Illinois Jacquet

Saxophonist

Joined Lionel Hampton

Introduced the Honking Sax

Formed a Big Band

Selected discography

Sources

Jean Baptiste Illinois Jacquet is considered one of the most distinctive, innovative tenor saxophone players of the post-swing era. During the 1940s Jacquet’s frantic, high-register solos made him a star, but his reputation as a squealing sax man has earned him almost as much critical disapproval as public acclaim. Hisfat, round, bluesy tone is referred to as “Texas style,” a sound made famous by Jacquet and his contemporaries Arnett Cobb and Buddy Tate. The Texas style of play would later influence many rhythm and blues saxophonists from the 1950s to the contemporary era.

Jacquet has spent his entire life playing music. His first public appearance, at the age of three, was in a tap-dancing and singing performance with his father’s band. As a teenager, he switched to drums; it was a natural progression, according to Jacquet in a 1985 Jazz Times interview. “When you learn to tap dance,” he pointed out, “you don’t have no music—you’re your own music! That’s why they usually made the best drummers.. .. [The] time is with the dancer, and the band will only swing if you got the time.”

In high school Jacquet took up the alto saxophone and joined Milt Larkins’s band, one of the legendary unrecorded territory bands. In a 1988 Jazz Times article Jacquet reminisced about one summer evening in Kansas City when up-and-coming alto sax star Charlie Parker watched Jacquet play. “Afterwards, “recalled Jacquet,” we went to a club and started jamming. Our styles were so much alike that when he would play, I thought it was me.”

Joined Lionel Hampton

Jazz bandleader and drummer Lionel Hampton hired Jacquet in 1941, on the condition that Jacquet switch to tenor saxophone. While he was with the Hampton Orchestra, Jacquet became aware of the fact that audiences enjoyed his s solos. He commented in the Jazz Times interview, “The Apollo Theater had a hip audience…. I’d remember the explosion of the crowd after certain things I played, and I’d write them down.” Jacquet took this arsenal of notes into the studio for the Lionel Hampton Orchestra’s recording of “Flying Home.” Thanks in part to Jacquet’s solo, the record became Hampton’s first pop chart entry; it reached Number 23 on the 1943 Billboard charts.

In 1943 Jacquet joined the Cab Calloway Orchestra and remained a member for a few years. Later, during the late 1940s, he became a member of Count Basie’s orchestra for a year, playing on notable Basie numbers “Mutton Leg” and “The King.” He also appeared alongside jazz musicians Lester Young, Harry “Sweets” Edison,

For the Record…

Born Jean Baptiste Illinois Jacquet, October 31, 1922, in Broussard, LA.

Began tap dancing for his father’s band, c. 1925; played drums and alto saxophone before switching to tenor sax, c. 1941; played in Milt Larkins’s and Floyd Ray’s territory bands, c. 1938; member of Lionel Hampton Orchestra, 1941-43, Cab Calloway Orchestra, 1943-44, Jazz at the Philharmonic bands, 1944-61, and Count Basie Orchestra, 1945-46; appeared in short film Jammin’ the Blues; led bands and made recordings, 1950s-80s; visiting professor, Harvard University, 1983-84; formed Illinois Jacquet and His Big Band, 1985; “Flying Home” inducted into the NARAS Hall of Fame, 1996.

Addresses: Record company —Mosaic Records, 35 Melrose Place, Stamford, CT 06902.

Barney Kessel, and others in the short film Jammin’ theBluesan6 was a featured member of Norman Granz’s legendary Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) groups.

One Jazz at the Philharmonic concert in which Jacquet appeared was held in Los Angeles on July 2, 1944, and was notable for several reasons. The performance was the first of Granz’s successful series of jazz concerts and tours that played only to nonsegregated audiences and paid the musicians above union scale. It would also spawn the first commercially released live jazzrecording.

Introduced the Honking Sax

Jacquet’s two-and-a-half-minute solo on “Blues (Part Two)” on the historic Jazz at the Philharmonic recording is considered a highlight of the set. According to What Was the First Rock‘n’Roll Record?, “[Jacquet’s performance] was something new, a mixture of stage antics and musical pyrotechnics that, in only a few manic choruses, blew open the boundaries of jazz and rhythm and blues. On that July day at the Philharmonic, Jacquet introduced the phenomenon of the honking saxophonist, and black music—hell, American music—would never be the same again.” Not only was Jacquet acclaimed for his solo on “Blues (Part Two),” but his playing on the track “How High the Moon” convinced record label owner Moses Asch to release the JATP album.

Jacquet’s frenetic style has had appeal among rhythm and blues fans. Gary Giddens approvingly stated in his book Rhythm-a-ning, “He didn’t exactly invent the honking tenor, but at the age of nineteen, in the few minutes it took Lionel Hampton’s orchestra to record ‘Flying Home, ’ he put it on the map. Jazz was now finally as erotic and vulgar as the [women’s magazine] Ladies ‘Home Journal ’ had always warned, and the crowds that came tohear Jacquet with Hampton, Jazz atthe Philharmonic (‘Blues’), and Basie (‘Mutton Leg’) expected nothing less than a shot to the glands.”

The flamboyant aspect of Jacquet’s playing also has its detractors. Basie biographer Raymond Horrick’s opinion of Jacquet differs; he remarked in Count Basie and His Orchestra, Its Music and Its Musician, “[Jacquet’s] high-note screams were in the worst possible taste, but sufficiently exciting to the less-discerning, sensation seeking public to earn him nation-wide recognition… [For] his period with Basie he sobered down somewhat and recorded a number of less-extrovert solos with the band… After leaving Basie, the exhibitionism returned to his playing and with it commercial success.” Norman Granz perhaps best summed up Jacquet’s style in Jazz: The Transition Years: “Even if it’s honking, it’s the best honking. And there’s no baloney about it.”

Formed a Big Band

Jacquet’s reputation as a honking and screaming sax player has followed him throughout his career. However, ina 1953 Down Beat article he said, “I’d hit thosehigh notes mostly because people wanted it. But to be frank with you, I never liked that stuff.” Leading his own bands during the 1950s and 1960s, he became an exceptional ballad interpreter and also took up playing the bassoon. Jacquet’s musical developments did not go entirely unnoticed. Reviewing a live performance in 1968, Down Beat writer Gene Gray remarked, “Whatever one may say about Jacquet during his halcyon days, today he is a complete musician. Whether it be a gentle ballad or an old flagwaver, Jacquet impresses with sound, swing, and soul.”

One of the highlights of Jacquet’s 1969 album The Blues: That’s Me is his rendition of “Round Midnight,” played on bassoon. The album, featuring guitarist Tiny Grimes and pianist Wynton Kelly, was one of several he recorded for Prestige during the 1960s. On The Soul Explosion, also released in 1969, Jacquet leads a ten-piece band with his brother Russell on trumpet and former Hampton sidekick Milt Buckner playing organ.

Jacquet spent the seventies and early eighties in Europe, keeping a low profile in the United States. In 1983 and 1984, while he was a visiting professor at Harvard University, he was inspired to form a big band. He told interviewer Chip Deffaa in Jazz Times in 1985, “I made up my mind that if I could make students at Harvard sound that good, it was time for me to come back to New York and pick the best musicians I could find and form my own big band. I thought: Duke [Ellington’s] gone, Count [Basie’s] gone, Jimmie Lunceford’s gone, Cab [Calloway] no longer had a band—it was just like a call I had, to form this band.” Jacquet’s big band, which broke attendance records at the Village Vanguard, is documented on the album Jacquet’s Got It! and in the documentary film Texas Tenor: The Illinois Jacquet Story.

Jacquet continued performing on jazz recordings into the 1990s. A guest spot on the Modern Jazz Quartet’s 1994 album A Celebration proved that he is still in fine form. As he explained in the closing statement of a 1988 Jazz Times interview, “With this kind of music you don’t get old, because it takes 50 years to learn how to play it. I don’t expect to retire.”

Selected discography

Jazz at the Philharmonic, Stinson, 1944, reissued, Verve.

Bottoms Up, Prestige, 1968, reissued, Fantasy/OJC, 1990.

The Soul Explosion, Prestige, 1969, reissued, Fantasy/OJC, 1991.

The Blues, That’s Me!, Prestige, 1969, reissued, Fantasy/OJC, 1991.

The Comeback, Black Lion, 1971, reissued, DA Music, 1991.

The Black Velvet Band, Bluebird, 1988.

(As Illinois Jacquet and His Big Band) Jacquet’s Got It!, Atlantic Jazz, 1988.

Flies Again (recorded 1959), reissued, Roulette Jazz, 1991.

Flying Home (recorded 1947-67), reissued, Bluebird, 1992.

Flying Home: The Best of the Verve Years (recorded 1951-58), reissued, Verve, 1994.

Illinois Jacquet All-Stars 1945-47, Blue Moon, 1994.

(With Modern Jazz Quartet) A Celebration, Atlantic, 1994.

The Complete Illinois Jacquet Sessions 1945-1950, Mosaic, 1996.

How High the Moon, Prestige.

Sources

Books

Britt, Stan, Long Tall Dexter, A Critical Musical Biography of Dexter Gordon, Quartet Books, 1989.

Cook, Richard, and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP, and Cassette, Penguin Books, 1994.

Dance, Stanley, Jazz Era: The Forties, Macgibbon&Kee, 1961.

Dawson, Jim, and Steve Propes, WhatWas the FirstRock’n’Roll Record?, Faber and Faber, 1992.

Giddins, Gary, Rhythm-a-ning: Jazz Tradition and Innovation in the Eighties, Oxford University Press, 1985.

Gitler, Ira, Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s, Oxford University Press, 1985.

Hampton, Lionel, with James Haskins, Hamp: An Autobiography, Amistad, 1989.

Horricks, Raymond, and Alun Morgan, Count Basie and His Orchestra, Its Music and Its Musicians, Negro Universities Press, 1971.

Wilson, John S., Jazz: The Transition Years 1940-1960, Meredith Publishing Company, 1966.

Periodicals

Down Beat, February 11, 1953; January 9, 1969.

Jazz Times, January 1985; September 1988; September 1989.

Additional information for this profile was taken from the films Jammin’ the Blues, 1944, and Texas Tenor: The Illinois Jacquet Story, Rhapsody Films, 1991.

—Jim Powers