Born in Columbia, SC, on June 16, 1924, tenor saxophonist
Lucky Thompson bridged
the gap between the physical dynamism of swing and the cerebral
intricacies of bebop, emerging as one of his instrument's foremost
practitioners and a stylist par excellence. Eli Thompson's lifelong
nickname -- the byproduct of a jersey, given him by his father, with the
word "lucky" stitched across the chest -- would prove bitterly
inappropriate: when he was five, his mother died, and the remainder of
his childhood, spent largely in Detroit, was devoted to helping raise
his younger siblings. Thompson loved music, but without hope of
acquiring an instrument of his own, he ran errands to earn enough money
to purchase an instructional book on the saxophone, complete with
fingering chart. He then carved imitation lines and keys into a broom
handle, teaching himself to read music years before he ever played an
actual sax. According to legend, Thompson finally received his own
saxophone by accident -- a delivery company mistakenly dropped one off
at his home along with some furniture, and after graduating high school
and working briefly as a barber, he signed on with Erskine Hawkins'
'Bama State Collegians, touring with the group until 1943, when he
joined Lionel Hampton and settled in New York City.
