Bobby Hackett With Vic Dickenson: Live at the Roosevelt Grill

If I have to pick one trombone player whose playing embodies both the tradition and a rare timelessness that would be Victor Dickenson (1906-84).

Celebrating that artful master of melancholic humour, here is a tape worth listening to from the David W. Niven collection. Recorded live in 1970, Bobby Hackett Quintet, featuring Vic Dickenson, plays one of its regular nights at the Roosevelt Grill, located inside The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City.

The place was opened in 1924 and later became synonymous with Guy Lombardo whose orchestra performed there for nearly three decades. It was only a year before Roosevelt Grill was used as one of the locations for the copper movie The French Connection that jazz critic Whitney Balliett caught up with Hackett and Dickenson one late evening:

"My head full of cute muted trumpets and toy-soldier rhythms [of Sy Oliver band], I went over to the Roosevelt Grill for the final moments of Bobby Hackett's quintet, which will soon be dissolved when Dickenson replaces Kai Winding in the World's Greatest Jazz Band and the rare Benny Morton replaces Dickenson in Hackett's group. Hackett and Dickenson together are Jack Sprats of jazz. Hackett is cool, golden and mathematical, and Dickenson is hot, shaggy, and funny, and between them they encompass most of what is worth knowing about jazz."

Vic Dickenson

A similar evening at Roosevelt Grill documented here on tape, features Dave McKenna on piano, Jack Lesberg on bass, and Cliff Leeman on drums.

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