Research Catalog

Title

Lawrence "Larry" Lucie audio collection : 299 items.

Author

Lucie, Lawrence.

Publication

[2006]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division.

Description

299 audiotape reels

Summary

The collection consists of 299 audio recordings from Lucie's personal collection of recordings.

Subject

• Borough of Manhattan Community College
• Jazzmobile, Inc
• African American guitarists
• African American musicians
• African Americans > Music
• Jazz

Genre/Form

Sound recordings.

Note

• Lawrence "Larry" Lucie (1907-2009) was a jazz guitarist and music educator. Born in Emporia, Virginia, he learned banjo, mandolin, and violin as a child. When he was a teenager, he moved to New York City, where he finished high school, and studied banjo at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. Lucie also played clarinet, but beginning with his first professional engagement with trumpeter June Clark (1931), he primarily played rhythm guitar. He occasionally performed rhythm solos, but otherwise kept a background role as a performer equally adept in multiple styles of music. Lucie first gained notice in 1932, when he substituted for Freddie Guy in the Duke Ellington Orchestra during Ellington's Cotton Club residency. This led to work with Benny Carter's band. Other bands and players with whom Lucie performed or recorded during the 1930s and 1940s included the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, Fletcher Henderson, Henry "Red" Allen, Teddy Wilson (backing Billie Holiday), Chu Berry, Pete Johnson and Jelly Roll Morton, Lucky Millinder, Coleman Hawkins, and Louis Armstrong. Lucie spent two years each with Lucky Millinder and Coleman Hawkins, and 4 years each with Louis Armstrong, Teddy Wilson, and Benny Carter. In the 1950s, Lucie performed and toured with Luis Russell, Cozy Cole, and Louie Bellson. During the 1960s, he worked as a freelance and studio musician, and occasionally led small groups. He was a member of the New York Jazz Repertory Company in the 1970s, and he toured Europe substituting for Al Casey in the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band. Through the 1980s and into the 1990s he worked with Panama Francis's Savoy Sultans, and performed as a soloist or with a duo or trio. Lucie was active as a teacher in New York City from the 1960s through the early 2000s. He worked with the Jazzmobile, Muse Jazz Workshop, and the Borough of Manhattan Community College. In addition to guitar, he taught basic music classes, African American music, and music theory. He also took private students. Lucie was often called upon to discuss his career and the many important musicians with whom he worked. In the mid-1940s, Lucie met a guitarist, bassist, vocalist, and composer named Nora Lee King (1909-1995, known professionally as Lenore or Susan King). King was working in a duo with pianist Maurine Smith at the time, and Lucie hired both of them to play with him in a group called The Lucienaires. Lucie and King were married from 1948 until King's death. They performed and recorded together, and founded the Toy Records label and Playnote publishing company for their recordings and compositions. In the 1980s and 1990s, the couple hosted a weekly New York City cable television program. Lawrence Lucie died in 2009 at the age of 101. At the time of his death, he was the sole surviving musician to have recorded with Jelly Roll Morton and to have performed with Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club.

Source (note)

• Donated by Lawrence Lucie, 2006.

Linking Entry (note)

• Forms part of the Lawrence "Larry" Lucie archive. Papers can be found in the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division: Lawrence "Larry" Lucie papers, 1927-2004. (Sc MG 764)

Call Number

Sc MIRS Lucie 2006-21

OCLC

1196087259

Author

Lucie, Lawrence.

Title

Lawrence "Larry" Lucie audio collection : 299 items.

Publisher

[2006]

Linking Entry

Forms part of the Lawrence "Larry" Lucie archive. Papers can be found in the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division: Lawrence "Larry" Lucie papers, 1927-2004. (Sc MG 764)

Source

Donated by Lawrence Lucie, 2006.

Connect to:

Request Access to Schomburg Moving Images and Recorded Sound

Added Author

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division.

Research Call Number

Sc MIRS Lucie 2006-21