Wade Legge Trio - Wade Legge Trio (2016)

"The Fresh Sound label is one of the major reissue record companies, also releasing new music on their Fresh Sound New Talent subsidiary. Fresh Sound, under the direction of the tireless Jordi Pujol, has repackaged and reissued a great deal of very valuable jazz from the 1950s and early 1960s. In addition to the major names, some of their most intriguing sets focus on obscure figures from jazz history whose music has been out-of-print for decades.

Wade Legge (1934-63) had a brief life and a briefer career but he was a fine bop-based pianist with his own chord voicings and sound. He is best-known for being Dizzy Gillespie’s pianist during 1952-54, touring Europe with the great trumpeter. Legge also made recordings with Pete Brown, Lenny Hambro, Jimmy Cleveland, Milt Jackson, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Gigi Gryce, Jackie McLean and Shafi Hadi during 1954-57 and the Lionel Hampton big band in 1959. But for unknown reasons in 1959 he retired from actively playing music and, when he passed away in 1963, Wade Legge was just 29.

Legge’s Fresh Sound release has his only sessions as a leader (12 titles with bassist Lou Hackney and drummer Al Jones from Gillespie’s quintet), a song by the same trio with singer Joe Carroll and two of the four numbers that they recorded with baritonist Lars Gullin making the group a quartet. In addition, Legge is featured on four numbers with a quartet led by vibraphonist Joe Roland and on three songs with a quintet headed by drummer Bill Bradley Jr. that also includes trumpeter Phil Sunkel and tenor-saxophonist J.R. Monterose. The swinging music, dating from 1953-55, fits securely into the hard bop scene of the era and shows that Wade Legge was an unheralded talent." -- Scott Yanow