Lucky Thompson

USA

Born: 16 June 1924

Died: 30 July 2005

Years Active: 40, 50, 60, 70

Genres: Jazz, Vocal

Styles: Bop, Post-Bop, Hard Bop, Modal Music, Mainstream Jazz, New Orleans/Classic Jazz, Standards, Traditional Pop, Vocal/Standards

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Born in Columbia, SC, on June 16, 1924, tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson bridged the gap between the physical dynamism of swing and the cerebral intricacies of bebop, emerging as one of his instrument's foremost practitioners and a stylist par excellence. Eli Thompson's lifelong nickname -- the byproduct of a jersey, given him by his father, with the word "lucky" stitched across the chest -- would prove bitterly inappropriate: when he was five, his mother died, and the remainder of his childhood, spent largely in Detroit, was devoted to helping...

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