[Dixielandjazz] Franz Jackson - RIP

[Robert S. Ringwald]

 Stan Brager wrote:

> Tenorman Franz Jackson has passed at age 65.


"65"???


His mark on jazz can be heard
> on the many recordings he made and the groups he played with. Although I
> never met him face to face, I spoke with him on the phone several times 
> when
> I had a radio show. Franz was always generous with his time and was a keen
> observer of the early days of jazz.
>
> Many of his recordings are still available. They reflect a man who grew up
> with jazz and continued to grow throughout his life.
>
> Stan
> Stan Brager
> ................
> Franz Jackson 1912 ~ 2008
> Legendary Chicago saxophonist Franz Jackson dies at age 95
> Worked with such jazz greats as Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton
> By Howard Reich
> Tribune critic
> May 8, 2008
> Tribune critic
>
> Few jazz musicians in the 21st Century can claim to have known the two key
> inventors of the music: trumpeter Louis Armstrong and composer-pianist 
> Jelly
> Roll Morton.
>
> Franz Jackson, a legendary Chicago saxophonist who performed past his 95th
> birthday, worked with Armstrong, socialized with Morton and collaborated
> with Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Fletcher Henderson and
> other swing-era icons.
>
> As a virtuoso saxophonist, brilliant clarinetist and evocative vocalist, 
> Mr.
> Jackson was a mainstay in Chicago jazz clubs and concert halls dating back
> to the Roaring '20s (except for a period in the late 1930s and '40s, when 
> he
> lived in New York and Sweden).
>
> Mr. Jackson, 95, died of natural causes early Tuesday, May 6, in Riveridge
> Manor, a nursing home in Niles, Mich., said his daughter, Michelle Jewell.
> He had suffered a hip fracture in April, she said.
>
> Though listeners marveled at Mr. Jackson's ability to play so well for so
> long-he performed for more than two hours straight at a 95th birthday
> celebration last November-it was the particular nature of his sound that
> always commanded attention.
>
> "When I think of Franz, I just think of a big, powerful saxophone," said
> Eric Schneider, a Chicago tenor player who frequently performed with Mr.
> Jackson.
>
> "He reminded me of Coleman Hawkins," added Schneider, referring to a 
> seminal
> tenor saxophonist of a more romantic era. "But he had his own thing too."
>
> Indeed, if Mr. Jackson embraced the larger-than-life sound that was the
> hallmark of swing giants Hawkins and Ben Webster, he also incorporated
> elements of the more ethereal sounding tenorist Lester Young.
>
> At the core of Mr. Jackson's music, though, was a deep well of soulful
> expression, conveyed in poetically stated melodies and 
> touched-by-the-blues
> phrasings.
>
> "He was the real thing-the authenticity of his playing" distinguished him,
> said Art Hoyle, a noted Chicago trumpeter who often partnered with Mr.
> Jackson. "He was virtually there when the music was in its infancy. When 
> you
> talked to him, you were talking to history."
>
> Mr. Jackson was born Nov. 1, 1912, in Rock Island, Ill., and came to 
> Chicago
> with his mother when he was 13. He quickly began teaching himself to play
> reed instruments and at 16 was working with a pioneer of boogie-woogie
> piano, Albert Ammons. By the early 1930s, Mr. Jackson was playing for
> bandleader-composer Henderson-widely considered the architect of big-band
> swing-and learning to write scores from him.
>
> "That was a great time to be with Fletcher, too, because he was doing a 
> lot
> of [arranging] work for Benny Goodman's band at the time," Mr. Jackson 
> said
> in a 1992 Tribune interview. "Basically, he was taking his great old 
> charts
> and rewriting them for the Goodman band."
>
> Mr. Jackson's education continued apace, for by performing with Armstrong,
> trumpeter Roy Eldridge and other innovators based in Chicago, Mr. Jackson
> absorbed the language of early jazz as it was being created and refined.
>
> He moved to New York with his first wife, Maxine Johnson, in the late 
> 1930s,
> but he found the jazz scene there cliquish. Even so, in Manhattan he
> befriended the virtually out-of-work Morton, in the waning days of the 
> great
> composer's life.
>
> By 1950, Mr. Jackson returned to Chicago, leading his Original Jass
> All-Stars for years at the Red Arrow club in Stickney. Although many
> musicians of his vintage rejected the bebop innovations that supplanted
> swing, Mr. Jackson absorbed them into his own, remarkably malleable work.
>
> "A lot of guys didn't like it when bebop came along, but I liked it fine,"
> Mr. Jackson said in the Tribune interview. "I could understand it because 
> I
> knew the bebop guys like Dizzy [Gillespie] before they became famous; I
> played with them."
>
> Even into his 90s, Mr. Jackson remained a strikingly charismatic figure,
> singing vintage tunes such as "St. James Infirmary" and "Limehouse Blues"
> with a vocal grit and a declamatory style rarely encountered anymore. In a
> marathon concert with the Chicago Jazz Ensemble three years ago in 
> Chicago,
> he held his own against tenor monsters such as Johnny Griffin, Von Freeman
> and Ira Sullivan.
>
> "He did exactly what he loved his entire life, he made a living at it, he
> raised his family on it," said his daughter. "If I have one regret, it's
> that he's not more widely known," she said, though Mr. Jackson's
> recordings-on labels such as Delmark and his own Pinnacle Recordings-are
> available on his Web site: franzjackson.com.
>
> "But he was the heart of jazz."
>
> On May 15, Mr. Jackson-who lived in Chicago and Dowagiac, Mich.-will
> posthumously receive the 2008 Theodore Thomas History Maker Award for
> Distinction in the Performing Arts from the Chicago History Museum.
>
> In addition to his daughter, Mr. Jackson is survived by a son, Robert; 
> five
> grandchildren; and a step-grandchild.
>
> A memorial service will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. May 24 in the Apostolic
> Lighthouse Church in Dowagiac, Mich.
>
> hreich at tribune.com
>
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