Texas-born tenor saxophonist Herschel Evans brought a thick, blues-drenched, vibrato-heavy sound to Count Basie's orchestra that became the foil to labelmate Lester Young's cooler tone — the two traded contrasting solos nightly until Evans's sudden death from heart disease in 1939 at 29. His feature "Blue and Sentimental" remains the clearest recorded portrait of a throatier, gospel-inflected style that pulled Basie's reed section, and Kansas City jazz generally, toward vocal phrasing.

the sound in question

1938

Blue and SentimentalHerschel Evans