TONY FRUSCELLA by Gordon Jack

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Gordon Jack is a frequent contributor to the Jazz Journal and a very generous friend in allowing JazzProfiles to re-publish his insightful and discerning writings on various topics about Jazz and its makers.

Gordon is the author of Fifties Jazz Talk An Oral Retrospective and he also developed the Gerry Mulligan discography in Raymond Horricks’ book Gerry Mulligan’s Ark.

The following obituary was published in the February, 2017 edition of Jazz Journal. 

For more information and subscriptions please visit www.jazzjournal.co.uk

© -Gordon Jack/JazzJournal, copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with the author’s permission.

"Throughout his short career in the nineteen fifties Tony Fruscella remained on the fringes of the jazz scene.  He was one of a young school of New York-based trumpeters that included Jon Eardley, Don Ferrara, Don Joseph, Jerry Lloyd (aka Hurwitz), Dick Sherman and Phil Sunkel who managed to work occasionally in the city but had little exposure on recordings. Stylistically they were products of the bebop revolution but they retained much of the delicate lyricism of earlier masters like Harry Edison, Bobby Hackett and Charlie Shavers. 

Dan Morgenstern has pointed out that contrary to most source books Fruscella was born on Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village on the 14th. February 1927. Subsequently reared by nuns in a New Jersey orphanage he joined the army in 1945 playing in the 2nd. Division band. In 1947 while studying at the Hartnett Music School along with fellow students Al Haig and Phil Urso he married singer Morgana King – the marriage lasted until 1956. In 1948 he made his recording debut with a group of friends (Chick Maures, Bill Triglia, Red Mitchell and Dave Troy) on a session which was not released until 1974. His playing is remarkably mature with some of the delicate, introspection associated with Miles Davis. Chick Maures who died from an overdose in 1954 will probably be unknown to most readers (this was his only recording) but his playing is notable for some spirited Charlie Mariano-like choruses on alto. 

The following year he was invited to take part on a Lennie Tristano recording with Lee Konitz that introduced Subconscious-Lee to the repertoire. In a JJ interview (December 1996) Konitz told me, “Tony was supposed to be on the date but when he came to my room to rehearse I apparently offended him in some way with a couple of suggestions so he pulled out. I had real trouble relating to him because that whole junky mentality was always a big turn-off for me. I could never identify with it and hated that aspect of my environment.”

In the late ‘40s Fruscella was often to be found playing at sessions in Teddy Charles’s loft on the corner of 55th. Street and Broadway with Phil Woods, Jimmy Raney, Frank Isola and Brew Moore. He was also a regular at Don Jose’s on West 49th. Street where Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims, Brew Moore, Lester Young and their friends would chip in 50 cents each to hire the studio for the evening. The entrance was notable for a red door which became the title of a famous original co-written by Sims and Mulligan. Years later Dave Frishberg added a hip lyric to it which he called Zoot Walks In. On one occasion when there was not enough money to pay for the studio, Mulligan took Jimmy Ford, Brew Moore, Allen Eager, Steve Perlow and Nick Travis to Central Park to rehearse. Encouraged by his girl-friend Gail Madden, Gerry had begun experimenting with a piano-less quartet at Don Jose’s with either Tony, Don Ferrara or Don Joseph on trumpet, Phil Leshin or Peter Ind on bass and Walter Bolden or Al Levitt on drums.

Lester Young often worked with Jesse Drakes but in 1950 he hired Fruscella for two weeks, possibly for a Birdland engagement. Around 1951 Herb Geller arrived in New York from Los Angeles. He once told me that while he was waiting for his union card to work in the city which took six months, he started working illegally in the Nyack area with Fruscella, Phil Urso, Bill Triglia, Bill Crow and Ed Shaughnessy. A rehearsal he did with Tony was taped and released years later under Fruscella’s name on the Xanadu label. Gene Allen was on baritone and the tightly-voiced charts – possibly by Triglia – have a distinctively Birth of the Cool flavour. Apparently Herb was never paid for his performance.

Early in 1953 Robert Reisner and Dave Lambert started presenting bop sessions at the Open Door in Greenwich Village and Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg were occasionally in attendance. In an elegy for Tony Fruscella which appeared in a 1970 Down Beat article, Robert said he once nominated Tony as the leader. This turned out to be a disaster. “He was so permissive that he couldn’t say ‘No’ to anyone who wanted to sit-in…what began as a quartet became a cacophonous orchestra. Worried about the union and wanting to control the mayhem I started dragging guys bodily off the stage. One tenor player put the bell of his horn next to my ear and played a flurry of notes. Tony turned to me and said, ‘See man, he’s saying something’”.

Dan Morgenstern’s sleeve-note for a Fruscella-Brew Moore recording at the Open Door painted an evocative description of the club – “The Open Door was a haven for jazz people with no money. When you walked in off the street you entered a room with a long bar that had a Bowery feel to it. At one end of this bar stood an ancient upright piano, manned most evenings by Broadway Rose, a fading but spry ex-vaudevillian. She knew a thousand old songs and cheerfully honoured requests. A creaky door led to the huge, gloomy back room sporting a long bandstand, a dance floor which was never used and rickety tables and chairs.” This was where Tony Fruscella held court for most of 1953 usually assisted by Brew Moore, Phil Woods, Ronnie Singer and Bill Triglia. Often his good friend Don Joseph would join him and they would sometimes perform Bach duets during the interval. Occasionally when no other pianist was available the twenty year old Cecil Taylor was allowed to sit in. Some of the stars of the day like Charlie Parker, Monk, Mingus, Roy Haynes and Milt Jackson occasionally appeared at the club but not very often - probably because remuneration was more generous elsewhere. By 1954 the Open Door had ceased to feature jazz.

The Ertegun brothers heard Fruscella at the club and arranged for him to record for Atlantic Records. One of the titles -  I’ll Be Seeing You – is probably his most famous solo and years later Red Mitchell added a lyric to Tony’s performance which he often performed at Bradley’s in New York. In June 1954 Gerry Mulligan recruited Fruscella for his piano-less quartet as a replacement for Bob Brookmeyer. They did two weeks at Basin Street followed by a set at the Newport Jazz Festival in July which was Tony’s swan-song with the group. Stan Kenton introduced the quartet to an enthusiastic audience and a tape of them performing Bernie’s Tune, The Lady Is a Tramp and Lullaby Of The Leaves has circulated for years. Tony sounds extremely tentative and lacking in confidence and in 1994 I asked Mulligan for his observations on the trumpeter. “Newport was enough for me to realise that having Tony travelling with me and being onstage together night after night would have driven me crazy. He lived in a world of his own…it was too bad it didn’t work out because he was such a lovely player.”

Bill Crow once told me what it was like to work with Tony. “Billy Triglia loved Tony and tried to use him when the job wasn’t too heavy. In other words Billy could cover for him if he didn’t show up or was too stoned to play. We were in a club in New Jersey and one customer in particular liked the way Tony was playing so he called him over and offered to buy him a drink. Tony’s response was, ’Well man, I’m already pretty stoned and the bread’s kind of light on this gig so would you mind just giving me the money?’ The club owner overheard and was furious but that was typical of Tony”. Crow went on to say that he was so introverted that the commercial world even at its most artistic was too much for him to deal with. Having to turn up at a job on time and be there for a set number of hours was something he found difficult. Robert Reisner probably summed him up best when he said, “Tony had a dogged will to fail”.

In November 1954 he took Bob Brookmeyer’s place again, this time with the Stan Getz quintet. They performed in Buffalo, Baltimore, Boston and Birdland in New York and John Williams was the pianist with the group. He was a one-man rhythm section with stimulating left hand accents and he told me, “I loved Tony because he was one of the most gentle and loving little guys. I could sit at the old upright in my New York apartment when he would come by to play and he would absolutely kill you … his lyrical creativity was unsurpassed. His problem was that he was totally out of it all the time living in another world on the end of the flower stem quite untouched by, ‘When does the gig begin?’ or ‘Intermission is over, you’re supposed to be up there ready to go’. He always seemed to be stoned on a mixture of uppers and downers combined with alcohol which made him appear so laid back that you wondered if he was really there at all, but at his best he could play so beautifully.” 

Tony can be heard with Getz on a brief Birdland broadcast and two charming studio titles – Blue Bells and Roundup Time – recorded in January 1955. Their musical rapport is notable but apparently there was a conflict in their personal relationship which led to a fist-fight causing Tony to leave the group. A little later he began living with Stan’s ex-wife Beverly at her apartment. He was arrested there on a drugs possession charge in April 1957 and given a six months sentence. Throughout his life Tony was known as a ‘Street kid’ who apparently never owned a telephone or had a steady address, usually preferring to crash-out at a friend’s apartment.

Apart from a few hospital stays caused by his well-known personal problems nothing at all is known of his activities in the sixties. Tony Fruscella died on April 14th. 1969 at a friend’s apartment. The cause of death was cirrhosis and heart failure.”

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

Tony Fruscella – The Complete Works (4 CDs). The Jazz Factory JFCD 22808/9.

Tony Fruscella & Brew Moore Quintet – The 1954 Unissued Atlantic Session. Fresh Sound Records FSR-CD-660.