hypersongs

Fats Navarro

A bebop trumpeter from Key West who followed Dizzy Gillespie in Billy Eckstine's band, made the Tadd Dameron sessions of 1947 and 1948, and died at 26 in 1950, leaving an influence on Clifford Brown and Miles Davis.

Key West to New York

Theodore Navarro was born in Key West on September 24, 1923, of Cuban, African and Chinese descent, and Spanish was his second language. His father, Teodoro, was a barber who played piano at night. He began on piano at about six and trumpet at about thirteen, and his first professional appearances in 1939 were on tenor saxophone with Walter Johnson's band in Miami. He graduated from Frederick Douglass School in Key West in 1941 and left that year, joining Sol Albright's band in Orlando and then Snookum Russell's, where he befriended J. J. Johnson.

In late 1943 he joined Andy Kirk, and in 1944 (or 1945, per the Amsterdam News) Billy Eckstine's band, replacing Dizzy Gillespie; Eckstine told Leonard Feather that a week or two after Navarro joined, you would hardly know Diz had left. He declined to go to California with Eckstine in 1946 and settled in New York, recording in 1946 to 1948 with Kenny Clarke's 52nd Street Boys, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet and Howard McGhee.

Dameron, Birdland and legacy

His main partnership was with the pianist and arranger Tadd Dameron from 1947, on records including "Lady Bird" and "The Chase" and at the Royal Roost in 1948. He recorded for Savoy as Fats Navarro and His Thin Men on January 29, 1947, with Leo Parker, Dameron, Gene Ramey and Denzil Best, and sat in on a Dexter Gordon session for Dial on December 22, 1947. In 1949 he played Jazz at the Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall and made a session with Bud Powell, with Sonny Rollins, for The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 1. He won the 1948 Metronome poll (jazz.com puts it in 1949), and two Birdland recordings of 1950 with Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, issued as One Night in Birdland, are his last.

He died in New York in July 1950, on the 6th or 7th according to the source, aged 26. Gillespie said Fats probably had the best attack of all of them, and A. B. Spellman wrote that he was a much better technician than Gillespie, with a fuller sound, crisper diction and more secure range. Navarro influenced Miles Davis, Clifford Brown and Lee Morgan, and entered the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1982. A headstone was dedicated at Rose Hill Cemetery in Linden, New Jersey on September 24, 2002, the mayor proclaimed Fats Navarro Day, and fourteen trumpeters played his songbook that evening at Jazz Standard, directed by Don Sickler; Leif Bo Petersen and Theo Rehak's Infatuation (Scarecrow, 2009) is the first comprehensive study.

Songs

  • Nostalgia 1947

    A 1947 Savoy side recorded with Charlie Rouse, Tadd Dameron, Nelson Boyd and Art Blakey, built on the changes of "Out of Nowhere".

Sources

  1. Fats Navarro, Wikipedia
  2. Fats Navarro: Theodore Navarro, jazz.com
  3. Fats Navarro: trumpet master and bebop pioneer, Amsterdam News (2020-03-19)
  4. Tadd Dameron and Fats Navarro: a complete recording date, Lewis Porter