Jazz Articles about Doug Lawrence

Doug Lawrence: Doug Lawrence & Friends

by Jack Bowers
December 11, 2021

If the name Doug Lawrence doesn't sound familiar, the name Count Basie surely should. What is the Lawrence- Basie connection? Well, for more than two decades Lawrence has been the featured tenor saxophone soloist with the renowned and still- active Count Basie Orchestra, a chair once impressively occupied by the likes of Lester Young, Eddie “Lockjaw" Davis, Lucky Thompson, Wardell Gray and Frank Foster, among others. When someone has been around as long as Lawrence, he or she makes a ...

Doug Lawrence & His Orchestra: Big Band Swing

by Jack Bowers
July 25, 2006

When one is employed as a sideman with the Count Basie Orchestra, as tenor saxophonist Doug Lawrence has been for several years, he learns a thing or two about Big Band Swing. Lawrence has also worked for Benny Goodman, Buck Clayton, Grover Mitchell, Frank Wess, Loren Schoenberg, Tony Corbiscello and the Smithsonian, DMP and Manhattan and Chicago Jazz Orchestras, among others. He has put those lessons to good use on this impressive new release by not one but two of ...

Doug Lawrence: Streetwise

by C. Michael Bailey
February 13, 2003

There is always more room for a good tenor-guitar-organ combo. Tenor saxophonist Doug Lawrence leads such a combo for his Alltribe debut. A native of Lake Charles, Louisiana, Lawrence has been performing since childhood. He currently leads the Doug Lawrence Orchestra and has recorded widely as a sideman and as a leader. For Streetwise, organist Dan Trudell, guitarist Ray Macchiarola, and drummer George Fludas join Lawrence for the festivities. Together, they pump out a liqueur-cool brand of organ-tenor jazz that ...

Doug Lawrence: High Heel Sneakers

by Douglas Payne
February 1, 1999

There's a joyful spirit to the playing of Texas tenor Doug Lawrence (b. 1956). His energy and bright ideas are contagious. And if High Heel Sneakers, his second Fable Records release following last year's successful Soul Carnival , is any indication, his music is too. Lawrence, on the scene for two decades and only now getting heard outside of Loren Schoenberg's big band and the New York City scene, is a craftsman of the first order. He has ...

Doug Lawrence: Soul Carnival

by Joel Roberts
August 1, 1998

Tenor saxophonist Lawrence has traveled an interesting road to his debut release as a leader. He was about to join Elvis Presley's backup band in Las Vegas in 1977 when the King died. He ended up joining the jazz band at West Point instead. He then served a long apprenticeship with, among others, the Count Basie Orchestra, the Loren Schoenberg Big Band, Buck Clayton, and the DMP All Stars.

On Soul Carnival, Lawrence's years learning the trade as a sideman ...