Don Lanphere

[Larry Kart]

Picked up this seemingly obscure latter-day Lanphere (1928-2003) album:

http://jazztimes.com/articles/9672-jazz-worship-2-free-indeed-don-lanphere

at a library sale today, and so far I'm very impressed. He sounds even better than he did on the Hep albums he made after his initial return to action -- deep-toned, rhythmically and harmonically fluent, and quite individual. The program, has a "spiritual" flavor at times, with some gentle wordless choral backgrounds on several tracks -- it would seem that Lanphere was "born again" -- but so far nothing has gotten in the way of the excellence of his playing. He's backed by very good Seattle-area players (that's was Lanphere's home town and where he settled), and on one of the tracks there's a lovely slow-motion trombone solo from latter-day Seattle-ite Julian Priester.

[AllenLowe]

used to see him at the West End in those days with a friend of mine - Jeff Fuller - on bass. He was excellent. He also sounds good on those very old sessions with Duke Jordan, I think it was - late '40s maybe?

Edited May 22, 2014 by AllenLowe

[Quasimado]

Very original tenor for any period - the sides with Fats are excellent, especially considering he was just a kid at the time ... the fast company caught up with him, unfortunately. The comeback Heps are also very nice. This looks like one to find ...

Q

[Gheorghe]

The 1948 sessions with Fats and Max (the two tracks of Move) is great, also his nice playing behind Earl Coleman on the other sides of that session.

I think, the late 1949 session with "Fats and Bird´s rhythm section" is not so great, but anyway, Lanphere was a great player in the Lester Young school, like Brew Moore, whom I also like very much.

I remember one time reading some liner notes on a Miles Davis album, where the author tells us, that he had an informal conversation with Miles during intermission, and Miles was quite articulate, and somehow the author mentioned the town where he came from, and it was the place where Don Lamphere lived.

Miles, who sure hadn´t played much with Lanphere, and never was lookin back, said to the man "say hello to Don Lanphere"........