Fats Navarro: a young african-american with parents of Cuban descent and Chinese. Fats was just called "Fat" or mocked as "Fat Girl" by colleagues bebobbers of his time: that for its size and weight traits in compensation for the "feminine" of his face and loud. It is, musically, a trumpeter of inestimable importance for the period of Bebop, one of the pioneers along with Dizzy Gillespie and Howard McGhee, two of the first trumpeter to configure the joints of the trumpet for this style has modernized jazz improvisation.
The musical career of Fats Navarro began, more or less in 1941 to 18 years old when he left the parental home for traveling with local bands in Florida (where he was born) and Indianapolis: a formation called Allbright's and Sun's band Snookum pianist Russell, musician of Indianapolis, were the first bands where he passed the young trumpeter. But the interesting thing is that Navarro did not begin his musical journey by learning the trumpet, but tenor sax.
Moreover, as a child, began taking piano lessons and later as a teenager, he became interested in tenor sax, reaching considerable fluency in that instrument. The improvement on trumpet happened between the ages of 18 and 20, at which time he was influenced by trumpeter Charlie Shavers (who was his cousin-third), and especially by Roy Eldridge, considered by many the first trumpeter to transition the influence Louis Armstrog - melody and improvisation - for bursts of pre-bebop: that between 1941 and 1944, by which time the big bands already had the young soloists of great originality and virtuosity that would be the principal architects of bebop, among them Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Howard McGhee and Charlie Parker.
In late 1943 Fats enters the Andy Kirk band, the main Kansas City bandleader who, incidentally, had already discovered many musicians as Mary Lou Williams, Don Byas, Shorty Baker (first husband of Mary Lou) and Buddy Tate.
In compact orchestra Kirk, Fats Navarro went through its second phase of influences: there he met the great and original first-Howard McGhee trumpet, which would immediately his main influence before knowing Dizzy. It is with this band of Kirk, who in 1944 experienced by the state of New York City, where he played the famous Minton's Play House and could be observed by some of the musicians of the New Yorker, in addition to coming to be admired by the critic Leonard Feather. The result of this recognition was admitted in 1945 in the band of Billy Eckstine to replace Dizzy Gillespie. Already duly installed in New York, Navarro began to collaborate with the emergence of the bebop scene next to a legion of musicians dissidents of the big bands: Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Dizzy himself, Tadd Dameron, Kenny Clarke, Bud Powell, Coleman Hawkins among many others.
Despite scant recordings as a leader, Fats Navarro was not only the principal trumpet of New York alongside Dizzy between the years 1945 and 1948, would also be considered as a major influence, Clifford Brown for a few years later. Fats come to participate in more or less 100 recordings as a sideman, which explains the harassment of the greatest bandleaders to have him as a soloist on records with his bands. Nevertheless, Navarro left important records where it appears as leader or co-leader along with Tadd Dameron: Some of these are the Fats Navarro Memorial, Vol 2 - Nostalgia (1946, Savoy), The Fabulous Fats Navarro (1947, Blue Note ), Fats Navarro - Fat Girl (1947, Savoy) and the double The Complete Blue Note and Capitol Recordings of Fats Navarro and Tadd Dameron (Blue Note, 1947, 1948), this last being the most famous and accessible from all others.
Even the record that I leave above available for download is a bootleg released here in the South American soil seal Argentine Del Prado - recording character "homemade" is not officially released by any record label at the time and therefore unrelated to copyright -- where Navarro works in the front line with the sextet of pianist Tadd Dameron: These recordings were rescued from the radio broadcaster's famous Symphony Sid that, in the early morning of Saturday, broadcast live performances from bands that played at the Royal Roost nightclub -- famous club which, incidentally, was situated on Broadway, and being one of the top clubs next to the beboppers Minton's Playhouse, was called The Metropolitan Bopera House (paraphrase of the famous and finds historical stage at The Metropolitan Opera House). These recordings are not in perfect qualities to point to hear the perfectly harmonic lines of piano in the background or mark the battery with total clarity, but the soils Navarro sounds clear so that clearly show the improvisatory style of the young master, this style marked by coups-de-language random in the midst of bandages with notes perfectly crisp and melodic richness out of the series - which shows, after all, how he managed to unite the influence of single legato Howard McGhee with the articulation and well marked exploration of the upper register of Dizzy Gillespie.
After these recordings from 1948, Fats Navarro was gradually falling ill with tuberculosis and a lot of heroin injecting in the veins. In 1950 he dies before completing 27 years, leaving his wife and daughter alone.
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