complete with brass band playing to give the New Orleans touch. He saw this music as almost classical counterpoint. His style consisted of a repertoire of clearly articulated phrases played against the melody. He was noted above all for his warm and passionate tone. Of course, George would never have used the word

“counterpoint." When I asked him last October about his music, he replied: “If you’ve got six men, you’ve got a strong band—fill in everything. Somebody should be going all the time. It’s a conversation, just like if I would tell you ‘no’ and you say ‘yes,’ you know that? Somebody should be underneath: that’s the sort of music 1 came up with, and play.” George was a modest man, who was not much concerned with fame. “I played because I loved to play,” he said last Friday. As his body was taken from the church to the cemetery, two brass bands played traditional dirges.