Lux Lewis—”Melancholy” & “Solitude” (1939)

Eighty years ago, Alfred Lion, Francis Wolff and Max Margulis founded a new record label called Blue Note records. The first record, labeled BN-1 contained two blues compositions by Meade “Lux” Lewis: “Melancholy” and “Solitude,” which were both recorded in New York on January 6, 1939.

Kentucky-born jazz pianist/composer Anderson Meade Lewis (1905-1964) was the son of a guitarist who arranged for him to have violin lessons. As a youngster Meade imitated characters from a popular comic strip and because of this his friends began to call him Duke of Luxemburg. The nickname “Lux” stuck with him.

When Meade “Lux” was 16 years old he gave up the violin and switched to the piano. He couldn’t read music, and learned to play by following the plinking of a player piano. Meade “Lux” Lewis’ original influence was Jimmy Yancey, a Chicago blues pianist. As a tribute to his idol Lewis would later compose “Yancey Special.”

Meade “Lux” Lewis -- who believed in letting the right hand know what the left was doing, and giving them both plenty to do -- once said a bit scornfully of “progressive jazz” players, “Their right hand is raisin’ hell but the left hand is doin’ nothin'.” Over the years the bulky, jovial Lewis had developed and refined the basic simplicity of his barrelhouse piano playing style, making it a complex and expressive kind of jazz.