Willie Lewis was a bandleader and singer who played alto saxophone. Tall and handsome, he was a sharp dresser and fluent in French. His greatest skill was running the ONLY all African-American Swing orchestra on the European Continent in the late 1930s.
Goudie, already a well-established Parisian star, serving in the orchestra from 1935 to 1938. He’s heard on a little less than half of their 60 European recordings (or around thirty, two-sided 78 rpm discs).
Lewis took over an existing band in 1931, building his popularity and a superb orchestra packed with formidable musical talent, mostly imported from America. He had such excellent trumpeters Bill Coleman, Arthur Briggs, Bobby Martin and Jacques Butler. Band pianist was Herman Chittison.
Chittison was probably the best Jazz piano player in Europe and had toured the Continent with Louis Armstrong. For a short time in 1935-36, Benny Carter, the brilliant multi-instrumentalist and dynamic Jazz pioneer wrote arrangements and played trumpet and alto sax for Lewis, but is on only a few recordings.
The Entertainers dissolved in late 1938, though Lewis continued performing, recording and broadcasting. But he couldn’t elude the rising political tensions, returning home in 1941.
Early on, Willie Lewis secured a chic Parisian venue at Chez Florence. The prestigious gig was at the grandest cabaret in the Montmartre quarter. Recall that Big Boy had played there within days of first arriving in France in 1924. The gig also entailed a Saturday night radio broadcast from the club heard across the Continent.
A Down Beat magazine correspondent -- one Duncan MacDougald II -- reviewed them favorably in 1938:
“. . . when they choose to settle down and really shell out their best stuff, there is probably not another band in Europe, which can beat them. The weekly broadcasts of the band are, I understand, extremely popular with Continental swing devotees, for they play about the only authentic Harlem music to be heard in Europe.”
MacDougald singled out the “likeable” Goudie for special praise, calling him:
“. . . the star of the reeds who plays plenty of soulful hot tenor in a sort of rhythmically rolling fashion, and who picks up his former instrument, the trumpet, to assist the brass now and then. When Big Boy is playing hot solo passages against a background of blocked brass and reeds, the band is at is very best . . . where he is featured, the group creates music which is distinctly first class.”
Video produced with Ian Scott-Parker for the Osher Institute course, Unsung Heroes and Forgotten Stars of Early Jazz and Blues.
Find more on Goudie:
Frank Goudie in Paris:
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Goudie Jazz Rhythm pages:
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29 сен 2024
