[Ed. note: This post was originally published on June 21, 2016]
Sir Charles Thompson died on June 16 near Tokyo, where he’d lived since 2002. He was 98, and was playing gigs up until a few years ago when he became ill with colon cancer. The Washington Post’s obituary notes that prior to his recent hospitalization, “although he was very weak, he insisted he play for his wife Makiko, saying, ‘This is for you, for this might be the last chance’.” Trumpeter Yoshio Toyama, who announced Thompson’s passing, said, “He played for an hour, with much feeling.”
Thompson was knighted by Lester Young in the early forties when he spelled Jimmy Rowles in the combo that Lester and his brother Lee led at Cafe Society in New York. Sir Charles, whose ubiquity throughout the decade earned him the nickname, “the house pianist of 52nd Street,” was attentive to style and presentation. He said Cafe Society, a groundbreaking integrated nightclub at Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village renowned for Billie Holiday’s long residencies, “was the most high class jazz club in the world…and really an exciting place.” He observed that Lester “led the band with his eyes. He hardly said anything except, ‘Hey, baby.’ Everything that Lester had to say was complimentary.” The Post obit quotes him saying, “One night Lester turned to me and said, ‘You’re a swingin’ cat…From now on, you’re Sir Charles’.”
Thompson got his start on a peripatetic life as the son of a Methodist minister on assignment. He was born in Springfield, Ohio, on March 21, 1918, and spent his formative years in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he played violin until the locals “made it clear that the violin was not an instrument for black kids.” He was six when he switched to piano, and says he learned from records and leftover practice books for violin. In 1930, Bennie Moten’s band stopped in Colorado Springs and Count Basie, who was then Moten’s pianist, invited the 12-year-old Thompson to sit in. He said the experience “really fired my interest.”
Sir Charles spent the next decade dividing his time between music and odd jobs, “none of which I’m ashamed of. I’ve shined shoes and washed cars; I’ve been a bellhop, elevator operator, and a hotel clerk, but as a caddy I learned lessons in psychology that have been invaluable.” In 1934, claiming to be 18, he got work with the Civilian Conservation Corps. He cleared land and forest near Cape Girardou, Missouri, and from there “branched out into [work with] bands.” He joined Cecil Scott’s busy outfit in St. Louis, but admitted to being “too young and inexperienced to keep up the pace.” By then his parents were living in Parsons, Kansas, the home of Buck Clayton, who was seven years Thompson’s senior, had already played in Shanghai with Teddy Weatherford, and would soon be starring with Count Basie. Thompson says he “got his inspiration to stay in music” through “a couple of compliments” from Clayton, who was “a kind of idol…in a small town like that.”
He went back on the road, initially with a “carnival band” that his father didn’t like the looks of; they rode on a “ragged bus” and the per diem was 35 cents. “You take chances when you’re young [but] I got tired of eating one meal a day,” Thompson recollected. From there he found work with legendary territory bands led by Lloyd Hunter and Nat Towles, and “drifted to California” to play with Floyd Ray’s “very good band.” He signed on with Lionel Hampton’s inaugural big band in Los Angeles, a gig whose chief benefits were meeting Illinois Jacquet and bringing him back east. “The music wasn’t to my taste,” he said. “He wanted the drummers to play a back beat all the time, and that was bad for a pianist.”
Thompson left Hamp in Buffalo, and from there John Hammond recommended him to Lee and Lester. Years later, Hammond singled out Sir Charles for praise in his 1977 autobiography, John Hammond on Record, as “a pianist who had long been an enthusiasm of mine, and whose knighthood was a modest effort to keep pace with the counts and dukes of the jazz realm.” Hammond’s enthusiasm would have stemmed from Thompson as both a class act and a pianist whose mature style sounded like Basie with a bebop accent. The comparison is supported on records from throughout his career, and especially his mid-fifties dates with Basie’s All-American rhythm section of Freddie Green, Walter Page, and Jo Jones. (Speaking of his affinity for Basie style, the Thompson quotes in this piece, unless otherwise attributed, are drawn from Stanley Dance’s book, The World of Count Basie. Sir Charles is one of only three or four non-Basieites profiled in the Basie bible.)
Thompson will long be remembered for the jazz standard, “Robbins’ Nest,” the mellow riff tune he introduced in 1947 while playing with Illinois Jacquet. By that time, the tenor great had become a household name for his rousing solo on Hampton’s “Flying Home,” and for his full-throttle histrionics with Jazz at the Philharmonic. But Thompson knew him also as a ballad master who could “play soft.” When he introduced the tune at an otherwise undistinguished session on May 21, 1947, he told the band, “I want you to play this soft. [Trumpeter] Joe [Newman], I want you to use a mute. You play the melody. I’ll answer on the piano. Illinois, you take the middle…So far as I was concerned, I didn’t care if they called it ‘Mud in the Hole,’ but Fred Robbins was a big disc jockey then and I could see the possibilities when they called it ‘Robbins’ Nest’.”
Countless others, ranging from Basie to Claude Thornhill to Ella Fitzgerald to John Coltrane, recorded the tune, and the new century has brought forth versions by Harry Allen, Wycliffe Gordon, Herb Ellis and Duke Robillard, vocalist Trish Hartley, and others. Here’s a 1993 recording by Sir Charles that features bassist Eddie Jones and drummer Eddie Locke. (Jones spent a decade with Count Basie between 1952 and ’62, then settled in Hartford for a second career in the insurance industry. Jones was a numbers man and computer specialist, but he maintained a musical footing in the region, and often spent his summer vacations from CIGNA touring Europe and Japan with all-star groups. He also became a fan of Jazz à la Mode, and joined me a few times on-air during fund drives to help the cause. He brought along this CD on one of those occasions.)
Footage of Sir Charles in performance is rare, but he was captured beautifully in 1964 playing “What’s New.”
In addition to “Robbins’ Nest,” Thompson will be remembered for the September 4, 1945 session he led for Apollo Records featuring Charlie Parker. For a panel discussion about Bird, Sir Charles, who alludes humanely to Parker’s drug addiction as a “physical handicap,” recalled him as “the greatest musician and man I ever met.”
“20th Century Blues” is one of the four titles recorded by Thompson’s septet with Parker, Dexter Gordon, a rhythm section of Danny Barker, Jimmy Butts, and J.C. Heard, and his old friend from Parsons, Buck Clayton.
When I posted a note about Thompson’s passing on Facebook on June 18, I was impressed with the number of friends who immediately cited his playing on Vic Dickenson’s 1953 Showcase album for Vanguard. As the title implies, “Sir Charles At Home” is a showcase for Thompson, with additional solos by clarinetist Edmond Hall, trumpeter Ruby Braff, and Vic on trombone.
