I loved Charlie. I was with his big band at New York's Arcadia Ballroom. I was one of the singers with Lucy Reed. We used to do vocal duets. Al Cohn wrote an arrangement for me for a Sicilian song called Dicitencello Vuie. In English it means You Tell Them. I still can't believe it. Al Cohn wrote an arrangement for me [laughs]."
Ventura's blowing style was seriously hip. Isn't it about time we cut the guy a break?
JazzWax tracks: Here's Ventura in the 1940s and into the 1950s on tenor and baritone...
- Charlie Ventura 1946-1947
- Jackie and Roy (1948)
- Live in Pasadena (1949)
- Charlie Ventura 1949
- Plays Hi-Fi Jazz (1956)
JazzWax clips: Here are a few superb clips of Ventura...
Here's Tea for Two in March 1945, with Howard McGhee (tp), Charlie Ventura (ts), Arnold Ross (p), Dave Barbour (g), Artie Shapiro (b) and Nick Fatool...
Here's If I Had You in October 1948, with Norman Faye (tp), Bennie Green (tb), Charlie Ventura (ts,bar), Ben Ventura (bar), Roy Kral (p), Gus Cole (b) or Chubby Jackson (b) and Ed Shaughnessy (d)...
Here's Ventura on I'm Confessin' in 1951, with Conte Candoli (tp), Charlie Ventura (bar), Jimmy Wisner (p), Ace Tesone (b) and Chick Keeny (d). Sweet work by Condoli...
And here's Ventura in a clip with the Gene Krupa Band playing Leave Us Leap, from a short calledThe Drummer Man (1947). Ventura's on tenor sax in the white suspenders...
This story appears courtesy of JazzWax by Marc Myers.
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