Wardell Gray (1921-1955) was an American jazz bebop tenor saxophonist.

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His first musical job was in Isaac Goodwin's little band, a part-time outfit that played local dances. When auditioning for another job, he was heard by Dorothy Patton, a young pianist who was forming a band in the Fraternal Club up in Flint, Michigan, and she hired him. After a very happy year there, he moved to Jimmy Raschel's band (Raschel had recorded a few sides earlier in the 1930s but did not do so again) and then on to the Benny Carew band in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was at around this time that he met Jeanne Goings; together they had a daughter, Anita, who was born in January 1941.

Wardell's next move was to return to Detroit. In 1940, Stack Walton handed over leadership of the house band at the Congo Club to Johnny Allen, with Wardell taking his tenor chair. The Congo Club, in Detroit's main black entertainment area, was a popular night spot with a well-regarded band which, at one time or another, included such fine musicians as Howard McGhee and Teddy Edwards.

Just up the road from the Congo was the Three Sixes; in the chorus line was Jeri Walker, a young dancer from New Jersey. Wardell and Jeanne were splitting up, and he and Jeri were soon together. Jeri knew Earl Hines, and when the Hines band came through Detroit in late 1943, she persuaded Earl to hire Wardell - on alto, since there was no tenor vacancy at the time.

This was a big break, as the Hines orchestra was not only nationally-known, but it had also acted recently as a nursery for some of the emerging bebop musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Although most of these had left by the time Wardell joined, playing with the Hines band was still a marvellously lively and stimulating experience for the young Wardell.

He left Hines late in 1946, settling in Los Angeles; soon after arriving there, he recorded the first session under his own name. This was a quartet session for Eddie Laguna's Sunset label, and on it Wardell had strong support from Dodo Marmarosa on piano. The date produced some excellent sides, notably Easy Swing; there is a reissue of the whole session, including alternate takes (2), but a selection is available on (12).

In Los Angeles, Wardell worked in a number of bands, notably with Benny Carter and with the small group that supported Billy Eckstine on a tour of the West Coast. But the real focus in LA at this time was in the clubs along Central Avenue, which was still thriving after the boom years brought about by the huge injection of wartime defence spending. Here Wardell found his element, playing in the mainly after-hours sessions in clubs like Jack's Basket Room, the Down Beat, Lovejoy's and the Club Alabam, and his early success in these sessions led Ross Russell to include him in a studio session he was organising for his Dial label. The session was designed as a showcase for Charlie Parker, but Wardell acquitted himself superbly, showing no sign at all of being over-awed by Parker's presence.

It was in the Central Avenue clubs that Wardell held his tenor battles with Dexter Gordon. These two were ideally matched: Wardell's light sound and swift delivery were more than a match for Dexter's big, blustering sound, and their tenor jousts became a kind of symbol for the Central Avenue scene. Their fame began to spread, and Ross Russell managed to get them to simulate one of their battles on The Chase, which became Wardell's first nationally-known recording.

Apart from a spell with a little band led by Al Killian (some Jubilee recordings by this group show Wardell in fine form) Wardell was still working mainly in one-off sessions during 1947. However, at a concert around the turn of that year which also featured Benny Goodman, Wardell so impressed the clarinettist that Goodman hired him for a small group which he was just setting up as part of his flirtation with bebop. Goodman had previously been highly critical of bop playing but, speaking of Wardell to Metronome, he said that "if he's bop, that's great. He's wonderful!"

Goodman's new group included the young Swedish clarinettist Ake "Stan" Hasselgard and, initially, Teddy Wilson, and it opened at Frank Palumbo's Click Club in Philadelphia in May 1948. There is little sign of bop in the group's playing, the only noticeable influence being in some of Wardell's phrasing and in aspects of Mary Lou Williams' arrangements for the band.

The group was not, however, a financial success and Goodman eventually broke it up, but by now Wardell was fully established on the East Coast as an up and coming musician. For a while in late 1948/early 1949 he worked with the Count Basie Orchestra, whilst also managing to record with Tadd Dameron and, in excellent quartet and quintet sessions, with Al Haig. The quartet session included "Twisted", one of Wardell's best-known recordings and which was used as the basis for a best-selling vocalese version by Annie Ross.

Wardell left Basie in 1949 to return to Benny Goodman. However, life in the Goodman band became increasingly uncongenial for him. In addition, his marriage to Jeri was breaking up. Goodman was not an easy employer at the best of times and this, combined with the constant travelling, made Wardell increasingly unhappy: recordings of the band, both studio sessions and live airshots, feature work by Wardell that is below his own best standards. (That it is the Goodman surroundings that was the problem, rather than any fall-off in Wardell's ability, is shown in a session recorded with local musicians in Detroit; Wardell's work on this session is exemplary).

On leaving Goodman, Wardell rejoined Count Basie. Basie had bowed to economic pressures and broken up his big band, forming a septet which included Clark Terry and Buddy DeFranco; Wardell joined them in, probably, July 1950. This setting was a much happier one for him and the group enjoyed some success; airshots from the time show a very relaxed, swinging band with no weak links.

It was during this good time from a musical point of view, that Wardell's personal life also became happier. He was finally divorced from Jeri and was at last free to marry Dorothy and, together with Dorothy's daughter, Paula, they set up in a little house in Los Angeles.

The only drawback to working with Basie (who had by now enlarged his group again to big band size) was the constant travelling, and Wardell eventually decided to leave so that he could enjoy more home life. The decision was entirely understandable, though the Basie rhythm section was ideally suited to Wardell's brand of swing and, from a musical point of view, enthusiasts for his playing may regret his decision. And an unexpected side-effect was that, because work in the LA area was short (for black musicians, anyway) Wardell still had to travel frequently in search of jobs. Nevertheless, life at home was good, and one of the few interviews that he ever gave (to the British Melody Maker) showed that he was very happy.

At around this time his recording sessions started becoming fewer—though a live session with Dexter Gordon, recreating the excitements of Central Avenue, and a studio session with Art Farmer have fine examples of Wardell's playing.

However, there are increasing signs of a lack of engagement in Wardell's work around 1951/52, notably in a further live session with Dexter Gordon from February 1952 and it seems that he may have been becoming disillusioned with the music business. That he was still capable of playing superbly is shown by his work on a live jam session at the Haig Club, but such sessions were by now very sparse, and more typical work from this period was recorded on a session with Teddy Charles.

Also at around this time, he seems, tragically, to have become involved in the drug scene. How this could have happened, given his maturity and his understanding of the consequences, is still a mystery; nevertheless, friends reported that it was beginning to take its toll. His playing was now less fluent, and a studio session in January 1955, which was to be his last, shows strong but (by his own standards) rather unsubtle playing.

He was still working regularly, though, and when Benny Carter was engaged in May 1955 to provide the band at the opening the Moulin Rouge, a new club in the black entertainment area of Las Vegas, he called on Wardell. He attended rehearsals but, when the club opened on 25 May, Wardell was unaccountably absent. Then the next day he was found, with his neck broken, on a stretch of desert on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Wardell Gray was dead.

There was what, by most accounts, was a fairly cursory examination of the circumstances; the verdict was accidental death. Many rumours surfaced at the time and later, each one more implausible than the last, but even now, no truly convincing explanation for Wardell's death has yet been advanced.

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