William
Sebastian "Sabby" Lewis (November 1, 1914 in Middleburgh, North
Carolina – July 9, 1994) was a jazz pianist, band leader, and arranger.
Lewis was born
in Middleburgh, North Carolina, but was raised in Philadelphia. He started
taking piano lessons when he was 5 and moved to Boston in 1932. After working
with Tasker Crosson's Ten Statesmen in 1934, Lewis organized his own 7-piece
band in 1936.
In the late
30s and early 40s Sabby Lewis and his band were mainstays at notable Boston
jazz venues such as the Roseland-State Ballroom, Egleston Square Gardens, and
The Savoy Café.
In 1942,
Lewis' band won a listener contest on a broadcast from the Statler Hotel's
Terrace Room in Boston. The contest, sponsored by the F.W. Fitch Company, was
to select a band to appear regularly on NBC's Bandwagon program, heard on 120
stations at the time.
During World
War II, Lewis' orchestra included long-time Ellington tenor saxophonist Paul
Gonsalves,and drummer Alan Dawson spent much of the 1950s in the band. Other
notable alumni of the Lewis band included trumpeters Cat Anderson, Sonny Stitt,
Roy Haynes, Al Morgan, Idrees Sulieman and Joe Gordon.
Here’s Sabby Lewis and his Orchestra with Edna, recorded 1946
Here’s Sabby Lewis and his Orchestra with Edna, recorded 1946
He continued to lead a big band well into the 50s. In 1956, he performed in the Boston Area, and recorded with a local vocal group, the Vibra-tones. He also became a disk jockey when he went to work at WBMS in the 1950s. After his radio career ended around 1957 (WBMS was sold; it became WILD and made changes to its staff), he went back to doing what he did best—entertaining audiences.
Unfortunately,
his career was almost permanently ended in 1963, when his car was hit by a
drunk driver; the accident damaged his left hand, making playing the piano
difficult. He left the music industry
and worked for a while as a housing inspector at the Massachusetts Commission
Against Discrimination, before gradually making a return to performing in the
mid-1970s. A position from which he retired in 1984.
Lewis received a proclamation from Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis during that same year. The special music citation celebrated his work and his place in the African-American history of Boston. Lewis never made the national big-time, nor appeared to feel the
need to do so.
Till the day
he finally retired, many local jazz musicians thought of Sabby as a mentor and
an inspiration. Sabby Lewis died in July
1994. He was 79. (Compiled
mainly from Wikipedia)
2 comments:
Hi there..love your blog. Would it be possible to re-up Maria Cole's A Girl Named Maria album from 1954?
Hello Eddie, Sorry I never replied to your original request, but mainly because the link given by Don Dan was not Maria's 1954 album but her later 1960's one, which I'll post if you want it! Regards, Bob
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