Existing comment:
Fats Navarro, 1923-1950
Calling Fats Navarro "the best all-around trumpeter of them all," Dizzy Gillespie declared, "he had everything . . . tone, ideas, execution." Navarro began honing his technique when touring with regional big bands while still in his teens. He later picked up bebop influences from trumpeter and bandmate Howard McGhee after joining Andy Kirk's Kansas City–based jazz band (1943). In 1944, Navarro traveled with Kirk's band to New York City, where he sat in on jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse, the Harlem nightspot known as "the bebop laboratory." Tapped to take Gillespie's place as the principal trumpet soloist with Billy Eckstine's big band in 1945, Navarro remained with Eckstine for a year before gravitating to smaller bebop ensembles that gave him more freedom to experiment. His recordings as a sideman in groups such as those led by Tadd Dameron, Charlie Parker, and Coleman Hawkins, influenced a host of trumpeters, including Clifford Brown. |