Lou Levy (pianist)

Lou Levy real name was Louis A. Levy ( born March 5, 1928 in Chicago, Illinois, † January 23, 2001 in Dana Point, California ) was an American jazz musician and pianist.

Life

At twelve, who was born as the son of Jewish immigrants in Chicago Levy began to play the piano. The late forties he made as a pianist for Georgie Auld, Boyd Raeburn and the Bebop Band by Chubby Jackson, with whom he also toured Europe for the first time attention. In 1948, he joined for some time at the orchestra of Woody Herman.

Since the fifties, Levy made ​​a worldwide name for himself as a sideman of many renowned vocalists. He played with on many of the known Songbook albums by Ella Fitzgerald on the Verve label, accompanied next to Sarah Vaughan, Anita O'Day, Tony Bennett and Nancy Wilson and was nearly two decades (1955-1973) of the ordinary pianist Peggy Lee ( for example on the album Black Coffee ). Frank Sinatra, with whom he went on tour in the spring of 1987, he accompanied, among others, on the original recording of My Way (1968 ) and the associated album.

In the instrumental field Levy worked with, among others, Benny Goodman, Shorty Rogers, Shelly Manne and especially long years with Stan Getz, with his quartet he still went on tour in the eighties. The mid-1970s worked with Levy, even when shooting the band Supersax. Even through his albums under his own name, among others, with bassist Eric von Essen, Levy is one of the most distinguished jazz pianists of the 20th century.

Disco Graphical Notes

Selection of albums under his own name:

• The Lou Levy Trio ( Nocturne Records, 1954)
• Solo Scene (RCA Victor, 1956)
• Jazz In Four Colors (RCA Victor, 1956)
• Lou Levy Plays Baby Grand Jazz (Jubilee, 1958)
• The Hymn (Philips, 1963)
• The Kid 's Got Ears ( Jazzis, 1982)
• Lunacy ( Verve, 1992)
• Ya Know ( Verve, 1993)