Fats Navarro

Fats cover

As I noted in my first post on Chet Baker, among the innumerable delights of Paul Berliner’s book Thinking in jazz is his exploration of trumpet styles and links between them.

Miraculously, we can explore most of these players on YouTube—here’s Fats Navarro (1923–50, yet another distressingly short life—see list here), at the Royal Roost in 1948:

It’s gratifying that Anthropology is not only a discipline that embraces jazz, but (thanks to Charlie Parker) a real living piece:

Cf.

Lady Bird:

Casbah, again with Tadd Dameron, and Rae Pearl (Harrison) singing:

And savour Guilty, a rare male-voice ballad featuring Earl Coleman:

From his last gig, with Bird on 30th June 1950—a week before Fats died:

The treasures of YouTube are inexhaustible, but as a change, the 4-CD set The Fats Navarro story is instructively annotated, like other gems in the Proper Records series—and it ends with two further searing tracks from that last session.

7 thoughts on “Fats Navarro

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