Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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NIEHAUS, Lennie

(b 11 June 1929, St Louis MO; d 25 May 2020) Alto sax, composer. Moved to the West Coast as a child; worked with Jerry Wald '51, joined Stan Kenton; served in US Army '52-4 where he met Clint Eastwood, his swimming instuctor; they had a love of jazz in common. With Kenton again until '59. With Bud Shank and Art Pepper he was one of the most prominent in the West Coast alto sax school of the period, which seemed to combine the influence of Charlie Parker with the style of Benny Carter, but his own primary influence was Lee Konitz. He came from a musical family and had a thorough grounding in theory; he knew better than to try to be over-elaborate, but could improve on a pop tune with his melodic ideas, and he had nothing to learn about the alto saxophone, his fluency, attack and swing as good as the best. He retired to commercial work in TV and films (often worked with Eastwood), arranged for night-club acts etc; he was off the scene so long that his albums were long out of print; there were five on Contemporary '54-6 and one on EmArcy '57, all small-group sets with excellent sidemen; also Patterns on Fresh Sound. Reissues of '50s tracks on Fantasy CDs are absurdly short measure and don't do him justice; all the tracks from those years ought to be compiled in a decent set. His retirement from jazz was a great loss, but the money probably wasn't enough to live on.