• Genre: Jazz
• Active: '30s - '60s
• Instrument: Trombone

Biography

Trombonist Jack Lacey was the pitch approximator of record on more than 50 recording sessions between 1930 and 1946, showing up on some of Benny Goodman's most famous releases as well as working with outfits such as Frankie Trumbauer & His Orchestra and Jack Jenney & His Orchestra. Although fairly anonymous studio work filled his schedule during the ensuing decades, he did create one album as a leader for MGM in 1962, Trombone on the Town. He died about three years later. The trombonist came out of the Philly jazz scene, working with the orchestra of bandleader Oliver Naylor circa 1928.

Freelancing in New York City was an obvious move to make in the '30s, leading to collaborations with Talmadge Henry, Joe Reichmann, and finally Goodman in 1934. Military service during the Second World War represented the only major gap in Lacey's employment as a studio musician after leaving Goodman -- to whose band he made contributions of a distinctly controversial nature. The great singer Peggy Lee, forced to put up with a Downbeat "Blindfold Test," considered Lacey's horn playing to be the "only good thing" on Goodman's Columbia recording of "Blue Moon." The same magazine presented an opposing point of view in another review, describing the trombonist as "the only bring down in the band...I hate a quibbling trombone...Lacey never seems to get to the point...He lacks punch and from his recorded work, it would seem he lacks ideas...."

Lacey should not be confused with the disc jockey of the same name who promoted R&B and doo wop records on station WINS. The trombonist's last performances outside of the studio were in the '60s with the Merle Evans Band. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide