[Dixielandjazz] Jimmy Forrest & "Night train"

[Norman Vickers]

To:  DJML & Musicians and Jazzfans lists

From:  Norman Vickers

Betty Forrest, widow of trombonist Jimmy Forrest, and founder West Michigan
Jazz Society, writes in response to the 

New Yorker Magazine Book review  about Ellington.

 

Thanks, Betty.

 

From: Betty Forrest [mailto:bforr at hotmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, May 15, 2010 3:36 PM



 

Jimmy's "Night Train" was said to be a rip-off of Ellington's "Happy
Go-Lucky Local", but most of it was something he had been playing around St.
Louis in the mid-40's, several years before he was with Ellington in
1948-49.....He used it in solo choruses with the band and Ellington often
picked up stuff from his soloists improvs and when they caught his ear he
would later use them in his own format.  Ellington never agreed that Jimmy
had ripped him off....but Mercer didn't feel that way!  He wanted to go
after the rights, at one point, but Duke wouldn't let him....Or so goes the
story as I was told it.
 
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