Bill Crow

- © Steven A. Cerra, introduction copyright protected, all rights reserved.
In terms of my exposure to the World of Jazz, I first “met” Bill Crow as the bassist with the “original” Gerry Mulligan Quartet. That’s because, the first time I ever heard the Gerry Mulligan Quartet was in 1959 when Bill played in the New York based version of the group that also included Art Farmer on trumpet and Dave Bailey on drums.

The occasion for the first listening was the What is There to Say? LP [CL 130; CK 52978] that Columbia graciously delivered to my door for a small charge courtesy of my membership in the Columbia Record Club.

With its mixture of standards such as the title tune, Just in Time and My Funny Valentine and intriguing originals like As Catch Can, Festive Minor, Blueport and News from Blueport [composed by Bill], the recording instantly became one of my favorite albums and it has remained so to this day.
And while my Jazz awareness developed to the point that I eventually worked my way back to the original, “original” quartet that Gerry formed in 1952 while working in Los Angeles with Chet Baker, bassist Carson Smith and drummer Chico Hamilton [I liked Larry Bunker better in the drum chair], I never lost my preference for the Farmer-Crow-Bailey edition of Gerry’s group.

Since that first “meeting,” it seems that Bill Crow has always been a part of my Jazz life and I’m happy to say that he still is through a collective correspondence via an internet group in which we both participate.

The music has been good to him and he has been good for the music as in addition to making it, he has also written about it and was for many years involved in its professional activities through his association with Musicians Union Local 802 in New York.

Bill’s bass lines are thoughtfully constructed with notes that always seem to be the best ones from a particular chord sequence. When Bill’s playing, you never have to “look for” the time; it’s firmly there. His notes sustain just enough to give the beat a nice bounce and he artfully varies them to help stimulate the soloists and keep the music flowing.

I think that Bill’s long association with Gerry Mulligan, especially Mulligan as composer – arranger, helped him to develop a very sophisticated harmonic knowledge. He has incredible ears so he knows exactly where the soloist is going and then he can guide him from there. Bill knows what the function of the bass is - he can play the bottom….he can walk…..he can do it all.

Any drummer would love to work with him as Bill gives a rhythm section an instant cohesion. My favorite drummer on the planet – Joe Morello – certainly thought so during his long working relationship with Bill as part of the Marian McPartland trio while at the Hickory House in New York during the mid-1950s.

And yet, Bill was not an instant phenomena on the instrument like a Jimmy Blanton or a Scott LaFaro. His was more a studied, dogged application built on years of trial and error – he literally made himself into one of the premier bassists in Jazz, albeit an underappreciated and unacknowledged one.

His story is more reminiscent of pianist Bill Evans’ assessment:

“I always like people who have developed long and hard, especially through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think what they arrive at is usually … deeper and more beautiful … than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning…. And yes, ultimately it turned out that these people weren’t able to carry their thing very far. I found myself being more attracted to artists who have developed through the years to become better and deeper musicians.”
Bill Crow’s well-developed sense of humor is another of his wonderful qualities. It is an attribute he shares whenever he can in his stories, comments and writings about Jazz musicians – who, as a group, are very funny people.

One of my most cherished possessions is a faded, dog-eared copy of his Jazz Anecdotes which, in its review of the book, The Library Journal cautions should be “Read … somewhere where you are not afraid to be seen laughing out loud.” The humorous Clark Terry story which Bill recounts on pages 327-328 about a bird named Chet who sings Christmas carols has saved me untold dollars in unspent trips to a mental health therapist.

Bill has the ability to explain complicated and arcane aspects of Jazz in layman’s terms. I have always found him to be a helpful teacher about what goes into making Jazz.

For example, did you ever wonder what made trumpeters Nick Travis and Bernie Glow such in demand lead players in the New York Studios, or what baritone saxophonist Gene Allen’s great skill was that made him so welcomed by his sax section mates, or what the relationship was between “good riff makers” and “inside lines” in the Mulligan Concert Jazz Band? Read Bill’s cogent explanations of these aspects of Jazz in the following interview and then you’ll know.

Bill always helps me to remember another quality about Jazz, either playing it or talking about it and that is – Jazz is fun – enjoy it and don’t take it too seriously.

Phil Woods has labeled Bill Crow “Jazz’s Boswell,” a just and deserved appellation as Bill's writings about Jazz and its makers have served to enrich our appreciation of Jazz and to document many important aspects of it as an art form.

However, when one finds a Samuel Johnson to serve as a diarist to a James Boswell, as is the case in following interview that Bill gave to Gordon Jack in his Fifties Jazz Talk: An Oral Retrospective [Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2004, pp. 61-73; paragraphing modified] this, too, needs to be shared as its nice to return the compliment for all of Bill’s contributions to Jazz.


Bill has a website - http://www.billcrowbass.com/ - which is currently offering his two CDs on Venus.

“Bill Crow was born on December 2 7, 1927, in Othello, Washington. His autobiography From Birdland to Broadway is a fascinating account of the life of a jazz musician, and when we met at the Local 802 AFM office on West 48th Street, New York, in 1995, it was soon clear that he has an apparently inexhaustible fund of stories about the jazz world. We talked mostly about his time playing bass with Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan, but I began by asking him if he knew a lady named Gail Madden, who had been a pianist and a model in California before becoming active in New York jazz circles in the early fifties. She appeared on Mulligan's first album as a leader in September 1951, playing maracas on some numbers, and Gerry has credited her with suggesting the idea of a piano-less rhythm section to him before they left New York for California later that year I When they arrived in Los Angeles, it was thanks to Gail and her previous relationship with Bob Graettinger that Mulligan was introduced to Stan Kenton, who very soon bought some of Gerry's arrangements. She also suggested hiring Chico Hamilton for Mulligan's first quartet, so Gail Madden was clearly a significant, if unseen, influence on his early career.
I met Gail before I knew Gerry very well, thanks to a drummer friend of mine by the name of Buzzy Bridgford. He introduced us at an apartment in Greenwich Village owned by a lady named Margo, who was apparently a $100 a night hooker and was bankrolling Gail, who wanted to be a therapist and save all the junky jazz musicians in New York. Charlie Parker had agreed to go along with all this and was first on her list. Gail's plan was that, with Margo's money, she would buy a brownstone and start a clinic and all the guys would come and live there so she could straighten them out and get them off junk. Buzzy, who knew all the inside jazz gossip, claimed that Joe Albany, Serge Chaloff, J. J. Johnson, Stan Levey, and Gerry were also going to be involved, but unfortunately for Gail, she had an argument with Margo over money and the whole idea collapsed.

Soon after, she and Gerry became a "couple," so we figured that if she couldn't save everyone on her list, she would concentrate on him. She started turning up on his gigs out at Queens, playing maracas, and I remember her being there when Gerry was rehearsing a band in Central Park on the shore of the 72nd Street lake [Gerry couldn't afford a rehearsal studio].

Around that time they both disappeared from the New York scene, and the next thing we heard was that they were on the road, hitching to California, and we all laughed because that was exactly the sort of wild thing they would do. They made it, all right, and then those wonderful records that Gerry made with Chet Baker started coming out. I was with Stan Getz by then, and Johnny Mandel, who played trombone with us, transcribed some of Gerry's tunes, like "Walkin' Shoes" and "Line for Lyons," because Stan was so keen on the Mulligan quartet sound.
Looking back, I don't think there was any rivalry between Stan and Gerry, because they were both in a "star" position in the jazz world. Getz of course was more difficult than Gerry, and he was devious, which Gerry never was. Stan really was the "golden boy" who never had to make concessions to the commercial world, playing whatever he wanted in the clubs and recording anything he wanted in the studio. He was also a very good-looking guy, and I remember when I met him with his first wife Beverly, who was Buddy Stewart's younger sister, they looked like the beautiful young couple on a wedding cake.

He never really did anything bad to me but he took advantage of my good nature as much as he could, although I was so thrilled to be playing with him that I didn't mind at all. I saw him do dumb, ugly things to other people who were his close friends, and I am sure that fooling around with junk exposed an unpleasant underlay in his personality that he managed to cover up most of the time.

I'll give you an example concerning the trumpeter Dick Sherman, and I can tell this story now that he and Stan are gone. Jimmy Raney had left the quintet after Stan had shown up high on a couple of jobs, so Stan hired Dick to come and play with us at Birdland. Dick had been with me on the Thornhill band, and he was a wonderful player, but he was a junky, and everyone knew, including Stan, that he was trying to get clean and break his habit.

Anyway, he came down to the club with us and played great all night, and at the end of the gig, Stan paid him off with a little bag of heroin. Duke Jordan and Kenny Clarke, who were in the group, and indeed everyone who knew Stan, had reservations about him as a result of that kind of behavior, because he really knew how to wound people. Everyone loved his fantastic musicianship and sunny disposition when sober, but the other side to his nature had come out too many times. I don't know what went on between him and Clark Terry because Clark would never say anything bad about anybody, but there were two names you could say to him that would ruin his day: one was Cat Anderson and the other was Stan Getz.
I'll tell you a funny story about Stan and Al Cohn, who was very fast and had a wonderful sense of humor. Al was with a crowd in Jim and Andy's, our musicians' bar, and somebody was telling us about the record Stan had just made with Joao and Astrud Gilberto. Joao had been hired for the date because he was in town and he was "hot," and Astrud was with him as his interpreter. When they found out there were English lyrics to "The Girl from lpanema" and that Astrud could sing a little bit, they thought it would be cute to have her sing a chorus in English.

On the recording, Joao sang in Portuguese, followed by Astrud and Stan, but it was too long for a disc-jockey copy, so they cut out Joao's chorus. Apparently Stan telephoned the A and R man the next morning, who thought he wanted to make some sort of a deal for Astrud, who wasn't in on the royalties, but no, Stan was calling to make sure that everything stayed the same. He didn't want her to get any money out of his hit. When Al Cohn heard this, he just leaned back against the bar and with a big grin said, "Well, I'm glad to see that success hasn't changed Stanley!"

Tony Fruscella played with both Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan for a short while in the fifties, but he didn't stay with anybody very long because he was so introverted that the commercial world, even at its most artistic, was too much for him to deal with. Having to show up at a job on time and be there for a set number of hours was something he found difficult. Red Mitchell was very friendly with him, and he used to say that he could see the poetry in Tony's playing. In the last few years before Red died, he would bring one of Tony's tapes with him if he was booked somewhere like Bradleys. He'd added lyrics to one of Tony's solos, and he would play along with it. He used to tell audiences that too few people knew him because he hadn't been -recorded enough.
Pianist Billy Triglia loved Tony and tried to use him on gigs 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. Charlie Barnet once fired him because he couldn't hear him, although I don't know why he took the job, because he didn't like to play with big bands. If he couldn't be where he could play softly, he would just forget about it.

I sometimes saw Tony or Don Joseph playing with Brew Moore at the Open Door on West 3rd Street. Now Don had worked with Jerry Wald and a lot of other bands, and he was the same kind of poetic artist that Tony was, but he was very funny, with a wild sense of humor, whereas Tony was much more turned in on himself and tended to get depressed.

Don was supposed to be in the sextet that Gerry Mulligan formed in 1955, because they were old friends from "the street," you know, scuffling around outside Charlie's Tavern or Hansen's drugstore like so many of the guys in the late forties did. All the young musicians would stand on the sidewalk talking in front of Charlie's when they didn't have enough money to buy anything if they went inside. They would be looking for some action, like word of a jam session or a job, because Charlie's had become a sort of clubroom established by musicians from the road bands. Hansen's was the turf of variety actors, comedians, straight men, and hoofers, but it was close to Charlie's, and we knew a lot of nightclub and theater comics because we worked in the same joints-that is when we worked at all.

"The" alto player among the young 11th street" guys was Dave Schildkraut. Of course we knew Lee Konitz from his records, but he didn't hang around with us outside Charlie's, because the Tristano group moved in a separate world. I don't know what happened to Dave, but three or four years ago, Eddie Bert, who is famous for digging people out of the woodwork, arranged for him to come out and play with us. Davey sounded wonderful, but he is very spooky about seeing flying saucers all the time, and maybe he does, but he seems to see them more than anyone I have ever met. He used to live out at Brooklyn, but I have lost track of him.'

Getting back to the sextet, for some reason Don Joseph didn't show, so Gerry hired ldrees Sullieman, who knew Peck Morrison. Peck knew Dave Bailey, and I think that is how they all joined the band. Eventually ldrees and Peck had other fish to fry, so Gerry called me, and although I was happy with Marian McPartland's group, I couldn't pass up the opportunity of playing with him along with Bob and Zoot. I had played with Bob Brookmeyer when I was with Stan Getz, and he probably recommended me, since Gerry was looking for a rhythm section who were willing to take the role of accompanists; he didn't want fancy solo players. By now, Jon Eardley was with us and he was always complaining that he didn't get enough solos. Gerry used to say, "I understand how you feel but there isn't very much I can do about it. Being my band and wanting to play, I am going to solo a lot and I have Zoot and Bobby, who are two of my favorite soloists that I love to listen to, but I will give you as much of what is left as possible."

Jon was a wonderful player, but at that time he was messing around with junk, which didn't sit too well with Bobby, who thought he embarrassed us on our first European tour in 1956. We went over to Europe on the Andrea Doria, and we were very excited about seeing all these wonderful places and people, but Jon was in a terrible state. Most of the time, he hardly had his eyes open, and he would be sleeping by the window on the train, but Gerry understood, as long as he got himself together to make the job. We ran into places where we followed Chet Baker, whose group was leaving a trail of bad junky vibes around Europe.
As a result, we were not welcome in some hotels and we were searched quite seriously on the trains. Of course, the authorities nearly always picked on Dave Bailey to be the one they searched, and he is the straightest guy you can imagine, and always has been. When Jon finally got his act together and moved to Europe permanently, he was a brilliant player for many years. I recorded with him the last time he was in New York with Eddie Bert, Benny Aronov, and Mel Lewis, but Loren Schoenberg hasn't been able to sell the album yet.

After he broke up the sextet, Dave Bailey and I stayed with Mulligan when he reformed the quartet in 1958 with Art Farmer. I remember Gerry had a lot of unanswered mail from fans that nobody seemed to be bothering with, so for the next year until he disbanded again, I answered the letters and became the unofficial spokesman for the group.

For our debut album he asked us all to contribute something, so I wrote "News from Blueport." We rehearsed in the studio on the day of the recording, and I had to change it a little because I had written a continuous line without rests, which was very hard for Art to articulate. He asked if I would mind making some alterations, which of course I didn't. I think that by removing some of the notes we improved the line. I know that Gerry liked the tune because, when he had the big band, he was always saying he wanted someone to do a chart on it. We did a European tour with that group in 1959, and when Art and Gerry went back to the States, Dave Bailey and I stayed in Milan to record with Lars Gullin and George Gruntz on piano. The date came off very nicely and we were all paid, but for some reason the record never came out. I hadn't played with Lars before, but I liked his playing very much. I heard a little of Gerry in him and also a little of Serge Chaloff.
Bass solos in Gerry's piano-less groups could sometimes be a problem because the instrument was un-amplified in those days and, in some of the rooms, the resonance of the bass didn't cut through as well as it might. It isn't that Gerry's accompaniment was more assertive than a pianist's would have been, but the timbre of the baritone was so close to the bass that it was sometimes hard for him to stay under my sound.

It really depended on the club we were in, and occasionally he would just drop out because he couldn't play softly enough to keep from covering me up. In other locations he would be free to play anything he wanted behind me and I could still hear what I was doing. All the time I was with Gerry, I didn't consider myself much of a soloist, bearing in mind the exquisite company I was keeping, with people like Brookmeyer, Willie Dennis, Art Farmer, Gerry, Jim Hall, Thad Jones, Zoot, Clark Terry, Gene Quill, etc., etc. When he gave me a solo, I felt as though I was out on the edge, and I didn't have sense enough to play within my capabilities. I was always going for it, and Gerry would hear the beginning of what I was trying to do and, if I missed a note, he would be able to finish my solo for me or complete it as an accompanist by playing a harmony line to what I should have played!

Once in a while, though, I could hear myself as clear as a bell, and I remember playing at a high school gymnasium in Oakland, California, where my solos were so coherent that Gerry and Bob were looking at me-like, where did you come from? It was terrific training because, until I joined Gerry, I never felt there was any restriction on what I did in a solo. Any note that sounded good to me was fair game. But without the piano, Gerry played his harmonies off my bass line, and sometimes he would say, "What are you doing playing my note?" I would ask how it became his note, and then I realized he was thinking structurally, as an arranger, expecting me to stay around roots, thirds, and fifths.
If I was on a root, he would try to be on a tenth, and being a third an octave higher, he would imply all the notes of the chord in between. If I was playing around the sevenths and ninths, he would expect me to use those notes as passing tones, which meant I had to really start thinking about my solos in a different way that related to him. I would hear what he was doing in his backgrounds and try to turn my bass line in that same direction so that we could be together. It became an interesting game. and if you listen to the records, you can hear both of us listening carefully to each other when we solo. Of course, Gerry heard music from the point of view of a composer and arranger and improvised that way too, so that his solos sounded as though they could have been written.
I came into Gerry's Concert Jazz Band after they completed their European tour in 1960. Some of the West Coast people, like Conte Candoli and Buddy Clark, wanted to go home, so he hired Clark Terry and me to join what was already a very well-broken-in band at the Village Vanguard.

Bill Holman had already created a book from the old quartet and sextet arrangements, and all the other New York writers were very excited about the band. Gerry didn't write much original material, but Bobby and Al Cohn were contributing a lot, and Wayne Shorter wrote a chart called "Mama G," which was the one arrangement that wasn't in the style of the band.

When Gary McFarland first started writing for us, he sounded very Dukish, but Gerry edited his work so that it sounded more like our band, and I remember Gary saying, "Oh, I see what you want." Johnny Mandel also expanded the music he had written for the film I Want to Live, and it was great to play.
The esprit de corps of the band was so good because it really looked as though it was going somewhere. Gerry had some kind of understanding with Norman Granz where Norman would pick up the losses in the States if he, Norman, could have the recordings and European tours where he could make some money, and with that arrangement, we had a steady job. During that first week at the Vanguard, I couldn't believe how good the band sounded. During intermissions, we would jump off the stand and go in the kitchen to talk about the band until it was time to play again.
When Gerry first put the CJB together, I think he talked to everybody and said, "I have some money from the movies I made," but to get the band started, we have to keep the overhead down as much as possible, so tell me what you can accept as your lowest figure." He paid the guys with families a little more, and speaking personally, I never had any problems with Gerry about money. He was always wonderfully fair, and in fact he used to give me raises without my asking for them.

What was so good about Gerry's band was having someone in each section who was a good riff-maker: Gerry in the saxes, Bobby in the trombones, and Clark in the trumpets. Also, because he didn't want to lose the inside parts, we never got too loud. We tried to keep our dynamic level from very soft to medium loud, rather than medium soft to very loud. He said you achieved the same dynamic effect when you changed volumes like that, and if you didn't get too loud, you saved everyone's chops, and Mel Lewis was the perfect drummer for a band like that.
On a job, if we were playing something that was not a structured ballad, we would begin with some kind of written figure for a chorus or two, and then we would start with the solos. If someone was playing well, we would never go to the next written section until we had the cue from Gerry, because he would start improvising backgrounds behind the solo, like he did with the quartet. If the background was simple enough and had a repeat, by the second time around the rest of the saxes would be playing in unison or harmonizing with Gerry; then Brookmeyer or Terry would think of a counter-line, and the brass section would join that. The band might play behind a soloist for five or six choruses of improvised riffs and it would really get going, and only when it reached a certain level would Gerry give the signal to go into the next written section. For instance, that live version of "Blueport" from the Village Vanguard album was so long that Gerry didn't think he could put it on a record, so he took a big hunk out of it. Those fours and eights between Gerry and Clark went on forever, so he took out some of those, and there were other solos he removed when he found a spot where he could make an undetectable edit.

Gene Allen was the baritone player in Gerry's band, and he was one of the pool of saxophone players, like Phil Woods, Gene Quill, Danny Bank, and Sol Schlinger, who did a lot of studio recordings in those days. He was a wonderful player who didn't get a big reputation outside of the musicians' world because he didn't have a strong ego, but his great skill was in blending with the rest of the section, who loved his playing because he made them feel so comfortable. He seemed to vanish off the scene when Gerry's band broke up, and I don't know what became of him, but a friend saw him on the Upper West Side a couple of years ago and apparently he isn't playing anymore.

Gene Quill was our lead alto and clarinet player, and I had first met him on the Claude Thornhill band in 1953. He was a tough little Irishman who loved to drink and was always daring fate, but he was an excellent player, with a raucous approach to the alto. He had all of Bird's stuff down, except that belligerence was something that Bird never had. Bird was a Pasha of complete confidence, whereas Gene was a little street fighter. He played the lead clarinet book with Thornhill really well, and the part was written down in the section, not an octave higher like Glenn Miller. Occasionally he would get impatient with Claude if he thought we were playing too many dance tunes-"the go-to-sleep medleys." One night, instead of playing the dance medley on clarinet, he stood on his chair and played lead on alto as wild and loud as he could. Then, before he sat down, he turned round and gave Claude the finger! Claude just laughed, because he loved weirdness and he thought that was really funny.
After that I didn't work with Gene for a few years, although we would sometimes run into each other in Charley's Tavern or Junior's. Then I joined Gerry, and there was Gene again. Bobby Donovan was the second alto on the band, and he idolized Gene, trying to be exactly like him, including the self-destructive parts, and as a result ended up destroying himself with booze. Bobby was a good player, although not the stellar player that Gene was, but with a better role model he might have survived.

Gene got on all right with Gerry, but once in a while he would have to calm Brookmeyer down, who used to get indignant when Gene didn't straighten up. Brookmeyer was a big drinker too, but he had a hollow leg. He could drink all day and you would hardly notice it because it didn't seem to be a problem. A lot of the older guys were like that. For instance, Charlie Shavers used to be drunk all the time but still played brilliantly. Our other trombone soloist was Willie Dennis, and we had met around town on a few record dates. I really got to know him on Gerry's band, and he was the perfect contrast to Bob Brookmeyer.

Nick Travis was our lead trumpeter, and he was also a very busy studio player. In New York at that time there was a large group of trumpeters like Bernie Glow. Joe Ferrante, Ernie Royal, Snooky Young, and Nick who knew how to phrase with whoever was on lead so that the section took on the character of that player's conception. For instance, Bernie Glow was a brilliant lead player who had distilled all the best standard phrasing from the Count Basie and Woody Herman bands, and he was very clear about reproducing those qualities. He knew how to telegraph his intentions to the rest of the section so that it sounded as though they had played together all year, even though they may have shaken hands on the stand that day and just seen the music for the first time.

Eventually Norman Granz sold Verve, and he and Gerry had some kind of disagreement. Faced with a summer with only one booking, Gerry couldn't afford to keep the band together, so he disbanded and went back to the quartet, and of course Judy Holliday was ill, but we were not aware of that until later. We worked with the small group unless he could get a couple of weeks in Birdland, when he would reform the CJB and usually do a recording date when it was broken-in again. After we realized that the band was only going to be a -sometime" thing, people started sending in deps when they had a conflict. Al Derisi came in for Nick Travis and Don Ferrara. If Clark Terry couldn't make it, he would send in Thad Jones, and Phil Woods used to sub for Gene Quill. Gerry didn't want to stay on the road all the time anyway, because he needed some personal life, and not having a manager who was out there drumming up business, there were a lot of holes in the schedule. Whenever there were two or three weeks free, Brookmeyer would grab Clark Terry, and they would do their thing at the Half Note with Dave Bailey, Hank Jones, and me. Hank was so busy, he nearly always sent a sub, and after three or four very good players, Roger Kellaway became our steady pianist, and he was wonderful.
Early in 1962 Gerry got some more work, and because Mel Lewis and Dave Bailey were busy, he was looking for a drummer. When he asked me who we should get, I suggested Gus Johnson, who had been one of my favorites ever since he'd sat in with the Terry Gibbs quartet at Birdland in 1954. There were a lot of good players around, but I knew Gus would be great, and I also knew he wasn't playing much, because he had been working as a bank guard.

Bob Brookmeyer has already placed on record that he was drinking heavily at that time, and for a while Gerry tried to keep up with him. He wasn't a good drinker, though, and there were periods on the road when he wasn't happy, because he was drinking too much and feeling lousy, but he wouldn't admit what the problem was. He preferred to blame the lack of support from the rest of the group, or club owners, or his reed -anything but the liquor. He did get over it, and whenever I talked to him over the years, he sounded very happy, and he was playing wonderfully -better than ever.
Dave Bailey seemed to drop out of the jazz scene at about the same time that Gerry finally broke up the quartet in 1965. He had been traveling first class with Mulligan, who had been his main connection to the jazz world, so I don't think he wanted to go back to playing those funky little clubs again. I had already left Gerry, after a disagreement that had nothing to do with music, and had come back to New York, where Kai Winding hired me to work at the Playboy Club. I played there with Walter Norris for the next five years, and whenever Bobby and Clark had a gig at the Half Note, I would take time out to play with them, and usually Dave would be the drummer. Eventually, when he got his flying license back, he started working for F. Lee Bailey, who liked the idea of having "Bailey and Bailey" at the controls of his Lear Jet. Dave became so busy he just stopped playing, and if someone asked him he would say, "I haven't played for so long, I don't want to come out and make a fool of myself."

Billy Taylor persuaded him to become a director of Jazzmobile, and Dave has been so successful that they now have their own building up in Harlem." He has recently had open-heart surgery and is feeling better than ever, but he still won't play the drums. We tried to get him to the Oslo Festival a couple of years ago for a reunion of the Brookmeyer/Terry group, but he wouldn't do it, so we used Ben Riley. Al Grey replaced Brookmeyer, who had a writing commission that was approaching a deadline, and at the last minute Roger Kellaway had appendicitis. Norman Simmons played piano, leaving Clark and me as the only ones from the original group.

We concluded the interview when I asked Bill about that wonderfully evocative photograph on the cover of his book From Birdland to Broadway. It looks as though he is going home at sunrise after a long night's playing.

It was taken in the late fifties by Dennis Stock in connection with a book entitled Jazz Street. Nat Hentoff made the arrangements and asked if I would mind being photographed walking across Times Square with my bass. Just after dawn on a Sunday, I walked across the street a few times so Dennis could get his shot. I didn't even have a wheel for it in those days, so I carried it on my back, but it came out very nicely. I suppose that story might destroy the romance of the picture, but it does show what often happened-just like Joe Rosenthal's photo of the planting of the flag on Iwo Jima in World War II. The GI's did plant it, but he had them do it again so he could get his picture."

Pete Christlieb

The Jazz Profiles editorial staff will follow the holiday hiatus with an additional respite due to certain familial caretaking requirements and to conduct extensive research into its next original piece.

In the interim, it will turn to other Jazz writings and bring forth two or three interviews that Jazz Profiles readers may find of interest.

One of the great benefits of residing in Southern California has been the opportunity to listen to Pete Christlieb perform on many occasions in a variety of Jazz settings.

He is a tower of power on the instrument and plays it with great command, singularity and inventiveness. A few notes and you know its Pete. The kind of original voice all Jazz players strive to achieve seems to flow effortlessly from the bell of his horn.

While playing in a big band, all of his sax section mates pay him the ultimate compliment of looking up at him when he stands to solo and nodding their heads in approval at his creations.

When soloing in a small group, you hate to be the one taking your solo after his. He is such a forceful and singular improviser whether he’s devastating the changes to Cherokee or enhancing the melodic beauty and lyrical poignancy of If You Could See Me Now.

Sadly, although he’s played with the big bands of Woody Herman, Louis Bellson and Bill Holman, as well as, being a fixture for two decades on Doc Severinson’s “Tonight Show” Band, he has never had a recording contract with a major label.

Not surprisingly for someone who is such a dominant and overriding soloist, Pete holds strong opinions and views about Jazz music and Jazz makers. He has also had a variety of mentors whom he recalls fondly including, Russ Cheaver of the Hollywood Saxophone Quartet, Bob Cooper whose place he took with the Lighthouse All-Stars, and indirectly, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, who had a great influence on Pete’s style, and Warne Marsh, with whom Pete recorded three wonderful albums.

His time on all of these major bands, his influences, opinions and gigs with everyone from Chet Baker to Frank Rosolino are all recounted in the following interview as given to Gordon Jack, Fifties Jazz Talk: An Oral Retrospective [Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2004, pp. 53-60; paragraphing modified].

Copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Despite his nearly forty years in the business, it is still one of the very best kept secrets in jazz that Pete Christlieb is one of the music's most exciting and inventive tenor players. He has worked with Count Basie, Louie Bellson, Bob Florence, and Woody Herman. When we met in 1999, he was a featured soloist with the Bill Holman band at a party to celebrate Vic Lewis's eightieth birthday.
“I was born on March 16, 1945, in Los Angeles. My father was a professional bassoon player at Twentieth Century Fox, and as a youngster I listened with him to Boulez, Schoenberg, Stockhausen, Stravinsky, and Villa-Lobos, because our house was full of classical music. Stravinsky often came over to rehearse with my dad, so it is not surprising that I took up the bassoon and, a little later, the violin.

It wasn't until I was about thirteen years old that I first heard some jazz. We had a few Gerry Mulligan Quartet albums lying around the house, and that's when I decided to learn the saxophone, which turned out to be a lot easier than the violin; you press a button and you get a note.

When I was about sixteen, I played in a Saturday morning rehearsal band with some other kids my age, and occasionally somebody good would sit in, to show us how the charts should really sound. The great Joe Maini once visited and played the lead alto chair, and he was so good, it was frightening. He more or less said, "You follow me, kid, and try to stick close to my ass, because we're going down the road and we're going fast!" Man, what authority. It was just fantastic to play in the section with him.

The first road band I played with was Sy Zentner, who gave me a call when I was about eighteen and flew me to Chicago. Although it was a dance band, they had a lot of nice arrangements, and being the solo tenor, I had the opportunity to play a little bit. Of course I wanted to be like Gerry Mulligan and play in a small group, but before you can do that, you have to pay your dues and go to "boot camp" on the road in a bus, just like everyone else.

Sy told me there were also some clarinet parts, so before I left town, I had to take lessons real quick with Russ Cheaver, who was wonderful. He was at Fox with my father and had played many fine clarinet solos in motion pictures over the years, and he was also the lead soprano with the Hollywood Saxophone Quartet. In just three lessons he taught me enough for my chair, which was really "industrial strength" clarinet, where you don't play any lead or any jazz, just a lot of whole notes. Gene Goe, who was the lead trumpet with Basie for a long time, was in the band. The bass player was Jeff Castleman, who had recommended me to Sy. Jeff eventually went with Duke Ellington and married the singer Trish Turner.

When we were playing opposite Harry James at Lake Tahoe, I used to sit in with his band when Sy's gig finished, because Harry's last set was a jam session. We stood next to each other, and he was just outstanding. Even though he was a hell of a drinker, he could always function, and he was such a great instrumentalist, he could play every part in the book. Harry was wonderful, and there was a camaraderie in his band rather like a bunch of guys fighting a war.

I was still too young to get into most of the jazz clubs, where you had to be twenty-one because of the drinking laws, but the Lighthouse served food, which gave them a loophole. Teenagers could go and listen, and that's where I asked Bob Cooper for some lessons. It turned out that he lived a block from our house and knew my father by reputation, and although he was not a regular teacher, I went to him for a couple of years for fine-tuning. If Lester Young had lived that long, I think he might have sounded like Coop, because Bob was such a fluent player.
He started me thinking about new possibilities and other avenues for improvisation, and we studied the old Nicolas Slonimsky book on scales and melodic patterns that everybody has [Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns]. If you really listen, you will hear people quoting from that book all the time. You know, the more I listen to Al Cohn and Zoot Sims from those days, the more I realize how much they influenced me, because they were both highly lyrical "Song in My Heart" type players, just like Bob.

When I was in New York in the early sixties, I used to visit the Half Note and watch Zoot go through his routine of looking away from the bartender and dropping his empty glass fifteen feet from the bandstand. The guy would catch it, fill it up, and pass it right back up to him. Zoot was a clever guy; he was like the Will Rogers of the tenor. Al was also clever and very funny, and together they were pretty wild. I got to know Al well a few years later at the Dick Gibson Jazz Parties in Colorado, and I told him what a pleasure it was playing with someone I idolized as a child. I used flattery as my opening approach, and it worked!

It was thanks to Bob Cooper that I became one of the Lighthouse All-Stars. He was playing on the Dean Martin Show at NBC, so he used to send me to me club as his substitute. I played with Sonny Criss there, and going toe-to-toe with him was like standing in front of a wheat-eater. I mean, he was geared to play with guys like Sonny Stitt, which I wasn't at the time, and I got beat-up pretty good. He was impressed that I was willing to get up on the stand with him, so we became buddies and he was like a father figure to me. I also played a few weeks with Hampton Hawes, who was a sweetheart. And Frank Butler, another genius, was the drummer. This was around 1965, but it wasn't too long before they changed the format and the Lighthouse All-Star era sort of "uglied" away into the sunset, collapsing in a heap of dust.
Soon afterwards, Chet Baker called me for a gig with Terry Trotter, Ray Brown, and Colin Bailey at one of those unattractive little bars near L.A. airport, the Boom-Boom room or some such name. It was a strange part of town, but people were flocking there to hear the great Chet. There was nothing written; he just called tunes and we played. After that, he had another date in Pueblo, Colorado, and he asked me to go with him. If I had been a little older and wiser, I would have asked for the money up front, because at the end of the week I didn't get enough from him to pay my hotel bill, let alone get home. This is what happens when you work for a junkie, so you really have to watch out for yourself.

Musically it was the best because he was playing beautifully, but everything else was a tragedy! I did some tunes alone with the rhythm section that I wanted him to play, and after a couple of times he had them down - he had great ears. Anyway, my wife and I had only been married a couple of months, and here we were in this little hotel in Colorado Springs; eventually I had to wire for money to get home, and that was the end of my career with Chet Baker. I think Phil Urso took my place.

I went back to L.A. and got a call from trumpeter Bobby Bryant, who was in town and making a big impression with Gerald Wilson's band. He wanted me for his steady gig at Marty's down on 58th and Broadway, which featured a hot organ and two-tenor group, along with Bobby.
This was around the time of the big riot in Watts, and the club was located at ground zero there. I waltzed on over, and the first thing they told me to do was to take the battery out and put it in the trunk so I could start my car after the job.

I was replacing Herman Riley for six weeks while he went on the road with Louie Bellson and Pearl Bailey, and the other tenor was Hadley Caliman, who was quite an exponent of the John Coltrane approach. Now I was from the tough "Lockjaw" Davis school, with some Gene Ammons, Coleman Hawkins, and Zoot Sims thrown in, so we went at it like a sword fight in a pirate picture every night! Bobby was on staff at NBC, so he would come in later and get in the middle, saying something like, "O.K., you guys-cool down!"

It was a wonderful experience. I learned the technique of how to really work a rhythm section on the bandstand -what to do and what not to do, and if you are going to play more than two choruses on anything, you had better have a good reason. That job lasted a couple of years, because when Herman got back, Hadley took off.
In 1966 I was at the Flamingo in Las Vegas, backing Della Reese with another two-tenor and trumpet group. Buddy Childers was the leader, and the other tenor was Jimmy "Night Train" Forrest. Della was a big star, but she was a real sweetheart, and it was fun working for her because she didn't act big time at all - just a great gal and one of the guys.

Woody Herman was at the Tropicana, and Buddy used to hang out there all the time, and when our job with Della finished, it was Buddy who recommended me to Woody, because Joe Farrell was leaving. Bill Byrne, who played trumpet and was the band manager, called and asked me to join them at the Chez Club in West Hollywood. I had all the records with Sal Nistico and the '63-64 band, so I was already familiar with the music, and I was like a young lion ready to take on the world - let me have at it! I really roared through the stuff, and Woody was pretty cool.

At the end of the first week, we had a party at his house in the Hollywood Hills, which used to be Humphrey Bogart's old place, and he gave us the "Cook's Tour." We got to this beautiful bathroom, which looked like the municipal plunge. It was like a big swimming pool about eight fee! deep, and it would have taken about two hours to fill it up. I said something like, "Hell, Woody, what do you need that for?" and he said "To soak a sore ass, kid. Now keep moving and don't loiter!"

The word was that we were going to Europe, and two days before we were due to split, Woody said he wanted to talk to me. I thought that I had been doing pretty well and he wanted to give me a raise, but he told me that I was not going, which was like a harpoon to the old ego.

Apparently Sal Nistico wanted to come back, and Woody needed him for his big name and crowd appeal, because he would be a big draw in Europe. The deal in those days with big bands was that if they let you go, they had to give two weeks notice or two weeks pay, and as they were leaving straight away, I was supposed to get the money, which was $300. At the time, everyone was making $150 a week unless you were on Basie's band, for instance, where some of those guys were on about $500, and Sonny Payne was probably getting $2,500 a week. Woody said to go and see his personal manager, Abe Turchen, and you can guess exactly what happened; I got nothing but a promise. About a week later, Byrne phoned from Switzerland and told me that, as soon as the plane landed Sal disappeared and wasn't seen again.

They had been using some other guy, but Woody wanted me back. No. had just had a call from one of the trombone players who was booking for Buddy Rich's band, and he offered me $175, so I told Bill I would come back for $225 clear. In other words, they could pay the tax. He replied, "$225 clear? I'll have to ask Woody." I could hear Woody in the room with Bill saying, "Christlieb that S.O.B.! Stan Getz didn't get $225 clear." Then Bill says, "Well, that'll be fine with Woody!"

I rejoined the band in Oklahoma City, and by this time it was a completely different band; everyone had left. Cecil Payne was on baritone, and the other tenors were Steve Lederer and Steve Marcus. With Woody, if you played first tenor, you had all the hip lead parts and the third chair had all the jazz. I was playing second, which was known as "The Bermuda Triangle," where you got nothing. It was the lackluster position in the band, with no fun and no glory. I had no jazz to play except on the last set every night, when I had a couple of choruses of the blues in A-flat on "Woodchoppers Ball." Eventually I told Woody that it was ridiculous, because I had come on the band to blow, so I quit and I never did get my $300!

Around 1970 1 had a call from Louie Bellson, who was rehearsing a band down at the union prior to going on the road with Pearl Bailey. He is the nicest man in the world, and I am still working with him thirty years later.
Just before joining Louie, I had been working at a club owned by Fletcher Henderson's brother, Horace. He had known Pearl for years, and he gave me a note for her. She always did have an ego like a blowtorch, and when I gave it to her, she just exploded and started shouting at me about taking up her time with something she considered trivial. Louie told her to give me a break, and the next day, she bought me an expensive sweater as an apology. During the tour, every time we had a scene, she bought me another one, and I still have about twenty-five beautiful sweaters from getting beat-up by Pearl Bailey!

One night I fell asleep onstage, and she hit me so hard that I fell over and took the rest of the sax section with me, music stands and all! The audience loved it and thought it was part of the act because it looked like the Keystone Cops. Louie told me that when Joe Louis was guesting with them in the fifties, she kept picking on Joe and throwing punches at him. Eventually he said to Louie, "Please tell your old lady to cut it out, because it really hurts when she hits, man. She's got a helluva punch!"
I made the first few rehearsals with Supersax, but I quit very soon because it was so arduous and repetitive. The concept of playing Charlie's solos was beautiful, and when I heard their first record, I was a little envious of the guys who stuck with it, because it took a long time to get it right. It needed a certain personality who would sit down and work hard, but I was not willing to spend that much time. If there had been opportunities to blow, I might have remained, but the guys were so tired from playing about 23,000 notes that, when it reached the point of someone taking a chorus, the saxes needed a rest. That's why Frank Rosolino or Conte Candoli were hired.
In the early seventies I met Warne Marsh for the first time at a rehearsal with Clare Fischer's big band. The tenors sat next to each other, and we shook hands as Clare counted off "Lennie's Pennies." Playing Tristano’s line for the first time was like trying to change the fan belt on a car while it is still running. Afterwards, Warne told me that he was using an album of mine as a teaching device for one of his students, demonstrating which series of notes I used moving from chord to chord. He actually told me things about my playing I didn't know I was doing. He was totally unique, and you will never in your life hear anyone play with quite that same chromatic approach. The Tristano method could be tedious and involved, but Warne made it more palatable and less cumbersome by swinging a little harder. I learned different ways of improvising from him, especially with regard to economy and selectivity.'
I was on the Tonight Show from 1970 to 1990, and it was a great gig with steady money. We made scale, which was $175 per night, plus doubles, although everyone thought we made a lot more because they saw us on T.V. every night. These days, on the Star Trek show, for instance, I play clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, and a little tenor, and in one four-hour call, I take home what I used to make in an entire week on the Tonight Show. All through those years, I had regular offers to tour with people like Count Basie and Harry James, but I always sent one of my students. I kick myself now for turning down some good offers, but why go on the road when I had a steady gig in town?

I did get to play with Basic in 1983, when Eric Schneider telephoned and asked me to dep for him during the band's weeklong appearance at Disneyworld. Danny Turner and Eric Dixon were in the section, and the first tune every night was "Corner Pocket," featuring me. I had been listening to that arrangement for years, so I didn't have to read it; I just walked up to the microphone and blew the shit out of the solo. On the first night, after I sat down, Basic leaned over to me and said, "What did you say your name was?" I told him again, but he wasn't too good on long names, so he announced every number with, "Ladies and gentleman, Pete's on tenor" or "Now we are going to turn Pete loose on . . . " etc., etc. He gave me features on everything and, man, I played high, fast, and loud all week and got to hang out with all those great guys. I have a tape of one of the shows, so now I can tell my grandchildren I played with Count Basie.
Over the years I worked a lot with Frank Rosolino, who had a real gift, and we had a wonderful relationship. He was a great trombone player and scat singer, and he swung so hard, it was like playing with another saxophone, because he had such facility. He was also extremely funny, and on the bandstand he could create total, hilarious bedlam. Sometimes the band couldn't play because we were too busy laughing. I knew nothing about his domestic problems, but they were enough to set him off, turning the whole thing into a tragic Italian opera, where everybody dies in the end, leaving everything in a minor key.

I had been working with Bob Florence, but when Bob Cooper passed away in 1993, 1 took his place on Bill Holman's band, and I have been there ever since. You know, people ask me about "free" jazz, which I have never liked, because there is enough freedom in the legitimate avenues of expression which hasn't been exhausted. Suppose you have eighteen guys together and, after the downbeat, you let them play free. It sounds like they are warming up. Someone has to come in and say, "Stop. Let's get down to business," and that someone would be Bill Holman, who is the leader of the intelligent big band movement.
When Warne Marsh improvised, he could put a phrase anywhere between beats one and four and have it resolve twenty bars later in exactly the same place -displacement, in other words. As a writer, nobody can do that better than Bill Holman, and he is also a master of tension and release. He has a wonderful way of building tension and then more tension until you wonder if it is ever going to release, and when it does, the band is like a juggernaut coming out of the pipe with a momentum that is totally elevating. We have a lot of fun playing his music, but I don't know if every little detail is always right, because if concentration is lost for a second, you can slip out of the cog. I always tell anyone new who sits next to me that if he is playing with me, he is almost certainly lost; we all have our own part. There is nobody in the world who can shine Bill Holman's shoes when it comes to writing for a big band.

I have already mentioned some other influences, but Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis was also very important to me because he was so different to everyone else. Nobody could ever copy his incredibly ornate false fingerings, and he had about fifteen for any note you can think of. He was like a trombone with a plunger, only he was doing it on a saxophone. He could get the timbre, the slant, and the growl, swinging and ricocheting off this note and that note, and when he put it all together, he created a sense of excitement that had you on the edge of your seat. I had known him for years, and when we spoke before he died, I gave him a hug and a big kiss and told him how much I loved him and what his playing meant to me. I also listened a lot to the "Tasmanian Devil" of the tenor, the wonderful Johnny Griffin, who plays fast and furious. Sonny Rollins was important too, for his sound and tremendous command of the horn.
I have several tenors, but my favorite is an old 1949 Selmer with a balanced action, and I use a two and a half Rico plastic reed with a wide-open Berg Larsen mouthpiece, which gives me a lot of flexibility and lets me play. A closer lay with a three or four reed needs too much pressure, because it is like trying to get a diving board to vibrate. You have to blow so hard that you run out of air halfway between an idea and completing the phrase. Why work so hard? Phil Woods has a similar set-up to me, as did Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, but there are exceptions like that good old Washington boy, Corky Corcoran. He had a sound like a tree trunk because he used a five reed on his Link mouthpiece, which had a very narrow lay.

You know, you need other interests in life besides playing and rehearsing with bands every day, which is why I have been involved in drag racing for thirty years. They are the cars that do zero to two hundred miles an hour in seven seconds and need a parachute to stop. I used to drive, but now I just build them for my kids to race. Mechanically they need the same preventative maintenance program that an aircraft has, so with the cars and the music, I manage to keep pretty busy.”

Jazz in Italy: Dado Moroni

- Steven A. Cerra, [C] Copyright protected; all rights reserved.




Every Jazz fan knows the experience. You're listening to some artist for the first time. All at once, you hear something in the choice of notes, the phrasing or the attack which catches your attention. You begin to listen more closely and a new passion is born. The artist has spoken to you through the music. You've become a fan.

Such was the case for me with the music of Dado Moroni. My first contact with Dado's wonderful approach to Jazz piano came in 1995 while listening to Ray Brown’s Some of My Best Friends Are … The Piano Players [Telarc CD-83373] that features a number of prominent Jazz pianists, all of whom I was familiar with except Dado. The cut from the disc which really got my attention was Dado's rendition of Coltrane's Giant Steps. I was hooked; I wanted to hear more of Dado's recordings with their intriguing concepts and hard-driving style.
But where to find them? [remember this was in the mid-1990’s before Amazon.com really set sail] Having a friend who owned a CD store in San Francisco immediately got me access to a computer database with the quick result that there were no discs catalogued for a "Dado Moroni." While continuing my search, an edition of the Jazz Times magazine arrived which contained, of all things, a very favorable review of a new disc by none other than the Dado Moroni Trio, entitled Insights. Mercifully, the review listed the disc as JFCDO07 on the Jazz Focus as well as the contact information for the label which was located in Calgary, Alberta.

Jazz Focus president, Philip Barker kindly sent along instructions for ordering a copy of Insights and also informed me that Dado was featured on Tribute, another Jazz Focus disc under the leadership of George Robert (JFCD004) [and which contains a terrific version of Kenny Barron’s splendid tune – Voyage]. After receiving and listening to both recordings, I was even more convinced that Dado was a very special talent and one deserving of more exposure in this country. I wanted to know more about this creative Jazz pianist who opens his Jazz Focus Insights disc with a beautiful and haunting rendition of Blossom Dearie's rarely heard Inside a Silent Tear instead of the usual burner, plays Stompin' at the Savoy as a solo piano slow ballad, and gives Old Saint Nick the image of a swinging hipster with his version of Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.
Through an initial telephone introduction formed by Philip Barker and as a result of a series of follow-up conversations, Dado was a very willing participant in a running dialogue aimed at affording me some background about his Jazz growth and development. Fortunately, we did not have to rely on my spotty Italian as Dado speaks excellent English.

When asked the usual question about when his interest in Jazz began, Dado shared that his earliest memories of Jazz are while bouncing to its rhythms suspended in a baby jumper hanging from a door jamb. Dado's father developed a liking for Jazz from the Allied servicemen stationed in Italy after World War II and would bring home copies of V-discs and play them on the family phonograph. Dado was captivated by the sounds of Jazz he heard as a child and at the age of three he would ask his father to put on records by Earl "Fatha" Hines, Erroll Garner and Thomas "Fats" Waller.

There was a piano in the house which his parents had brought in for Dado's sister, Monica. Dado would climb up on the piano bench and, curling the last two fingers under each hand, pick out the melodies and phrases he had heard on these recordings.
Dado recalls: "The Fats Waller record was called Smashing Thirds. I had no idea how to play thirds. I just heard happy sounds which I mimicked with major triads in my left hand and sad sounds which I represented with minor triads in my left hand. I just tried to copy by ear the sounds I heard on the records. Of course," laughs Dado, "by copying Garner's style with its four beats to the bar in the left hand, I had no need for a rhythm section!"

As he grew older and became more serious about Jazz, Dado commented that his parents "didn't want to force me but at the same time continued to encourage me." His father would take him out to hear the music being played in local Jazz clubs in Genoa and Milan. It was during one of these excursions when Dado was about eleven that he met a Jazz pianist in a local Genoa club who agreed to give him lessons.

"He recognized that I had evolved a very unorthodox technique by being largely self-taught and decided not to try and change it." Instead, he worked ideas and information into Dado's intuitive understanding of the music and like every good teacher answered his student's questions, realizing that this was where the real learning was taking place.
Dado recalls that "at this time I was having trouble learning the bass clef. My teacher suggested that I buy a bass. By learning Ray Brown bass lines from records and playing them on the bass, I was able to teach myself bass clef." He further extended his bass clef technique by listening to piano masters like Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum. Another instrumental influence is evident in Dado's style of playing which is very hard-driving and full of rhythmic accents in the bass line. When I asked him about this he noted that "I've always had an interest in jazz drumming; maybe that's where this feeling comes from."

During high school, his father continued his Jazz lessons with frequent trips to clubs in Milan where he was able to sit in. "My father gave me a lot of freedom to explore my interest in the music. He said, "do whatever you want - as long as you finish high school."

High school was followed by two years of law school where one day Dado realized that "I was either going to be a terrible, frustrated lawyer or a happy Jazz musician." When I asked Dado what he thought was the most important element in creating Jazz he said: "you've always got to be honest." His decision to leave law school and to pursue a career in jazz is certainly a reflection of that ethos.

Since that fateful day, Dado has over the years been found in the company of Ron Carter, Clark Terry, Ray Brown, George Robert, Tom Harrell, Al Grey, Bill Goodwin, Jon Faddis and Lee Konitz. When I asked him about Jazz pianists he admired on the current scene, he shared that he had "great respect for the work of McCoy Tyner because of his integrity over the years. I also enjoy listening to Kenny Barron, Steve Kuhn and Herbie Hancock."

Compositionally, "we have so much to choose from - such a rich heritage," commented Dado. His selections on the Jazz Focus Insights disc are certainly reflective of this treasure chest, ranging as they do from standards like If I Should Lose You, through some Ellington/Strayhorn compositions, and Jamal an original piece Dado wrote as a tribute to one of the giants of Jazz piano.

Dado Moroni is an example of learning the Jazz tradition by intuition and by training the ear to benefit from the contributions of those who have gone before. It is the way most of the early Jazz masters learned their craft. Judging by the manner in which he has matured as a Jazz pianist since I first heard him almost 15 years ago, it would seem that Dado has matriculated rather well though his courses in jazz education.”

Before moving on to specific reviews of Dado’s recordings, Philip Barker, owner of Jazz Focus and with whom I would co-produce Dado’s next CD – Out of the Night [Jazz Focus JFCD032] - had a similar epiphany upon first hearing Moroni as he recounts in his insert notes to Insights.
“It is June 25th, 1994 and the 15 Calgary International Jazz Festival is in full swing. The George Robert Quintet arrives to play a concert. I knew of their Italian pianist, Dado Moroni, but I wasn't prepared for what I heard when he played. The performance of the quintet was outstanding but Moroni stood out even among the wonderfully talented musicians with whom he was teamed.

Fast forward to Montreal and Sunday, July 3rd, 1994. The Robert Quintet is in the studio recording material for a JAZZ FOCUS CD. Once again the playing of the pianist is amazing. Here, clearly, is a major talent, yet one who is not yet widely known in North America. So I ask him if he is willing to record his own CD for JAZZ FOCUS. He says he is, and you have the result right here.

Dado is no newcomer to the recording studio. Over the last 15 years he has appeared on at least 24 albums/CDs in company with such musicians as Jon Faddis, Clark Terry, Lee Konitz, Al Grey, Ron Carter, Ray Brown, Lewis Nash, Peter Washington and, of course Tom Harrell and George Robert with whom he has both toured and recorded widely. The list of jazz musicians he has played and recorded with is much longer than this and includes many of the foremost American and European jazz artists.
Unfortunately for us in North America, most of the recordings on which he has appeared have been on European labels that have not had wide distribution in North America. The time was ripe for him to lead his own group on an internationally distributed North Ameri­can label.

It has been said that you can tell a musician by the company he keeps. By that standard, Dado Moroni would seem to be one of the best. Jimmy Cobb is surely one of the greatest of all jazz drummers; he underpinned such classic recordings as Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" and John Coltrane's "Coltrane Jazz". JAZZ FOCUS is honored, and also rather humbled, to have him on one of its releases.

Compared to Jimmy, Peter Washington is a relative newcomer to the jazz scene but he has established himself as one of the best bass players around, much in demand and widely recorded. Indeed his many recording credits include one with Dado - a 1994 date on which both were members of the Jessie Davis Sextet.

On one track of the present CD, the trio is joined by singer Adrienne West, who recorded a duo album with Dado in 1987. Among many other accomplishments, she has toured Africa for the U.S. State Department and starred in the "Fats" Waller musical "Ain't Misbehavin"'.
The program on this CD consists mainly of standards, though Moroni contributes one original composition. It starts gently with a little heard but attractive Blossom Dearie piece Inside A Silent Tear. The tempo picks up with a sprightly version of Billy Strayhorn's All Day Long. This leads, logically enough, to the Duke's Come Sunday. On Stompin' At The Savoy Dado plays solo; Stompin' is usually performed as an up-tempo swinger, but Moroni gives it a slow, thoughtful treatment which explores every aspect of the venerable piece. The next track is a piano-and-bass duet, Moroni's tribute to another great pianist, Ahmad Jamal. Jimmy Cobb returns for another nod to the Duke. and there follows a gorgeous version of If I Should Lose You. The trio is then joined by Adrienne West who provides a flawless reading of the lovely but too seldom heard Kenny Dorham tune Fair Weather.

The Milt Jackson standard Bluesology is a real swinger, illustrating well Moroni's complete command of the piano keyboard, with able support and solos from Washington and Cobb. Next up is Santa Claus. This was recorded with a view to its inclusion in the Christmas CD JAZZ FOCUS plans to release in 1996 but Dado was so pleased with it that he asked that it be included on this CD also. Santa has seldom swung like this! (But don't worry, another "take" is safely stored in the JAZZ FOCUS vaults ready for the Christmas CD when it is put together!) The program ends with two more trio pieces, the reflective Demoiselle and Ray Noble's classic Cherokee, which - despite the myriad times it has been performed - Dado and his colleagues have no difficulty making into something new, even while playing at breakneck speed. A rousing finish to a varied program!

Listening to the master tape, I am delighted with the outcome of this session. I hope and believe you will be too.

Philip Barker.”

In an effort to make more of Dado’s music more readily available in North America, Philip Barker and I joined forces and co-produced the aforementioned Out of the Night which was recorded for Jazz Focus in March, 1998.
As I wrote in my insert notes to the recording:

“The context for this second Dado Moroni disc on Jazz Focus Records was a day-long, Monday recording session in Seattle, WA that followed a weekend Jazz Party held in the Pacific Northwest. The New York-based trumpet and flugelhorn player, Joe Magnarelli, joined Dado, bassist Ira Coleman and drummer Bill Goodwin for the prior weekend’s festivities, and it was with much anticipation that we welcome this group into the recording studio fresh from the exhilaration and energy of recently playing together.”

Before moving on to a description of other recordings by Dado, in order to address what I find so appealing in Dado’s approach to Jazz pianist, here is a descriptive excerpt from these same insert notes:

“Dado has brought together a style which is both personal and unique and, at the same time, indebted to the piano giants who have gone before him. It is an approach that is very much reflective of his nature and his personality: passionate, intense, hard-driving and, above all, always swinging in the sense that it is marked by a pronounced feeling of rhythmic forward motion.”
Here’s Ken Dryden’s review of Out of the Night from http://www.allaboutjazz.com/:
“Italian pianist Dado Moroni is better known to European jazz fans because most of his work has been recorded and distributed on the continent, but this second disc for the Canadian label Jazz Focus should help to expose him to American audiences. This wide-ranging 1998 session, with trumpeter and flügelhornist Joe Magnarelli, bassist Ira Coleman, and drummer Bill Goodwin, finds Moroni exploring music from several decades, including standards (two takes of "Embraceable You"), classic jazz works from the 1930s and 1940s (Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin'" and Duke Ellington's "Black Beauty"), and more recent fare like the high-energy "Seven Steps to Heaven" and Joe Henderson's strutting "Out of the Night." Moroni's compositions are also a delight. His funky "Ne-Ne" is easily the most intense selection of the date. His blues tribute to Count Basie, affectionately called "Basie-Cally," is a swinger that features a choice muted trumpet solo by Magnarelli. The horn player's bossa nova "Bella Carolina" showcases his rich flügelhorn. Highly recommended.”
And to tack back for a moment about what was initially so appealing and engaging about Dado’s two cuts from the Ray Brown tribute album to pianists he admires, here’s Donald Elfman description of Dado’s performance:
“Italian pianist Dado Moroni, who is in the process of settling in New York [Dado lives in Genoa, Italy and maintains an apartment in New York], provides one of the album’s truly unusual delights. For his first recording with Ray Brown, the pianist does an all-out impersonation/tribute to Erroll Garner, complete with grunt. Compounding the wackiness is the fact that it’s a Garner take on John Coltrane’s Giant Steps! Ray starts with a slow statement of the theme on bowed bass with Moroni commenting quietly behind. Then, from out of a delirious nowhere, comes the Garner stuff which, after several loopy minutes, shifts gears into an up-tempo excursion more in keeping with the original tone of the piece. But with another shift, we’re back to Garner and Ray’s Arco bass. Moroni is clearly not awed by tradition new or old, and he and Ray just smile all the way through. The trio is up and cooking for My Romance, which demonstrates that the romance still has sparks.”
While Benny Green would be the pianist in Ray Brown’s trio during most of the decade of the 1990’s, shortly after this recording was made, Ray would use Dado on piano whenever his trio played in Europe.

Although the point has been made that much of Dado’s discography, especially his earlier recordings, were produced on European labels that have limited or no distribution in North America, he does have a rather substantial body of work from the past 15 years or so that is readily obtainable.

These CDs breakdown into three categories: [1] his recordings made as a sideman with Jesse Davis, George Robert, Tom Harrell, Mark Nightingale and Clark Terry, much of this from the late 1980s and early 1990s, [2] his piano trio works, then and now, and [3] his more recent performances as a “ranking elder statesman” as a member of Jazz groups based in Europe, particularly Italy.

I have selected a few examples from each of these categorizes to describe in an effort to reveal more about the developing technical and expanding creative qualities in Dado’s playing.
Beginning with Dado’s early sideman dates, and concentrating on the ones he made as a member of the quintet co-led by George Robert – Tom Harrell, these are among some of the best Jazz recordings made in the 1980s. This point is re-emphasized by Dan Morgenstern, the well-respected Director of the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, and the writer of the insert notes to all of the groups recordings beginning in 1987 with Sun Dance [Contemporary CCD-14037-2]:

"At this moment in time, nothing is more important to jazz than the presence of gifted young players who know and love the true language of the music and ire committed to its continuation. The list of such musicians, happily, has been growing of late, and on the evidence of this splendid record, we can safely add to it the name of George Robert.
What this young man has put together here is a band - not just a bunch of guys who met in a studio and went through the motions, but a musical collective made up of players who think and feel together, listen to each other and make their own music.

A finely matched blend of seasoned veterans and young comers is what we have here, and there may be something symbolic in the fact that the former are Americans and the latter Europeans - though the time when you could tell most European jazzmen by their accent is long since past, they still take their inspiration from this side of the pond.
Yet, for Swiss-born George Robert, jazz is something that came quite naturally, from his home environment.. His American-born mother's love for jazz was shared by his father, five brothers and two sisters; the boys all played instruments, and formed a family band. George started piano at 8, took up clarinet at 10, and studied with Luc Hoffmann at a distinguished conservatory in his native Geneva.

'I would always hear jazz records at home," he said, "and I feel that my ears got a solid foundation from that, at a very early stage. Later on, I met a lot of American musicians passing through Geneva and played sessions with them at my home. Among them, Jimmy Woode, Sam Woodyard, and Billy Hart really encouraged me when I was just 13 or 14. And studying classical clarinet gave me discipline, control and technique that were most helpful when I picked up the saxophone.”

Among the alto players who influenced young George were Johnny Hodges, Benny Carter, Charlie Parker, and Cannonball Adderley. 'They all had an influence,' he recalled, "but when I was about 14, a Phil Woods album, Alive & Well in Paris, really caught my ear - his gorgeous sound was the first thing that attracted me.”…

The group heard here was formed in the Spring of 1987 and toured in Switzerland and France; the album was recorded in Lausanne during the tour.
[Of the musicians in the band, George commented]: 'I've always admired Tom, both as a player and a composer, to have him next to me is a great inspiration', the leader said. The two horns get a beautiful blend, and have a very special way of interacting, notably in the interludes of collective improvisation that are a feature of the band. "Jimmy Woode introduced me to Dado in 1985, and since then, I've always worked with him. He's a wonderful pianist. His touch is just superb, and the way he comps is a rare gift." This young man moved to Amsterdam in 1986, and I've not the slightest doubt that we'll hear much from and about him. Bassist Reggie Johnson, with whom George had worked before, was the perfect choice. 'Reggie is an exceptional musician and the ideal bassist for us - we love him. And Bill has been a friend for a long time. I think he's one of the most musical drummers around." Goodwin's outstanding solo on the title cut proves that statement, and his experience as a record producer came in handy as well.
In a varied program of uniformly excellent originals by Robert and Harrell, the band strikes a happy balance between ensemble and solo strength. The leader gets a fine, full sound from both his alto and soprano (he handles the latter with a fluency that reflects his clarinet training) and tells a story when he plays. So does Harrell, surely one of the most underrated and under-publicized trumpeters of our time (and quite a flugelhorn player, too). The rhythm section is a delight, with a real feeling for not only time but also dynamics, and works hand-in-glove with the multihued horns. …
When you sound as good as these five guys, there's no need for artifice. This music speaks for itself, it swings and sings and it's always alive. We look forward to hearing more from George Robert and company - a new branch on the tree of jazz with exceptionally solid roots.”Two years later in 1989, the Robert-Harrell group was back with Lonely Eyes this time on GRP [1002]. Dan Morgenstern offered these insights about the band on this recording:

“This is the second album by what is unquestionably one of the best groups on the contemporary jazz scene. This is music that radiates togetherness and reflects George Robert's statement that the quintet, together since the spring of 1987, "is like a family; everybody loves working with one another.. the chemistry is there".

Indeed it is, and the music here surpasses the excellence of the quintet's impressive debut on records (Sun Dance: Contemporary C- 14037), which received critical acclaim from all comers of the jazz spectrum.

As on that first record, the quintet here presents its own music. All the compositions are originals from within the group-five by Robert, three by Harrell, and one by the band's youngest member, pianist Dado Moroni-and they are not just sketches on blues or "Rhythm" changes, but genuine pieces of music with an impressive variety of moods and textures. The quintet achieves its own identity and freshness, but it does so without artifice or self-conscious striving for novelty or effect. Clearly, there is a shared language among all its members, a language solidly rooted but never mired in the jazz tradition. The music flows with a natural ease that is a pleasure to hear.
The horns of the co-leaders are splendidly matched, both in ensemble and solo roles. Doubling and skillfully varied writing allow for a textural variety quite amazing for a small group. Harrell, who finally seems to be getting some of the credit long due him as one of the most original and consistently excellent creative improvisers of our time, plays trumpet and flugelhorn and gets his own sound, at once warm and brilliant, from both. Robert's main born is the alto sax, from which he gets a strong, personal sound, but he also has mastered the soprano and the clarinet (the latter his first horn after starting music on the piano, and heard here with the quintet for the first time on record). These two have marvelous rapport; truly together in ensemble unison, harmony or interplay, and feeding off each other in solo excursions.The rhythm section is always finely attuned to its supporting tasks, which are far from routine this group deals with subtle rhythmic as well as harmonic demands-but it seems inaccurate to describe this dynamic triumvirate as a mere "rhythm section". The greatly gifted Moroni is not only a wonderfully sensitive and alert accompanist, but adds solo strength (his modal ballad Adrienne reveals talent as a composer as well). Reggie Johnson's impeccable intonation and rhythmic strength would be enough, but he also steps out as a soloist, and when he does, it's not in the obligatory manner of giving the bassist some, but with lucidly musical (and never over-long) statements. Master percussionist Bill Goodwin is always there, adding colors and textures to the quintet's overall sonic meld and providing the kind of absolute rhythmic security that allows everyone to relax and play without fear of falling off the wire.”
And just so the impression isn’t formed that the Robert-Harrell quintet was the only group that featured Dado as a sideman during these relatively “early years” in his career, in 1994, he teamed up with Ray Brown on bass and Jeff Hamilton on drums to form a rhythm section for the young English trombonist Mark Nightingale on his recording entitled What I Wanted to Say [Mons 874 763].
And with the album’s title in mind, here’s what Johnny Dankworth wanted to say about Dado as contained in the CD’s insert notes:

“Dado Moroni contributes both brilliant support playing and solo moments; he has an incredibly facile technique which he utilizes with admirable restraint.” [paraphrase]

Dado’s solo on Alone Together will swing you into next week and he provides the album with so much forceful energy and excitement with his excellent comping, throughout.
As we approach the second [2] category of Dado’s recordings – his trio work – it is interesting to observe that while he made his recording debut in 1979, he did not make his first trio Jazz recording until 1992. The occasion was the release of What’s New? on Splasc(h) records [CDH 378.2], and Italian based label. Interestingly, as of this writing, the recording was still available through Amazon.
Carl Baugher finished his insert notes to the CD with the following, telling conclusions:

“Dado Moroni is clearly a musician with a wealth of talent. His improvising prowess is convincingly displayed on What’s New? and there is no reason not to expect further development from this still youthful artist. Stylistically, he offers a blend of new and old that’s irresistible. His polished technique, taste and solid musicality serve him well. The disc you hold in your hand provides an irrefutable answer to the question, ‘What’s New?’ The answer is an emphatic: Dado Moroni!”
And Thom Jurek offered the following review in http://www.allaboutjazz.com/:

“As a pianist and composer, Dado Moroni is an elegant stylist whose post-Ahmad Jamal voicings and Gil Evans-styled arrangements — even for small ensembles — are singular in their subtle, suave grace and their quiet musical expertise. This trio date with a young rhythm section (Rosario Bonaccorso on bass and Gianni Cazzola on drums) is an amalgam of the familiar and ambitious for Moroni. His own compositions, which make up half the album, tend toward the inherently melodic side of his nature: There's the charming ostinato aplomb in "The Duck and the Duchess" and the multi-faceted chromatic gracefulness of "African Suite," which loops three different strains of rhythms around a complex harmonic structure that examines all the tones between B and D. And then there's the adventurous improviser who tackles the outrageously difficult melodic line in Ornette Coleman's "When Will the Blues Leave," which extrapolates a 12-bar blues and pours it into a fugue-like structure of flatted ninths. To temper the two poles, there are readings of Hoagy Carmichael's "Skylark" — done as an exercise in intervallic interplay and mode-shifting melodic exchange — and a solid post-bop reading of Robin & Rainger’s "Easy Living." This is piano trio jazz at its lyrical, exciting best.”
In 1995 with Heart of the Swing [Music Corner MPJ 1000 CD], Dado initiated what was to become a series of trio recordings with Massimo Moriconi on bass and Stefano Bagnoli on drums. On their respective instruments, Moriconi and Bagnoli are two of the most technically gifted musicians in Italy, and in combination with Dado, these three ultimately formed what has become known as the Super Star Triok, an album that was released in 2003 on [abeat AB JZ 015].
Heart of the Swing is swing personified as it abounds with delightful arrangements of standards such as Just in Time, There is No Greater Love and Charlie Parker originals such as Anthropology and Barbados which provide the listener with ample opportunity to hear Dado’s finger-popping inventions, Moriconi’s huge, booming bass sound and Bagnoli crisp and lighting fast technique. Moroni-Moriconi-Bagnoli play a repertoire that is exciting and engaging while producing an album of swinging piano trio Jazz.
There’s more of the same by this exquisitely matched, powerhouse trio on Super Star Triok with a burning up-tempo version of What is This Thing Called Love, as well as, interesting treatments of standards including You’ve Changed and Love for Sale along with well-crafted versions of Jazz classics such as So What, Oleo and Ray Brown’s FSR [“For Sonny Rollins”]. There is even the tasteful introduction of Fender Rhodes electric piano and electric bass on a couple of tracks, a reflection of the interest in bringing different sounds into the music by the current generation of Jazz musicians.
Let’s begin the third category of this piece with its focus on Dado’s more recent recordings as both leader and sideman, most of these occurring in his native Italy, by focusing on Ken Dryden’s review of three of them in http://www.allaboutjazz.com/ :

“Pianist Dado Moroni is essentially a self-taught player who learned by listening to a variety of artists and styles. His discography as a leader is still fairly small, though he has recorded extensively as a sideman on European CDs in addition to appearances with Americans like trumpeters Tom Harrelll and Clark Terry and alto saxophonists Lee Konitz and Jesse Davis. Below are three examples of his work, including a live duo piano concert and two sessions as a sideman with up-and-coming European players.
Saxophonist Rosario Giuliani is a fast-rising star in European jazz. For his fourth Dreyfus CD Anything Else [Dreyfus Jazz FDM 46050 366982], he composed 9 of the 12 songs and is accompanied by Moroni, trumpeter/flugelhornist Flavio Boltro, bassist Remi Vignolo and drummer Benjamin Henocq. "Blow Out" is a percolating uptempo blues line showcasing the leader's fiery alto and Moroni's intense McCoy Tyner-like solo, followed by the relaxing samba "Danae." "Backfire" is reminiscent of the Phil Woods Quintet with Tom Harrelll because of its energy, though this propulsive bop vehicle has a soulful edge in spots. Giuliani's constantly shifting solo is driven by Moroni and the rhythm section's high-octane accompaniment. The ballad "A Winter Day" opens with Moroni's dreamy piano solo, then Giuliani and Boltro (on flugelhorn) trade choruses in this engaging, nostalgic theme. Giuliani switches to soprano sax for his lively AfroCuban-flavored "Conversation" and the sentimental ballad "My Angel." The two horn players breeze through Ornette's challenging "Invisible," though Moroni's fiendish "Three Angels" is almost as demanding. The pianist also contributed the lyrical "Hagi Mystery," another piece with a Caribbean flavor, featuring Boltro's rich flugelhorn and Giuliani's impassioned alto sax.
Moroni and Enrico Pieranunzi are two of Italy's top keyboardists, so a duo concert like Live Conversations [abeat AB JZ 039] makes sense. Both men have tremendous technique, yet also have big ears, able to complement each other's improvised lines while avoiding the train wrecks that often occur when there's a personality mismatch. Their interpretation of Miles' "Solar" is unusual, incorporating a bit of stride and a long closing vamp to spice up this bop favorite. There's a brief bit of confusion as Sonny Rollins' "St. Thomas" is introduced with a bit of the standard "Someday My Prince Will Come" and their wild romp through this calypso favorite has a decidedly humorous air. The aforementioned Disney tune is up next, transformed from a quiet waltz into a turbulent blend of dissonant harmonies and Stravinsky-like chords topped by a surprise ending.
A dazzling duo improvisation gradually leads into a stunning, somewhat ominous setting of "All the Things You Are," which segues into a more conventional version of "What is This Thing Called Love." The final track is a bit misleading: "Autumn Leaves" (the only tune listed), gradually unfolds from a dark improvisation into a bright performance with hints of Bill Evans. But this selection is actually a medley that detours into a dramatic workout of "Caravan" (yet also adding a brief, light-hearted lick from "Sweet Georgia Brown"), returning to the first theme and then engaging in an extended fast blues before gliding to a finish with a sly chorus of "Blue Monk."Magone [Dreyfus Jazz FDM 46050 369112] marks the debut recording as a leader for Belgian trumpeter/flugelhornist Bert Joris, a veteran member of the Brussels Jazz Orchestra. His potent rhythm section includes Moroni (who provides intuitive support for the leader in addition to his top drawer solos), bassist Philippe Aerts and drummer Dre Pallemaerts. Joris primarily focuses on his originals, delving into many moods. The brooding title track (an abbreviation of "Mother is Gone") is an emotional work; the trumpeter's solo is backed by dark, sparse piano and a rock-steady rhythm like someone pacing the floor, though Moroni's free- flowing bluesy solo steals the spotlight. Joris adds his mute for "Triple," a snappy, playful vehicle dedicated to his cat. The soft, lush ballad "Anna" (named for a young girl Joris once met) showcases his rich-toned flugelhorn. The perky bop line "King Kombo" evolved from two separate commissioned works. Moroni is heard on electric piano on two numbers, including his mellow "The Mighty Bobcat" and Joris' perky "Mr. Dodo." Joris is back on flugelhorn for the gut-wrenching interpretation of "I Fall in Love Too Easily." The last selection, "Benoit," comes from a 2005 concert, a Latin number showcasing the leader's muted trumpet.”
Dado has also been a long standing member of drummer Roberto Gatto’s quintet as is reflected by his appearance on two albums: Deep [CamJazz7760-2] and Roberto Gatto jazzitaliano 2006 [Palaexpo 03].
In addition to more of Dado’s sparkling improvisations, these albums under Gatto’s leadership find him in the company of some of Italy’s best musicians both old and new for as Ira Gitler, the notable and senior Jazz critic has commented: “Italian jazz musicians are the best in Europe and are world-class players.”
On Deep, the younger generation is represented by the brilliant soprano and baritone sax of Javier Girotto, who just made a solo performance with the famed Metropole Orchestra in Amsterdam while the seasoned veterans are well represented by Gianluca Petrella on trombone and the rhythm section of Dado, Rosario Bonaccorso on bass and the irrepressible Gatto on drums, all of whom are engaged in nine original compositions penned by Roberto.

And listening to Roberto Gatto Quintet’s Jazzitaliano live 2006: Tribute to Miles Davis ’64-’68 [Paraexpo 03] with Flavio Boltro [trumpet], Daniele Scannapieco [tenor sax and the “newcomer” on this CD], Dado Moroni [piano], Rosario Bonaccorso [bass] and Roberto Gatto play a repertoire of tunes from the pre-electric Miles period of the 1960’s will leave little doubt in your mind about the quality of Jazz on exhibit in Italy, nor about the validity of Mr. Gitler’s view of it.

As I wrote in an earlier review of this album:

“The tunes on this recording are from Miles’ Seven Steps to Heaven Columbia album and from the period referred to by Jack Chambers in his wonderful book, Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis as the “Circle, 1964-8.” Included in this period are such recordings as E.S.P, Miles Davis Quintet in Berlin, and Miles Davis Quintet at the Plugged Nickel multiple disc set.

The track selections on the Gatto quintet’s tribute CD are: [1] Joshua [2] There is No Greater Love [3] Footprints [4] Stella by Starlight [5] All Blues [6] Basin Street Blues [7] All of You and [8] Seven Steps to Heaven.

It’s obvious that these Italian Jazz musicians have been influenced by the Miles-Shorter-Hancock-Carter-Williams group from the Circle period. Boltro acknowledges Miles’ phrasing, Scannapieco Shorter’s tone, Moroni is indebted to Feldman’s percussive approach to the piano, Bonaccorso’s big sound comes from Carter-by-way-of-Chambers, and Gatto’s approach to keeping time on drums is done in the interrupted and inflected style as first played by Tony Williams [by way of Elvin Jones].

Daniele Scannpieco is another surprising treat on this recording. His tone may be reminiscent of Shorter, but his phrasing is like no other tenor player that I’ve ever heard before. He takes so many chances and while he escapes from some of his improvisational adventures, he also crashes by placing himself in situations from which there is no extraction other than by taking a deep breath and going on to build the next sequence. What fun!

But these Italian Jazz musicians all put their own “footprint” on this music [apologies to Wayne] by making their own contributions to this portion of the Miles canon.”
Reluctantly it is time to end this review of Dado Moroni, one of the premier Jazz pianists in the world, and his recordings both old and new, heading his own trio or as a sideman, but not before we pay a visit to a duo masterpiece that he recorded in Milan on April 6, 2007 with his long-time friend, trumpet and flugelhorn player, Tom Harrell.

The album is entitled Humanity [#2 abeat Signature Series AB JZ 051].
Comprised entirely of six, exquisitely interpreted standards – The Nearness of You, Lover, I Hear a Rhapsody, Darn That Dream, Poinciana – and the title track original by Dado, Humanity is a "formidable disc which gives the listener an hour of music that is rich in intensity, lyricism and pathos.” [paraphrase of Maurizio Zerbo’s review of the disc in http://www.italia.allaboutjazz.com/].

The pure music that Dado and Tom create on this recording is beautiful articulated in the following statement by pianist Enrico Pieranunzi who requested “the privilege” of being able to write the insert notes for this recording:

“I like the title of this CD very much.

It is a declaration, a good omen, a hope.

And it is wonderful that the title refers to a Jazz CD There is really no music that is more ‘human’ than jazz, of this expression of the body and imagination that speaks to life as it is happening by improvising with sounds.

Tom Harrell and Dodo Moroni tell their stories simply, authentically.

They sing their innermost being using so-called ‘mainstream’ language … but in the end this is not important.

What counts is the profound rapport there is between the two musicians, a silent and deeply felt understanding that spans the entire CD.

What counts are the thrills provided by tunes such as ‘Humanity’ or ‘The Nearness of You,’ as well as the other tracks, revealing a touching chance of beauty.

It is in cases like this that jazz reaches the point of being the most human of all expressions of art.”
If you have been a stranger to the music of Dado Moroni, I hope this review about him will convince you to remedy that unfamiliarity with a visit to his music. I promise you that you will come away from the experience justly rewarded.