Jimmy Knepper

Eloquent and original jazz trombonist disabled by Charlie Mingus

James Minter Knepper, trombonist: born Los Angeles 22 November 1927; married (one daughter, and one son deceased); died Triadelphia, West Virginia 15 June 2003.

A gentle and likeable man who seemed to slip in and out of bands practically unnoticed, Jimmy Knepper was yet one of the most eloquent and original of jazz trombonists. His career was irrevocably modified on 12 October 1962 by a punch in the mouth from that unpredictable and often violent genius of jazz, the bass player and composer Charlie Mingus.

Mingus had been preparing for weeks for a concert of his music at New York Town Hall. Knepper had been copying scores and doing additional work on Mingus's writing. The two men were in Mingus's apartment when Knepper refused to take on more work. The punch that followed broke one of Knepper's teeth, ruined his embouchure and resulted in the permanent loss of the top octave of his range on the trombone. Mingus alleged that his mild and affable trombone player had called him a nigger.

The concert was a disaster, but Knepper wasn't there. He was at the dentist having the stump of his tooth removed. He took out a civil action against Mingus.

By January 1963 Knepper was able to play again after a fashion and was hired by Peggy Lee to back her at the Basin Street East in New York. Knepper returned home from the job one morning at six. The postman rang with a delivery that required his signature, and he answered the door in his pyjamas. As he signed two men appeared from his garden. They were treasury agents who had had been tipped off by phone about the delivery. It was a small packet that contained about five dollars' worth of heroin and Knepper was taken to the agents' headquarters. Knepper was sure that Mingus had set him up. Eventually the agents agreed with him and released him.

Mingus came to court on 6 February charged with assaulting Knepper. Some of the bassist's friends testified that he would never hurt anyone. Mingus said that Knepper had come to his apartment drunk and fallen over, injuring himself. He said again that Knepper had called him a nigger. The black judge glared at him and said "That's got nothing to do with it." Mingus was given a suspended sentence.

Knepper's trombone solos and ensemble playing had been a vital part of Mingus's bands for five or six years until then. He was a vital figure in much of the composer's best work, including the albums The Clown, Tonight at Noon, Mingus Oh Yeah, Blues and Roots, Mingus Ah Um and the unique Tijuana Moods suite of 1957. During this time he had also graced bands of similar moment led by Gil Evans, with whom he recorded in 1960 his unforgettable classic feature on Where Flamingos Fly, surely one of the most beautiful and moving performances ever recorded on the instrument.

Although his trombone playing was most intricate, full of flying triplets and unusual intervals, Knepper always made it sound easy and he became the idol of other trombonists during the Sixties and Seventies. Unlike some of the brilliant technicians of today, Knepper kept a high emotional content in his work and involved his international audiences, who responded enthusiastically.

This was the apex of Knepper's career. He first took up the alto horn when he was six years old and in military school. He played in the school's marching bands and when he left, because his mother wanted him to play in marching bands and orchestrally, changed to the trombone. He finished his music studies in Los Angeles, and joined the Freddie Slack band, recording with Slack in 1947. Bebop had arrived and the big-band era was coming to a close. The result was that Knepper's playing reflected the swing style of the trombonists Dickie Wells and Lawrence Brown and absorbed the revolutionary alto sax style of Charlie Parker. His tone on the instrument avoided the brassy and concentrated on a fleet dexterity to express his original ideas.

But his years as a soloist still lay ahead. In the late Forties and early Fifties he followed the hectic sideman's path through the tail-end of the big bands, working for Gene Roland, Charlie Spivak, Charlie Barnet and Woody Herman. He briefly formed a quintet with Dean Benedetti, a saxophonist obsessed with the work of Charlie Parker. Knepper helped Benedetti in his mission to record unofficially as many of Parker's solos as he could - their efforts survive in a much-coveted seven CD set.

Knepper joined the Claude Thornhill band in 1956 for its tour of American bases in Germany, France and North Africa. In February 1957 he made the fateful move to the Charlie Mingus group, where he replaced one of his friends, another white trombone player of similar talents, Willie Dennis.

"It's hard for a jazz musician to live a rational life," said Knepper,

unless he has an independent income or a busy maximum of work. When I was with Mingus, we didn't work very much. Most of the jobs were either recordings or concerts, and in all it only came to 10 or 15 weeks a year.

Although he had by then left Mingus for Tony Scott's group, Knepper was delighted to be named "New Star" on the trombone by Down Beat magazine in 1959 for his work with Mingus. He was sure more work would follow as a result:

I didn't work for three months, and I panicked. Then Gene Roland got me into the Stan Kenton band. We made a cross-country tour. Kenton was one of the nicest leaders I ever worked with. A real gentleman.

Knepper had to leave the band because of his wife's illness:

After I left the band immediately went into a New York studio and recorded all the things that I had soloed on.

Frequent returns to work with Mingus in New York were peppered with trips abroad. He toured in Africa with Herbie Mann in 1960 and was in the Benny Goodman band for the disastrous tour of the Soviet Union in 1962. The members of the band got on well with the Russians, but Goodman's behaviour towards his musicians made them vow never to work for him again.

Knepper worked as a member of the Gil Evans Orchestra whenever he could between 1960 and 1967, interspersing his jazz work with jobs in Broadway pit bands - he was in the band for Funny Girl on Broadway between 1964 and 1966.

This left him time to deputise on Monday nights for the trombonist Tom Mackintosh in the rehearsal band that played on Monday nights at the Village Vanguard. This eventually emerged as the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, and Knepper became a cornerstone of it from 1968 to 1974. By now much in demand, he worked and recorded with the National Jazz Ensemble, and, in Japan, with the Akiyoshi-Tabackin Band. He wrote scores for and played in the Lee Konitz Nonet from 1975 to 1981 and even braced himself to return to work for Mingus in 1977.

When Mingus died in 1979 Knepper became a key player in Mingus Dynasty, a band dedicated to playing the composer's music.

He travelled to Europe to work and record with George Gruntz's Concert Band between 1976 and 1982 and made a successful trip to Britain to play with a group including the saxophonist Bobby Wellins and the bassist Dave Green for three weeks in 1980. From the late 1980s until the early 1990s he played with the American Jazz Orchestra, recording with it with Benny Carter in 1987.

Health problems made him cut down his playing during the Nineties and Parkinson's disease ended his career.

Steve Voce