486 Jimmy Forrest (1920-1980) and the All Star Combo “Night Train” 1952

“In March 1952, the tenor saxophonist Jimmy Forrest, a thirty-two-year-old son of St. Louis, broke the R&B charts wide open with a brooding, tough-rhythmed evocation called ‘Night Train.’ Duke Ellington had written and recorded a song called ‘Happy-Go-Lucky Local’ in 1946. Forrest had played in Duke Ellington’s orchestra in 1949 and 1950, and he had stolen ‘Night Train’ directly from the Ellington composition…How fine and fitting it was that this act of inspired robbery should become the favorite record of Sonny Liston, who at the time was in the joint for a lower form of robbery. It was the record that he would play, again and again, at every workout, until it echoed within him, the soundtrack of blow and heartbeat, until the end” (Nick Tosches, The Devil and Sonny Liston, 2000). 

Jimmy Forrest “Night Train”