Mid-February is a good time to remember the prolific and proficient bassist Jack Lesberg, who was born in Boston on February 14, 1920. Thirty years later, in February 1950, George Frazier, writing in Pageant, named Lesberg to his all-time all-star band, where he shared rhythm section duties with Earl Hines, Charlie Christian, and Gene Krupa. Now, you can take or leave Frazier, but if Jack Lesberg wasn’t worthy of Frazier’s list in 1950, I don’t know who was.
Jack Lesberg in the 1940s
Jack Lesberg played his first stringed instrument at age eight. It was his brother’s violin, and young Jack studied violin and viola with Karl Barleben of the Boston Symphony for six years. (His brother, Dave Lester, led a successful commercial band in Boston and Miami in the ‘40s and ‘50s.) He switched to the double bass when he was 17, and went into the nightclubs. He worked with Silvio Scafati’s band, and with Jack Manning and His Cavalier Strings, in the late 1930s. He also sat in at the Theatrical Club with Bobby Hackett, and this led Lesberg to a job with Muggsy Spanier in 1940.
Lesberg was back in Boston in 1942 and playing in Mickey Alpert’s Orchestra at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, a band Frazier once called “excruciating.” He was working on the night of the infamous fire, a story he told many times. Lesberg moved to New York in 1943. There he quickly established himself as a top bassist in the world of “Nicksieland,” or “New York Dixieland,” that stronghold of small group improvisation and a book stocked with “the good old good ones.” And Nicksieland groups included saxophones, guitars and basses instead of banjos and tubas, and drummers who played with swing-band feel. Lesberg had friends from Boston equally at home in that style—Hackett, Max Kaminsky, Brad Gowans, Joe Dixon, and frequent section mate Buzzy Drootin.
Jack Lesberg, though, was versatile and classically trained, and by 1945 he was playing concert music with the City Center Symphony under Leonard Bernstein (he stayed until 1948), working lucrative radio jobs like the Lucky Strike Hit Parade, and serving as house bassist at Eddie Condon’s club. In the late 1940s Lesberg worked out of town with Jack Teagarden, then with Condon.
It was in the 1950s that Lesberg needed his passport. As one of Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars, he went to Europe, Africa and Australia. He toured Europe with Earl Hines in 1957, Doc Severinsen in 1962, and Armstrong again in 1965. He toured Asia and Australia with Condon in 1964, and the UK and Latin America with George Wein’s Newport All-Stars in 1967. Finally, in 1971, Lesberg moved to Australia, to play bass with the Sydney Symphony. He stayed for four years before returning to New York.
Even with his ambitious travel schedule, Lesberg logged many hours in the recording studio. Over a 50-year period, he recorded with every important mainstream jazz artist and vocalist. The Lord Discography has Lesberg on 274 sessions, and only four bassists (Milt Hinton, Ray Brown, Red Mitchell, and Paul Chambers) played on more.
Lesberg slowed down in the 1980s, with one last European tour with Ruby Braff’s Armstrong tribute group, and travels across his own country on the jazz party circuit. He was on Benny Goodman’s last band in 1985. He played publicly for the last time at his 83rd birthday tribute at the Arbors Records “March of Jazz” party in Florida in 2003. He died two years later, in September 2005, from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
As a bassist, Jack Lesberg was steady and unobtrusive, and an infrequent soloist. He’s on this 1956 Eddie Condon date, and the bass is somewhat pronounced. I wonder if that was the engineer’s doing, rather than Jack’s, but you can hear his line clearly. He’s with old friends Hackett and Drootin, and joined in the section by Dick Cary on piano. The tune is “Dark Eyes.”
Wonderful article. Jack Lesberg’s brother was my father, David Lester f/k/a Lesberg. Many wonderful memories of Jack and his jazz band colleagues and of my father (who was a dance band violinist and band leader in Boston, NYC, and Miami and was 15 years older than Jack) playing together and apart! Me and my wife and two daughters (all of us musicians of sorts) attended Jack’s last public performance in Sarasota at a “Jazz Party”, which he used to organize all over the Country and played in in Europe. He was also a top jazz artist in Australia for several years, where he had some number 1 jazz record albums.
Paul A. Lester, Miami, Florida
Thank you, Paul. Jack had quite a career, and quite a life. And your father, Dave Lester, was quite active in Boston before he moved south. He had the house band at the Latin Quarter on Winchester Street, and hired good musicians with big band experience so they could sneak in some jazz when the management wasn’t looking!
Richard, thanks for this excellent profile. Interesting. My uncle, Al Maglitta, played drums with Jack in the Mickey Alpert Orchestra, including the night of the Cocoanut Grove fire. (Al died in 1980, having spent his last decades as a music teacher in Stoneham,MA. Thanks to your excellent book, I’m filling in the family stories and newspaper clips with mini portraits of the real people and artists. Thank you for keeping the flame burning!
Joe, thanks for the good words, and thanks also for the info on your uncle, I’ll bet he knew many of the musicians mentioned in the book. Did he continue to work as a musician in the years after the Grove?
Sorry for the time warp! Just circling back! Uncle Al knew a lot of the folks mentioned here; he used to talk about after-hours jams with black and white players at ( I believe) the Hi-Hat, with players from Sabby Lewis band and others. Uncle Al played for many years on CBS network live radio broadcasts at noon from the (I believe) Lenox Hotel – pretty sure this was after the fire. (For many years, my dad, his younger brother Jerry, had Al’s vibraphone and beautiful old kit — a full 1920s Slingerland setup including two tack-head toms and electric light bulb in the bass drum, and ancient Zildjian cymbals — in the basement of our Lexington home. We played them as kids, as did my dad; my brother still has it.) Uncle Al for many years played regularly for Jerry Lewis telethons in the Boston studios. Most of his work in his later years was teaching drums, including folks like the recently departed Reid Jorgenson Jr. He was the father in law of Ben Correggio (stage name Ben Anthony), a protege of Gene Krupa who took over and led the Krupa Orchestra until his death in the 1990s. Ben’s bands were regulars at Kings Grant Inn. His drum spirit lives on in my nephew Dante, who plays smoking drums in the rock band Verona Rose with guitarist brother Giancarlo. Thanks again for all your important work! https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/bostonglobe/name/reid-jorgensen-obituary?id=34469761
Thanks for this second chorus, Joe! There were numerous clubs that had after-hours sessions–could also have been at the Savoy, or the Ken Club. A different time. And I know Al was with WEEI for many years, all through the 60s and maybe longer.