In an era when jazz trumpeters tend to make their names with the
brilliance of their technique and the bravura of their approach,
Chicagoan Bobby Lewis stands out.
A poet of the trumpet if ever there were one, Lewis for nearly 50
years has seduced Chicago audiences with the muted, silvery lyricism
of his playing. And though he never has pursued a marquee career,
his softly stated playing has earned him a measure of immortality on
recordings by Ramsey Lewis, Curtis
Mayfield, Jerry
Butler, Jack
Teagarden and Tex
Beneke.
In concert, he has provided hauntingly melodic counterpoints to
performances by icons of jazz singing, among them Ella
Fitzgerald, Peggy
Lee, Tony
Bennett, Lena
Horne, Joe
Williams, Mel Torme, Sarah
Vaughan and just about everyone else.
Perhaps Lee summed up best what these vocalists, and others, valued
about Lewis' work: "A sound like no other," Lee once said.
"I like him best when he plays in pastels, but every note is
beautiful ... is loving."
Not bad for a kid who grew up in Oshkosh, Wis., but who has been a
leading figure in Chicago jazz since 1961.
"I started out listening to Harry
James, because my dad had some old James 78s lying around the
house," says Lewis, citing a trumpeter whose tonal radiance
made him a bona fide pop star in the 1940s.
From James, Lewis, who plays a rare concert engagement Sunday at the
Gorton Center in Lake
Forest, eventually moved on to devouring recordings of Bobby
Hackett, Chet
Baker and, of course, the deity of them all, Louis
Armstrong. Though no one was going to rival the great Satchmo's
proficiency in blasting high notes into the atmosphere, there was a
great deal to be learned from the sometimes crying, sometimes
laughing melody lines that distinguished Armstrong's early-period
work.
"Listen to those old Armstrong recordings, like 'Chimes
Blues,'" says Lewis, 72. "The recording sounds scratchy
and old, but then Armstrong takes his solo, and everything sounds so
much clearer and louder and more beautiful, yet he was playing on
the same microphone as everyone else. But his sound was so much
better."
To his credit, Lewis never sought to mimic the inimitable Armstrong,
instead forging a purling, exquisitely understated style of his own.
He deepened his skills at the University of Wisconsin,
Madison.
For a while, he was torn as to whether he would become a classical
or jazz player, but after a two-year stint in the Seventh Army Band,
in Germany, in the late 1950s, he decided jazz mattered most and
moved in 1961 to one of its world capitals, Chicago.
Yet for all the mainstream appeal of Lewis' work, listeners
sometimes forget that early in his career he ventured into
avant-garde playing, collaborating in the 1960s with such past
Chicago revolutionaries as Joe Daley and Hal Russell.
In a way, Lewis has come to epitomize the anything-goes temperament
of jazz in Chicago.
"I had chances to move to New York and to L.A., but I always
loved the spirit of Chicago," says Lewis.
"And then there's all the new musicians coming up, like
[trumpeter] Orbert Davis -- I saw him come up as a kid. Now he's a
force of his own."
There was one more reason Lewis stayed here.
"Bud Herseth," he says, referring to the legendary artist
who held the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra's principal trumpet chair for an astonishing
53 years.
"When I heard him, I said, 'I want to be the Bud Herseth of
jazz.'"
He's getting there.
BOBBY LEWIS SEXTET
Rare concert by a Chicago jazz legend
When: 4 p.m. Sunday
Where: Gorton Community Center, 400 E. Illinois Rd., Lake Forest
Price: $20-$25; 847-234-6060
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hreich@tribune.com
