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Wardell Gray (February 13, 1921 – May 25, 1955) was an American jazz tenor saxophone.
In early 1935, Gray began attending Northeastern High School, he was then transferred to Cass Technical High School. He left in 1936, before graduating. Advised by his brother-in-law Junior Warren, Gray as a teenager started learning the clarinet. However, after hearing Lester Young on record with Count Basie, he was inspired to switch to the tenor saxophone.
Gray's first musical job was in Isaac Goodwin's small band, a part-time band that played local dances. When auditioning for another job, he was heard by Dorothy Patton, a young pianist who was forming a band in the Fraternal Club in Flint, Michigan, she later hired him. After a year there, he moved to Jimmy Raschel's band (Raschel had recorded a few sides earlier in the 1930s but did not do so again), and then to the Benny Carew band in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Around this time, he met Jeanne Goings; they had a daughter, Anita, born in January 1941.
In Los Angeles, Wardell worked with Benny Carter, (2025). 9780879306083, Miller Freeman. ISBN 9780879306083 blues singer Ivory Joe Hunter, and the small group that supported singer Billy Eckstine on a tour of the West Coast. But the real focus in Los Angeles was in clubs along Central Avenue, which were still thriving after the boom years brought about by the huge injection of wartime defence spending. Here Wardell played in after-hours sessions in clubs such as Jack's Basket Room, the Down Beat, Lovejoy's, and the Club Alabama. His early success in these sessions led Ross Russell to include him in a studio session he was organizing for his Dial label.
In the Central Avenue clubs Wardell held tenor battles with Dexter Gordon. Gordon recalled: "There'd be a lot of cats on the stand, but by the end of the session, it would wind up with Wardell and myself...His playing was very fluid, very clean.... He had a lot of drive and a profusion of ideas".Cited in Visser, pp. 24–25. Their fame began to spread, and Ross Russell managed to get them to simulate one of their battles on "The Chase", which became Wardell's first nationally known recording and has been called "one of the most exciting musical contests in the history of jazz".
The success of "The Chase" was the break Wardell needed, and he became increasingly prominent in public sessions in and around Los Angeles, including a series of jam sessions organized by the disc jockey Gene Norman. There were concerts at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, the Shrine Auditorium, and other venues.
Goodman's new group included the young Swedish clarinettist Stan Hasselgard and, initially, Teddy Wilson, and it opened at Frank Palumbo's Palumbos in Philadelphia in May 1948.
The group was not a financial success and Goodman eventually broke it up, but by now Wardell was established on the East Coast as an up-and-coming musician. For a while in late 1948/early 1949 he worked with the Count Basie Orchestra, while also managing to record with Tadd Dameron and in quartet and quintet sessions with Al Haig. The quartet session included "Twisted", which was used as the basis for a best-selling vocalese version by Annie Ross.
Wardell left Basie in 1949 to return to Benny Goodman. However, life in the Goodman band became increasingly uncongenial for him. In addition, his marriage to Jeri was breaking up. Goodman was not an easy employer at the best of times, and this, combined with the constant traveling, made Wardell increasingly unhappy. The result of this were recordings of the band, both studio sessions, and live airshows, featured work by Wardell that is below his own best standards.
On leaving Goodman, Wardell rejoined Count Basie. Basie had bowed to economic pressures and broken up his big band, forming a septet which included Clark Terry and Buddy DeFranco. Wardell was part of the Basie septet during 1950–51. The only drawback to working with Basie (who had by now enlarged his group again to big band size) was the constant traveling, and Wardell eventually decided to leave so that he could enjoy more home life. The decision was entirely understandable, though the Basie rhythm section was ideally suited to Wardell's brand of swing and, from a musical point of view, enthusiasts for his playing may regret his decision. And an unexpected side-effect was that, because work in the LA area was short (for black musicians, anyway) Wardell still had to travel frequently in search of jobs. Nevertheless, life at home was good, and one of the few interviews that he ever gave (to the British Melody Maker) showed that he was very happy.
In 1950, Gray played a live concert at the San Francisco Veteran's Memorial Hall as a guest with Gerald Wilson's band. Remarkably captured in high fidelity stereo (the only such example in his discography), this recording was released for the first time in 2006 . Gray can be heard in fine form during featured solo spots with small combo backup on "Nice Work if You Can Get It" and "Indiana" and also with Wilson's big band on the blues "Hollywood Freeway" where Gray trades exciting choruses with Zoot Sims and Stan Getz.
However, there are increasing signs of a lack of engagement around 1951/52, notably in a further live session with Dexter Gordon from February 1952, and it seems that he may have been becoming disillusioned with the music business. That he was still capable of playing superbly is shown by his work on a live jam session at The Haig, but such sessions were by now very sparse, and more typical work from this period was recorded on a session with Teddy Charles .
Around this time, Gray became involved with drugs; friends reported that this was taking its toll. His playing was now less fluent, and a studio session in January 1955, which was to be his last, shows strong but (by his own standards) rather unsubtle playing.
Although various sources still describe the circumstances of Gray's death as mysterious, the closing note of a solography on the tribute website wardellgray.org states that " 'The circumstances are now clear (ref. Han Schulte interviewing Teddy Edwards in the late 80s): Teddy was on the spot, May 1955 in Las Vegas, when WG died in his hotel room after an overdose. His friends, working with the group of Benny Carter in LA, wanted no police trouble, so they put his body in a car and brought it to the desert. By unloading, the body fell on the ground and his neck was broken. That's it.' "
Bill Moody's book Death of a Tenor Man tells the story of a contemporary investigation of Wardell's death by fictional detective/pianist Evan Horne.Moody, Bill (2003), Death of a Tenor Man, Dark City Books.
Jack Kerouac explicitly references Wardell in his novel On the Road: "They ate voraciously as Neal, sandwich in hand, stood bowed and jumping before the big phonograph listening to a wild bop record I just bought called 'The Hunt', with Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray blowing their tops before a screaming audience that gave the record fantastic frenzied volume."Jack Kerouac, Jack (2007), On the Road: The Original Scroll, Penguin Books, p. 215.
With Frank Morgan
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