| October 9th, 2005 09:14 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Jazz double bassist Lesberg dies
Jazz double bassist Jack Lesberg, who performed with the likes of Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman has died at the age of 85. As well as playing with many of the great jazz greats, Lesberg also played in symphonic orchestras.
Lesberg played violin in clubs before switching to the double bass in the late 1930s.
He survived the Boston Coconut Grove club fire of 1942 in which 492 people died and many more were injured.
After moving to New York he played with guitarist Eddie Condon, saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and singers Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan.
In the 1950s he toured with the Armstrong All Stars.
He also performed with the New York City Symphony Orchestra, under Leonard Bernstein, and later with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
His daughter, Valerie Kaplan, said he died from complications from Alzheimer's disease.
Jack Lesberg
ALISON KERR October 10 2005
The Herald online
Jack Lesberg was a versatile double bassist who ran two parallel careers: as a jazz musician and as an orchestral player. During his 60 years playing jazz, he worked with some of the music's greatest exponents, among them the tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, the singers Billie Holiday and Lee Wiley, the clarinettist/band-leader Benny Goodman, the guitarist/bandleader Eddie Condon and the cornettist Ruby Braff, and he was one of Louis Armstrong's popular All Stars group which toured Britain in the late 1950s. The happiest period of his life, he once said, was when he was "doubling at Eddie Condon's nightclub and playing in the New York City Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Bernstein".
Born in Boston, Lesberg originally studied the violin which he played in local clubs before he made the permanent switch to double bass in the late 1930s. One of his earliest tours was with the trumpeter Muggsy Spanier in 1941. Not long after surviving a fire at Boston's Cocoanut Grove nightclub (which killed 492 people in 1942), Lesberg moved to New York where he established himself as an in-demand player.
His first appearances on record were made in 1944, when, along with Spanier, trombonist Miff Mole, clarinettist Pee Wee Russell and drummer Gene Krupa, he was part of the Eddie Condon band that recorded live at New York's Town Hall.
From 1945 until 1950, when he worked for the New York City Symphony Orchestra, Lesberg would spend the first part of most evenings playing classical music and then head to Condon's where he would play jazz into the wee small hours. As a freelance from 1950 onwards, Lesberg had plenty of job offers and took part in high-profile tours with bands led by Louis Armstrong, Eddie Condon and the trombonist Jack Teagarden.
In the early 1970s, he settled in Australia and spent five years playing with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra before returning to the US. He continued to work until 2003 when Alzheimer's disease effectively ended his career.
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| October 9th, 2005 10:59 PM |
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| jb |
This cat was awesome!!! RIP!! Really sad news. |
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