Pittsburgh's Silhouettes

From The Silhouettes

George Bacasa, Ronnie Thomas and Al Secen were inseparable Lawrenceville buds. They went to high school together, and formed a polka trio during their senior year, practicing in George's basement. In 1953 they auditioned for Uncle Sam, and enlisted as members of the 536th Air Force Band.

In exchange for a four-year stint, they were stationed at Cape Canaveral, Florida (or maybe nearby Patrick AFB). When on-base, they showed VIPs around the rocket facility. But most of the time, they were out entertaining the troops, doing PR-type tours, performing on radio and TV and for recruitment drives. Their final year saw them recognized with the Roger Award, the Air Force's honor for its most talented airmen.

They came back home a little more sophisticated musically and morphed into a jazz group, with Bacasa on flute and reeds, Secen on vibes (he played the squeeze box when they were a polka band) and Thomas on bass. They eventually added jazz drummer Lenny Rogers (who went to Duquesne and later taught there) and vocalist Cathy Martin, though they would run through a number of singers over the years.

The band called itself the Silhouettes, sometimes messing with the minds of vocal fans who expected Bill Horton/John Wilson and the Philly harmonizers of "Get A Job" fame. Pittsburgh's Silhouettes were anything but doowoppers.

They had a funky, bossa-nova sort of sound with a mellow side. The group played the college and jazz circuits, and gigged at local clubs like the Red Door, Casa Di Monzo, Pilot House, Escapades, Encore, the Hilton and the Holiday House, going strong from the late fifties into the early seventies. While their Latin beat was infectious, they're remembered today because the Silhouettes left behind some great vinyl.

The first single was released on Bacasa's Bye George label (#1000). It was "St. Thomas," a remake of the Sonny Rollins piece, backed with a cover of John Phillip's song "Monday, Monday," released in 1967.

But their piece de resistance was the Segue release of 1969, their LP "Conversations With The Silhouettes." (SEG-1001) Segue was a local jazz label owned by WRS Labs and run by Basaca and Nathan Davis. (It would later fold when the owners switched from jazz to rock unsuccessfully.) Bacasa produced the imprint's first release, Davis' "Makatuka," and Davis produced the Silhouettes' "Conversations," their one and only album.

The band added Willy Smith on congas and percussion for the session, and tossed in a little lo-tech electronic trickery while recording. The tracks included on "Conversations" are Young Blood, Time To Fall In Love, Norwegian Wood (Lennon/McCartney), Sally's Tomato (Mancini), Question: Why?, Fonky First, Hashi Baba, Conversation, Sesame, What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life (Bergman/Bergman/Legrand) and Lunar Invasion, with most of the tracks written by Al Secen.

It was quite well received critically - Norwegian Wood was especially popular among affectionados - but as often happens, the wax didn't sell at the time though it's worth a small mint on today's collectors' market. Several of the tracks have been downloaded to youtube.com by funk fans, as have the 45s.

The last single by this group was 1969's "Oh What A Day," an upbeat pop tune sung by Carol Christian and produced by Bill Lawrence for his Canonsburg based Western World label (WWS-5503). The B-Side is "Red Snow," a composition penned by the band. The record companies at the time were trying to get the jazz guys to cross over by leading with a pop side in exchange for the flip being the group's choice. And as it ended up, "Red Snow" is the more remembered song.

Bacasa and Secens fronted a group called New Horizons into the early-to-mid eighties, playing clubs like Cunimondo's Keyboard in Verona. And that is about where Old Mon's trail runs cold. George Bacasa suffered a heart attack in 1976 and passed on in 1988 while still in his early fifties. Ronnie Thomas met his maker in 1991, while he was in his late fifties. The last we heard, Al Secen is still hanging in there and soaking up the sunshine in Palm Beach.

If anyone can help us fill in the missing pieces of Pittsburgh's Silhouettes, give us a yell so we can finish the story.

Deuces Wild

Deuces Wild: Flo Cassinelli, Spider Rondinelli, Dan Mastri, Bob Negri

Teeny Harris Collection at the Carnegie Museum of Art

The Deuces Wild were Pittsburgh's hottest local jazz band in the late forties throughout the fifties and into the early sixties. The roster changed more times than a runway model and the group split into competing bands, but the Deuces always took the stage with the area's top talent laying down the swing.

The quintet more or less morphed into existence. As far as we can decipher from our jumbled notes, Tommy Noll, a popular City drummer, founded the band, then Reid Jaynes took the reins, followed by Jon Walton and finally Tommy Turk became top dog all within the span of a couple of years.

Trombonist Turk (who recorded with Buddy Rich, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald) joined the original quartet of pianist Jaynes (who had a double keyboard act with Erroll Garner at Al Mercur's), local drummer Noll, bassist Cliff Hill (who famously plucked the stand-up in the Benny Goodman flick "One O'Clock Jump") and tenor sax Walton (who blew with Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw). Bassist Joe Wallace (who also played in the PSO) is often considered an original member too, so it's likely the Deuces' roster was fluid from its inception.

Old Mon speculates that the band's name was taken from Artie Shaw's 1942 hit "Deuces Wild" and is credited by some to Dick Brosky. That tale's a coin flip since he wasn't an original member, but replaced Noll early on in the band's tenure. (Walton played with Shaw and helped found the band, so he seems a likelier suspect.) Then again, the phrase is common enough, so roll the dice...it could just as easily been determined during a little penny ante action.

Over the years, the Deuces Wild bandstand was home to a who's who of local jazz greats. Its regular musicians included trombonist Turk, sax players Fiorvante "Flo" Cassinelli & Walton, pianists Bobby Negri, Ray Crummie & Jaynes, bassists Danny "The Fox" Mastri, Harry Bush, Wallace & Hill, and drummers Arnold "Spider" Rondinelli, Carl Peticca, Brosky & Noll.

Cassinelli, Crummie, Jaynes, Negri, Rondinelli, Turk and Walton are all members of the Pittsburgh Jazz Society Hall of Fame. That's flexing a lot of jazz muscle for one band.

Other local luminaries either sat in as featured sidemen or were session players for the band. Some of the artists were vocalists Tiny Irwin & Jeanne Baxter, trumpeters Roy Eldridge & Hershey Cohen, pianists Chuck Cochran, Beverly Durso & Dodo Marmarosa, and drummers Art Blakey, Terry McCoy, Bill Price & Rodger Ryan.

They first played at Lenny Litman's Liberty Avenue Carnival Lounge after the war in the forties before moving on to his Penn Avenue Midway Lounge in 1950, becoming Pittsburgh's can't miss act. Billboard noted that the Deuces had "built up a fanatical following" by 1947. After their run in town, the group split into two in 1955 and changed venues (Harold Betters took over their gig at the Midway) but not names.

The breakup could have been caused by the dreaded "artistic differences," or perhaps by too many players for too few seats, or just maybe the schedule caught up to them. They played Monday through Saturday from 9-2 with Saturday matinees, their sets every hour, 40 minutes on, 20 off, and they were well known for their after-hours jams with the other cats.

Whatever the reason, Tommy Turk's version with Harry Bush, Dick Brosky and Jeanne Baxter headed to the South Hills and settled in at Brentwood's Point View Hotel on Brownsville Road. Flo Cassinelli's Deuces with Bobby Negri, Danny Mastri and Spider Rondinelli played the Hill jazz club circuit while summering at The Cowshed in the Conneaut Lake resort region.

Both Deuces' outfits co-existed just fine in Pittsburgh's small pond, unlike the bitter battles fought by groups riding today's oldie circuit. They all ran in the same circles and their daily bread was earned through non competitive bookings and not record royalties, eliminating most of the potential backsplash.

In the 1950s, the Cassinelli Deuces did self-release at least four 45s on their own vanity record label. The first record was released in 1955, and the band wrote the sides with the exception of Harry Jame's swing favorite "Ultra," which they recorded twice. The two slabs of wax we could trace were "Ultra" b/w "Down Home" and "Ultra" b/w "That’s All That Matters to Me." If you know of the others, give us a yell.

By the early 1960s, the Deuces Wild era had run its course. Turk's move to Vegas in 1959 was one trigger, though he did return home often to play until his death, while Cassinelli and Negri formed their own groups. In June, 1972, they had a final reunion gig during The Pittsburgh Jazz Festival, playing a tribute show for Roy Eldridge.

Couldn't find any band vids, so here's Artie Shaw's "Deuces Wild."

Chuck Austin: Keeper & Mainstay Of Pittsburgh Jazz History

Chuck Austin from Pittsburgh Musicians Union

Chuck Austin could play that horn.

A trumpeter who could blow jazz, big band, blues or soul equally sweet, Austin worked with Dakota Staton, Paul Williams, Ruby Younge (in 1953, the trio opened the Hurricane Lounge), Joe Westray (on brass player & later judge Warren Watson's recommendation), The Apollos (with Art Nance, Spider Lindsey, Doc Miller and Horace Parlan), Rogers Humphreys, Jack Purcell, George Gee Orchestra, Balcony Big Band, 'Burgh Big Band and OPEK.

He also backed some of the biggest names in music. Austin appeared with Lloyd Price on The Ed Sullivan Show (he also toured & recorded with him on the LP "Personality" after being hired on Hill trombonist Sam Hurt's word), Count Basie's last concert at the Savoy Ball Room on Centre Avenue in the Hill, Diana Ross at the Civic Arena and Liza Minnelli at Heinz Hall.

As a member of the Stanley Theater pit band, he played sweet soul music behind headliners like Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer, James Brown and The Temptations. Austin turned down a gig with The Ray Charles Revue in the sixties because he was tired of touring and wanted to stay home with his family.

That decision may have cost him a chance at the big time. Austin never did get on vinyl as a lead man, hidden in the brass section of bands or as a sideman. He had to hold a day job with his cleaning company to keep his clan fed and weekends free for music. But it paid big dividends for the local scene.

Always known as a true gentleman among brother players, Austin was a member and mentor of Local 471, the black musicians' union where he met running bud Stanley Turrentine. Not only did he hone his chops while jamming at the hall, but he helped the younger guys on their career road.

After the white Local #60 took in #471 in 1966 at the national union's prodding, Austin served as an ex-facto rep to the black players who didn't feel they were getting a very fair shake in the new set-up. Since 2003, he's served officially as a board member of the Pittsburgh Musician's Union 60-147.

The black union's demise led to Austin's tour de force, The African American Jazz Preservation Society of Pittsburgh, established in 1996 to save the history of jazz, blues and gospel musicians in the City. Austin was one of the founders and long time president.

The organization produces shows, a newsletter, collaborations with other artistic fields like dance and poetry, education programming, books and A/V presentations. One of the primary tools was an Austin-led effort to tape the oral histories of local jazz greats. They have about 75 completed now, stored at University of Pittsburgh Archives as part of the American Jazz Preservation Society of Pittsburgh Oral History Project.

In a turnabout-is-fair-play bit of justice, Austin's remembrances were recorded as part of the Smithsonian Jazz and Manchester Craftsman Guild Jazz Oral History Project. A portion of his interview recalling his upbringing is on youtube under "Chuck Austin Final." (see below)

While Austin, who began by playing at his hometown Ben Avon Elementary School band, swam in the small Pittsburgh pool (he later moved to the Hill), there's no denying he was a big fish in local waters. He's a member of the Pittsburgh Jazz Society Hall of Fame, was named as a Pittsburgh Jazz Legend by the Manchester Craftsman's Guild, and was honored by The City of Pittsburgh in 2011 when City Council proclaimed Chuck Austin Day.

Austin passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer in the early hours of Saturday at the Aspinwall Veterans Administration hospice at the age of 84. His going away ceremony will be held tomorrow at the Mt. Ararat Baptist Church on Paulson Avenue, where he'll be remembered as a family man and friend, leader, musician and historian.

There will be one more ceremony next month that he'll be at in spirit.

On June 23rd, a Pennsylvania historical marker will be dedicated in the Hill on a spot by the now-demolished offices of the African American Musicians Union Local 471. It took two years of toil by the African American Jazz Preservation Society of Pittsburgh to make it happen. And you can bet that one way or another, Chuck Austin will be there.

(Much of the article was written from bits and pieces from various sources across the web, but Steve Twedt's Post Gazette obit in particular provided tons of useful stuff that Old Mon shamelessly, uh, "borrowed.")

Sean Jones

Sean Jones
It's a Robert Frost kind of road, wending its way from Warren, Ohio to New York City and then to Pittsburgh, but it's the path Sean Jones chose, and the City jazz scene is richer for it.

Trumpeter Jones is a musician, composer, bandleader, and educator, and it all started in Warren, where he was born in 1978 and began whetting his musical chops by belting out gospel as a youngster. He knew music was his calling almost right from the start.

After graduating from Warren Harding High, Jones went on to Youngstown State, where he earned a degree in classical trumpet performance and then went on to win a master's degree from Rutgers University, where he studied under Professor William Fielder, who included Jones' future boss, Wynton Marsalis, among his students.

Jones started out as most do, as a session player, but in 2004, his stars aligned.

He was playing his horn at an Ohio gig, and Wes Anderson was in the audience, taking in the show. Anderson was more than a random jazz fan; he's an alto sax player for Wynton Marsalis' Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. After hearing a few of Jones' licks, Anderson called his boss in the wee hours after the performance and said “Brother Wynton, you got to hear this cat.”

Jones got an interview with Marsalis and a six-month internship with the orchestra. When that was up, he was offered the first chair in Marsalis’ hand-groomed ensemble. He still plays with the internationally renown band and joins them for three month-long worldwide tours each year.

He also released his first of five and counting albums ("Eternal Journey") as a band leader for the Grosse Pointe Farms-based jazz label Mack Avenue Records. Pretty heady stuff for a kid in his mid twenties.

In 2005, Pittsburgh sax man Mike Tomaro, who is also the head honcho of jazz studies at Duquesne, hired Jones as an artist-in-residence. The following year, Jones joined Duquesne as a professor.

It's a hire that's been nothing but roses for the City jazz scene. Jones settled in by moving to Robinson Township, and his local presence made an immediate impact. His life is about music, and he haunts the area jazz clubs, sitting in on jams with any player who will have him - and who wouldn't? He performs in the City. He lectures and sits in on jazz workshops.

And in Jones' most notable move, he brought back the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra in 2009, now serving as its artistic director. The ensemble is the resident 16-member big band of the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, loosely based on the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. He picked up the pieces from Pitt prof and brass player Dr. Nathan Davis, who originally formed the band in 1986, but saw it splinter because of financial pressures.

The trumpeter performs with his own groups both nationally and internationally, in addition to his gig with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Jones plays at music venues and jazz festivals such as the Monterey Jazz Festival, Detroit International Jazz Festival and Montreal International Jazz Festival.

He teaches, performs with the Louis Armstrong Legacy University, and worked with the Chico O'Farrill Orchestra, the Gerald Wilson Orchestra, the Illinois Jacquet Band, Charles Fambrough (he's featured on the bassist's "Live At Zanzibar Blue" record), Joe Lovano, Tom Harrell, Jon Faddis, Jimmy Heath, Frank Foster, Tia Fuller, Brad Leali and the International Jazz Quintet.

And let's not forget his own band, the Sean Jones Sextet, that plays from Montreal to Monterey, Paris to London, and from Bonn to Istanbul. He's about due for another Mack Avenue album. In fact, his life style led to one of the cuts on his latest release, 2009's "The Search Within."

The track is called "Sunday Reflections," and was written while he was traveling from New York to Pittsburgh.

He's been recognized a few times along the road, too: in 2006 and 2007, he was selected as Downbeat Magazine's "Rising Star." In 2007, Jones was picked as JazzTimes Magazine Reader's Poll "Best New Artist," and also that year, he was featured on the Grammy Award-winning "Turned to Blue" by Nancy Wilson.

Many consider Jones to be this generation's heir-apparent to jazz trumpet players like Louis Armstrong and company. And hey, he won't be 32 until May.


Sean Jones (he's the big guy) and Marcus Printup dueling trumpets

Jeff "Tain" Watts

Jeff "Tain" Watts, photo by Oliver Link
Pittsburgh has been blessed with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to drummers - Art Blakey, Kenny Clarke, Vinnie Colaiuta, Roger Humphries, J. C. Moses and a pack of others that are internationally known behind the kit. Let's add one more name to the list: Jeff "Tain" Watts.

Born in 1960, he was raised in the Hill District's Sugartop neighborhood, attending Madison Elementary before graduating from East Allegheny High in North Versailles after the family moved. (He's so Pittsburgh that he even slipped a Terrible Towel in on the album cover of the Branford Marsalis Quartet's 2006 "Bragg-town" CD.)

Watts got rolling at Duquesne, where he majored in classical percussion, primarily as a timpanist under the eye of Dave Stock. That's where he really got his start, playing in a band with Dwayne Dolphin, Geri Allen, Tony Campbell and Joseph Callins, performing in the City jazz houses.

The drummer transfered to the Berklee School of Music, where he pursued jazz studies. There were a pretty good bunch of classmates in Beantown to hang with, too. He honed his craft with players such as Branford Marsalis, Kevin Eubanks, Greg Osby, Aimee Mann, and Steve Vai.

He joined the Wynton Marsalis Quartet in 1981, picking up three Grammy Awards with the ensemble before leaving the group in 1988. After working with George Benson, Harry Connick. Jr. and McCoy Tyner, he joined the Branford Marsalis Quartet in 1989. Hey, guess what? Two more Grammys.

For you trivia buffs, Watts is the only musician to appear on every Grammy Award winning jazz record by both Wynton and Branford Marsalis.

Watts played in Kenny Garrett's band when he returned to New York in 1995 after three years in LA. He also recorded and toured with Branford Marsalis again, as well as with Michael Brecker, Betty Carter, Kenny Kirkland, Geri Allen, Alice Coltrane, Greg Osby and Ravi Coltrane among others. Watts' has recorded over 120 albums as a sideman.

His own band keeps him busy enough. The Jeff Tain Watts Quartet (Jean Toussaint, sax, James Genus, acoustic bass, David Kikoski, piano, and Watts on the skins) plays coast-to-coast, from the Village Vanguard in NY to the Triple Door in Seattle, along with recent side trips to Russia, Scotland and the Netherlands.

Watts also has shown up to give a hand to the Dave Pellow's Carnegie Mellon Jazz Ensembles, and isn't shy about popping up on the home turf to perform or participate in a workshop every so often.

He's released six of his own LPs as a leader (he writes most of the band's songs; he's also a noted jazz composer), the last trio on his own Dark Key Music label. The latest is this year's "Family." And the label landed him another Grammy. Dark Key Music was a 2010 Grammy Award Winner for Best Instrumental Solo, by Terence Blanchard on the release "Dancin' 4 Chicken."

But don't quit counting the Grammys quite yet; he just won one more as part of the "Mingus Big Band Live at Jazz Standard" record which recently was recognized as the "Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album."

Watts has worked in film and TV, too, as both a musician on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno (that was his La-La Land gig) and as an actor, playing Rhythm Jones in Spike Lee’s "Mo Better Blues," and contributing some music for the flick. He also had roles in "Throw Momma From the Train" and "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air."

And his work has been duly recognized. "Modern Drummer" magazine voted him the best drummer twice.

His nickname? He was dubbed “Tain” by Kenny Kirkland when they were on tour in Florida and drove past a Chieftain gas station; Jeff Tain somehow was born from Chief-tain. Guess you had to be there. But he must like it; the adjective "Tainish" is now an accepted part of the jazz jargon.

Hey, the Big Apple may be where Jeff Watts hangs his hat now, but Pittsburgh is his home. And with him and guys like Cecil Brooks around to pass the drum torch on, the jazz circle here should remain unbroken for quite a spell.


Jeff "Tain" Watts - "Return of the Jitney Man" from the 2009 CD "Watts"

Tony Mowod

Tony Mowod from Public Broadcasting Guide
Hey, jazz in Pittsburgh has a long and storied legacy with enough greats to fill a Leo Tolstoy novel. And there's no danger of it slipping away from the City's affection, at least as long as Tony Mowod is around to carry its torch.

Born Najeba Samreny (Mowod is his pap's first name), the son of Lebanese immigrants, he grew up in the Hill and lived above "John's," his dad's restaurant, located on the corner of Bedford and Washington avenues.

Mowod went to Epiphany grade school in the Lower Hill, across from the Civic Arena, and was taught piano by the Mercy nuns. From there, he went off to Central Catholic, where he developed his taste for jazz and starting taking vibraphone lessons. After graduating, Mowod crossed the street from his old elementary school and enrolled at Duquesne.

Jazz and the stage wrestled for his attention in those days. He was a player with the university's Red Masque and spun a jazz show at WDUQ. Mowod eventually dropped out of the Bluff school to chase his acting dreams in the Big Apple. But music and scripts kept their tug-of-war tensions pulling on his soul.

Chuck Grodin was his roomie for a while, and he trod the stage in off-Broadway roles. Hey, he was even one of the finalists for the "Uncle Tanoose" role on the Danny Thomas TV show.

He had a 9-to-5 office gig to pay the rent, and played the vibraphone three nights a week with a trio. But he left New York to come home and get married, fully intending to return and make a grab for the brass ring.

We know how that works out in real life. Mowod's roots took hold, and he raised his family here. That's a familiar story for Pittsburgh musicians; the City has been blessed in that many of its artists stepped into the glare of the bright lights and decided home was where their heart was, after all.

Mowod worked in local radio, but his bread-winner was running supper clubs. He operated the Cedars Lounge, the Vogue Terrace Dinner Theater, which burned down (both were in East McKeesport), and finally Antonio's, a Downtown bistro.

It closed in 1976, and Mowod was broke. He became a Servico manager while doing a weekend jazz show on WAMO after stints at WAZZ, WTAE, WKPA and WYDD (he was named the “Radio Personality of the Year” from 1967-69).

The next decade was a struggle, but by the late eighties it all came together when his jazz show on WDUQ took off and the Pittsburgh Jazz Society, his brainchild, was born.

He's spent the past couple of decades producing and broadcasting "The Night Side" jazz show, one of WDUQ's mainstay programs. It's been syndicated since 1997 as JazzWorks and reaches some 60 markets. Mowod's Quincy Jones' theme of "The Quintessence" is followed by jazz that's in tune with the average jazz joe.

That's earned him an occasional potshot for shunning the be-bop and avant garde artists and not pushing local players more heavily. But what he spins works; mainstream jazz has always been pooh-poohed by the hardcore followers, though it's what the majority of listeners want to hear. You can't please all the people all the time...but 95% of them is a pretty good catch.

But a darker cloud looms. Whether there will be a Mowod show to tune into at all in the future is the $64,000 question. WYEP's purchase of the station has raised concerns about WDUQ's continued commitment to jazz programming, and the end result is yet to be determined, or at least announced.

While the status of Night Side may be up in the air, the PJS will be around no matter what. Its mission statement says it all "...(an) all volunteer organization, dedicated to the promotion, preservation and perpetuation of all jazz. This is accomplished through education, performance, partnering and community outreach for members and the general public."

And it does all that.

Since Mowod founded it in 1987, the organization has a web site, started a Pittsburgh Jazz Hall of Fame and awarded over a quarter of a million dollars in scholarship money to student musicians, raised through dues and events.

They've held a Winter JazzFest, Jazz Cruises on the Gateway Clipper, Caribbean Cruises, the "Jazz Train," "Jazz Day in the Park," a smorgasbord of concerts, and been recognized by both the Allegheny County Commissioners and Pittsburgh City Council - and you know how often they agree on anything.

Mowod himself has received his share of recognition; he's earned more awards than Old Mon has gray hairs (and that's more than your fingers and toes can tote up, unless you're related to a centipede). Here's a select list:

California University of Pennsylvania awarded him the “Excellence in Jazz Promotion Award” for both 1989 and 1990. In 1992, he was presented with a plaque by the River City Brass Band for “Outstanding Contribution to the Growth and Development of Jazz.” In 1998 he was honored as the "Radio Entertainer of the Year" by Showtime. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette selected Mowod as one of the "Top 50 Cultural Power Brokers of Pittsburgh" in 1998, 1999 and 2000.

In 2000, he was chosen by Vectors/Pittsburgh as the “Man of the Year in Arts and Music” and received the Harry Schwalb "Excellence in the Arts Award for Jazz" by Pittsburgh magazine. In 2001 he was the recipient of the “Outstanding Achievement in Broadcasting Award for Radio” of the Pittsburgh Radio and Television Club. In 2003, he was again picked as one of the "Top 50 Cultural Forces in Pittsburgh" by the PPG. In 2004 Mowod was inducted into the Pittsburgh Jazz Hall of Fame.

In 2007 he took home the Talk Magazine/Walt Harper "All that Jazz" award, in 2009 he was named a "Champion of Jazz" by the Washington Jazz Society, and last year he was honored as a Jefferson Awards winner for his work with the Pittsburgh Jazz Society.

As always, if you want something done, find a busy man to do it. Mowod is also an Adjunct Professor of Jazz History at Duquesne University School of Music, and serves on the boards of the American Federation of Jazz Societies and Pittsburgh First Night, along with being an advisor for Pitt's Center for Latin American Studies.

And he's never quite shaken the acting bug; he still does summer stock plays. To pass the time, he also writes liner notes for local jazz releases and is active in church projects.

Busy dude, that Tony Mowod, and that's a good thing for Pittsburgh's current jazz scene and also its legendary players of the past. As he reminds his audience, "Keep a bit of love in your heart, and a taste of jazz in your soul." He's living proof of what that can accomplish.

Walt Harper

Walt Harper
Hey, Pittsburgh has been home to some of the world's greatest jazz players. And a lot of them have stayed home to play their music, too many to mention. But the guy that's arguably the most synonymous with jazz in the City may be none other than Walt Harper.

Harper was a jazz pianist, club owner, recording artist and producer while living in his hometown of Pittsburgh throughout virtually all of his sixty year musical journey.

He was born on July 3rd, 1926, the sixth of eight children. His dad Charles owned a home contracting and building business while his mom Lucinda was a homemaker with her own home-based beauty shop located on Clarissa Street in Schenley Heights, a middle-class neighborhood in the Upper Hill.

Harper didn't take to hammers and saws (or curlers, for that matter), but he did show an early interest in music. His parents were supportive as they were with all the kids, and his brothers Ernie and Nate ended up pretty fair musicians, too.

Ernie was a pianist and Nate a tenor saxophonist who would one day join his brother Walt's quartet. Walt credited older bro Ernie, who became a jazz fixture in Chicago, with being his earliest musical influence on the piano. Ernie was already playing piano around Pittsburgh with young drummer Art Blakey, a fair jazz player himself.

Harper went to Oakland's Schenley High School as did two of his best friends, bassist Ray Brown and saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, the Sugar Man. Harper played valve trombone in the all-city band, but switched to piano. He was also a member of the Swinging Five, a jazz group he founded with Brown.

As teenagers, Harper and Brown would shoot hooky and go across town to Homewood and Errol Garner's house to listen to him play the piano. Garner would have music scores piled on the keyboards; the school-skipping pair never realized that he couldn't read music and was playing by ear.

After graduating from high school in 1947, he studied at the Pittsburgh Musical Institute and the University of Pittsburgh for a couple of years. Harper then led a 10-piece band on the road from 1949 to 1954. The group appeared all over the East and Midwest with artists like Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughan and George Shearing. But Harper never took to the road and came back home to stay.

Harper built a following by playing fraternity gigs and the tri-state area college circuit. Early on in his local career, he picked up the nickname "The Prom King" because his band played so many high school and college dates.

He was equally popular at the Mt. Lebanon High School as he was at the House, and throughout his playing days would entertain a racially mixed audience. In fact, the Courier's Teenie Harris photo collection shows white teens dancing to Harper's tune in the fifties.

In 1958, Harper's band started a gig at the popular Crawford Grill in the Hill District as the club's house band. It would run for over a decade during the fifties and sixties. The same fraternity guys and high school kids that he played for earlier followed him in droves to the Crawford.

At the same time, he began producing jazz festivals at the Hilton Hotel Ballroom in the early 1960s, selling out concerts by Carmen McRae, Chico Hamilton and the Ramsey Lewis Trio.

Later in the decade, he joined forces with the Catholic Youth Organization in producing larger festivals at the Civic Arena, featuring the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Thelonius Monk, Cannonball Adderley, the John Coltrane Quartet, and the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra with Joe Williams among other acts.

Harper remained at the Crawford until 1969 when he opened his own club, Walt Harper's Attic, downtown in Market Square up a flight of stairs above a State store. Don't laugh; it ended up the perfect spot for a club.

He did a lot of his own work. First, there was no problem with generating goodwill with the City's jazz fans. He had a photographic memory, remembered names, even if he hadn't seen someone for years, and had a big smile for one and all. Plus he started with that built-in cadre of followers from the Crawford.

And he wasn't afraid to do a little personal tub-thumping. Harper made his rounds in those early days, personally delivering his publicity blurbs and photos to the newspaper desks each week.

Harper brought in the biggest names of jazz. Stan Getz, Ramsey Lewis, Dizzy Gillespie, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Joe Williams and Cannonball Adderley, along with local stars Billy Eckstine, Maxine Sullivan, Roy Eldridge, Ahmad Jamal, and his high school buds Turrentine and Brown graced the Attic.

He would pay those cats to improvise, while Harper, from his piano stool, led his band and played mainstream, get-down-and-boogie jazz jams between sets. A couple of his more popular tunes were "I'll Drink to That" and "It's My Pleasure," but there's no question that his signature song was "Satin Doll," a tune he played so often that many Pittsburghers thought he, not Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn, wrote the tune.

During the first year of operation, Harper had the doormen keep a count of the Attic customers coming up the stairs. They totaled more than 250,000, many of them repeat visits, and it was nothing to see a line snaking around the block to get into the club. And many were well known folk like Terry Bradshaw, L.C. Greenwood and Connie Hawkins, adding some cachet to the joint.

Things went swimmingly until 1976, when after seven years, Harper noisily bumped heads with his partners and sold the Attic. He took the time to perform and do his own projects, but he was back in business soon enough when he opened Harper's Jazz Club downstairs of the Grant Street Oxford Center in 1982.

The Club drew corporate and politco clientele in keeping with Harper's desire to move jazz from the back rooms to the mainstream.

Among the musicians featured at both of Harper's clubs were: Cannonball Adderley, Max Roach, Nancy Wilson, Mel Tormé, Wynton Marsalis, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Joe Williams, George Shearing, Carmen McCrae and Lionel Hampton; there were many others.

Harper found that the days of the downtown clubs were ending. It was just too hard to put together a business model to cover building and appearance expenses, and he pulled the plug on the Jazz Club in 1988.

And hey, it's not like he couldn't use the time off from the club hamster wheel. He honed his tennis game, and became one of the top celebrity players in the area, achy knees and all. Try doing that while you're running a club by day and a band by night.

Professionally, Harper performed up and down the East Coast, led jazz workshops and cultural programs, recorded, appeared numerous times on national and local TV, received awards, wrote and composed music (he scored a ballet for Dance Alloy)...oh, and he had that Steeler gig, too.

In the seventies, Harper and his group "All That Jazz" were hired by the Rooneys to play as the house band for the Steeler home games, a job they held until 2002. Ya think Three Rivers Stadium was a big enough room for the showman?

"Walt Harper at Fallingwater," filmed at the Kaufmann Home which was designed by Frank Lloyd-Wright, was aired nationally on WQED/PBS in 1975, and Harper was nominated for a local Emmy award for his performance.

Harper recorded four CD’s on his own Birmingham label with his lifelong friend Ray Brown. They were "West Coast On Line," produced by Ray Brown with arrangements by John Clayton; "Gee Baby Ain’t I Good To You," co-produced with Ray Brown and John Clayton; "In Very Good Company" with Ray Brown, Stanley Turrentine and Cecil Brooks III, and "Be My Guest" with Ray Brown and Stanley Turrentine.

Earlier in his career Harper recorded several other albums, "Eddie Jefferson With the Walt Harper Quintet," "Night Thoughts," "Walt Harper at Fallingwater," "Live at the Attic," "On the Road," "The College Jazz Beat," and "Harper's Ferry."

Heck, while we were searching we also found a bit of LP vinyl called "Open Pantry Presents Christmas Eve With Walt Harper" from 1974, which brings us up to an even dozen records for the jazzman.

He was recognized for his work with a variety of awards and honors. Harper was named as the 2006 Musician’s Union Man of the Year Award; was a recipient of the 2004 Harry Schwab Excellence in the Arts Award, and in 2001, he received the Mellon Jazz Community Award for his contributions to the jazz community. Harper was also posthumously recognized by Pittsburgh City Council, and The Legacy apartments across from the Crawford Grill building feature his mural inside along with the other jazz greats from the City.

Harper, who resided in Point Breeze, went to his reward suddenly on October 25th, 2006. He suffered a reported heart attack and died en route to UPMC Shadyside. He was 80 years old at the time (and he probably hated that his true age finally came out; he was famous for knocking five years or a decade off the years he spent on this mortal coil).

Active until the end, Harper was fully booked for the following year at jazz halls in Pittsburgh and the surrounding area. Harper is survived by his wife, Maggie Harper, and his only daughter from his first marriage, Sharynn Harper, a New York based writer/independent producer.

The Walt Harper Jazz Music Education Fund was established in Harper's memory to recognize youth (particularly in the Pittsburgh area) who show outstanding talent and promise in the jazz field.


Walt Harper and Kenny Blake - "The Real Thing"

Harold Betters

Harold Betters
Harold Betters was born on March 21, 1928 in Connellsville, the son of Robert and Lela who ran one of the area's hottest jazz spots, Betters' Grill and Hotel.

One of seven children, (brothers George, Jimmy, and Jerome ended up performing professionally; all the Betters kids played instruments), Betters took to music - specifically, the trombone - at a young age, emulating JJ Johnson and Tommy Dorsey.

He led his own local quartet which included pianist John Thomas and brother Jerome (aka "Jerry" or "Romy") Betters on drums. Betters then studied music education at Ithaca College for two years after high school, and then served a year's residency at Brooklyn's Conservatory of Music.

Betters was drafted in 1950, and played in the 308th Army Band for two years. He claims that service tour is when he really learned how to play music. Betters lived briefly in New York City after his discharge before returning to Western Pennsylvania. In fact, he still lives in Connellsville today.

It was a welcome return. Along with Walt Harper, Harold Betters was the face of local jazz in the sixties and seventies and one of the City's must-see acts.

And it's not just a case of big fish/small pond syndrome; Betters can blow his horn. He's performed with Satchmo, Al Hirt, Slide Hampton, Ramsey Lewis, and Urbie Green. The Harold Betters Quartet toured with Ray Charles and appeared with Dick Gregory at New York's Apollo Theater.

Beside the local jazzfests, Betters has also played on the big stages, like the Kool Jazz Festival. He's also given command performances for the late Happy Warrior, Hubert Humphrey, and Cleveland mayor Carl Stokes.

He's been on "The Tonight Show," "The Merv Griffin Show," and "The Mike Douglas Show," as well as on local TV programs in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and San Francisco.

Betters has released over a dozen albums, and has to be considered one of the more commercially successful jazzmen based in Pittsburgh. His 1964 single "Do Anything You Wanna," released on Gateway, cracked the Top 100 and peaked at #74.

The first LP he did was fittingly enough "At The Encore" from 1962, reissued on CD as "Harold Betters Remembers the Encore." It led off the Gateway label Jazz Series; Betters would cut nine LPs for them.

He added three more discs for Reprise, a couple more from his own HB label, and a greatest hits collection on Spotlite to go with a handful of singles. All-in-all, Betters did pretty dang well as a recording artist.

But ask anyone who knew the club scene during that time, and they'll connect Betters with Wil Shiner's Shadyside Encore in a heartbeat. He played there so often that it became known as "The House that Betters Built." In fact, Betters has performed more recently at Cozumel in a homecoming of sorts; the space below the restaurant once was the Encore.

He was also a regular at the Holiday House and his late brother Jerry's club, the Crescendo in Oakland. And if you missed him there, well...

For a couple of decades, Betters led a jazz band which provided game day entertainment, mainly at Three Rivers Stadium, for the Pittsburgh Steelers, joining the team for a Superbowl trip or two. His players provided the musical accompaniment to the crowd's roar of "Here We Go Steelers, Here We Go..." and "Defense, Defense..."

Betters has entertained at Pirate and Pen games, too. He's the answer to this local sports trivia question: "Who played for the Pirates, Penguins and Steelers in the same year?"

But if you're not a sports fan, no worries: Betters can be heard on jazz radio stations and in many area clubs and venues; he's 82 and still gigging, even overcoming a bout of Bell's Palsy in 2008. And teaching, too. He's held shows and working seminars at Pitt, IUP, Penn State and West Virginia.

He's collected his fair share of accolades over the years. Betters was selected in the Playboy Jazz Poll as one of the best trombonists in the country, and as "Mr. Versatility" by Downbeat Magazine. He's also been named "Man of the Year in Music" by the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce and was inducted into the Pittsburgh Jazz Hall of Fame.

His success in this City is because he fused together its two most endearing and enduring musical forms, jazz and R&B with a blazing trombone and minimal vocals. Betters plays jazz standards, show tunes, and current hits arranged for a quartet and delivered in a soulful "hard bop" style, closer to Motown than Monterey. It's just the way Pittsburgh likes its music served.

LP Discography:

At The Encore (1962) Gateway
Takes Off (1963) Gateway
Even Better (1964) Gateway
Meets Slide Hampton (1964) Gateway
Yesterday, Today, And All Of My Tomorrows ???? Gateway
The Big Horn ???? H.B. Records
Swingin' On The Railroad (1965) Gateway
Ram-Bunk-Shush (1965) Reprise
Do Anything You Want To (1966) Gateway
Out Of Sight And Sound (1966) Reprise
Funk City Express (1966) Reprise
Christmas Album (1967) Gateway
Jazz Showcase (1977) Gateway
Best Of Betters (2000) Spotlite
With Friends, Live In New York (2001) H.B. Records

Selected Single Discography:

Do Anything You Wanna/All Alone (Gateway) 1964 (also released on Sue - 1965)
Stand By Me (Gateway) ????
Railroad/Dirty Red (Gateway) 1965
Moving Out (Gateway) 1966
Tall Girl (Gateway) 1966
All Alone (Gateway) 1966
Ram-Bunk-Shush (Reprise) 1966 (also released on Gateway)
Hot Tamale Man (Reprise) 1967
Papa-Ooh-MauMau (Warner Music UK) 2003


Harold Betters - "Tall Girl" (1966)

Johnny Costa

Johnny Costa
Johnny Costa is another in a long string of Pittsburgh musicians who decided that the road wasn't the life and came home to play. It may have put his light under a basket nationally, but make no mistake - Costa was one of the top jazz pianists of this era, even though he eschewed modern fusion-style jazz forms and stuck to the standards, playing the music of Berlin, Gershwin, Kern, mercer, Porter, and Rogers & Hart.

Born in 1922 in Arnold, an Allegheny River town 20 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, Costa never roamed far from his birthplace.

Costa's dad was an immigrant coal miner, and he wanted his kids to lead a life that kept their hands clean and back straight. At age five, Costa began playing the violin. When he was ten, his neighbor Fred Petri taught Costa to play the accordion.

Costa's father actually sold his house so he could buy his son a $500 accordion. Costa credited that early training with developing his skills with the right hand.

But when he reached high school, his music teacher, Frank Oliver, suggested that Costa dump the squeeze box and switch to the piano. The idea made sense to Costa, and after he heard some Art Tatum recordings, he was sold.

He taught himself to play Tatum's songs (in fact, Tatum himself would one day dub Costa "The White Tatum"), and his first teacher, Martin Meissler, came to Arnold a couple of times a week to coach him. And Meissler knew his stuff; he was Oscar Levant's piano teacher, too. Costa's left hand soon caught up to his right.

Costa joined the New York City-based clarinetist and bandleader Tommy Reynolds and his orchestra after graduating from high school. He returned to Pittsburgh soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor to marry his sweetheart Helen before leaving for the Army.

He was a corpsman in the "Tough Hombre" 90th Division, and took part in the brutal Utah Beach assault on D-Day. Within a few months, rheumatic fever sent him to a series of military hospitals for a year.

Discharged from the army, Costa auditioned for admission to the music department at Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie-Mellon University. He played Antonín Dvořák's "Humoresque" ala Tatum before a school panel. A music committee member reportedly said afterward "That was not 'Humoresque,' Mr. Costa, but what you played was wonderful. Of course, we'll accept you."

At Carnegie Tech, he studied music composition under Nicolai Lopatnicoff, a composer of the central European avant-garde style. Costa's personal influences were classical composers, particularly Bach, Beethoven and Chopin, and straight-ahead jazzmen Tatum and Fats Waller. The mash-up created Costa's great and unique style.

He earned two bachelor's degrees at CMU, in music composition and music education. Costa's been quoted as saying he needed the sheepskins "in case I was a flop as a professional musician." Fat chance of that happening, but better safe than sorry.

On the day he graduated in 1951, Costa began a sixteen year stint as musical director of KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh. He played the organ for "Meet Your Neighbor." On Josey Carey's "Funsville," he created the memorable character of Indian Mary, who wore a straw hat with two braids hanging out and a huge feather in back, chewed on a cigar, played the piano, and never said a word. Costa also starred on his own show, "The Wonderful World of Johnny Costa," where he spotlighted a composer and played his songs.

During the fifties, in addition to his TV duties, the Johnny Costa Trio with Jim DeJulio (bass) and Chuck Spatafore (drums), rode the MCA circuit, playing in Chicago, Detroit, Miami and New York several times a year. Costa was on Steve Allen's "Tonight Show."

The busy pianist also recorded for NYC labels Coral and Savoy. "Johnny Costa Plays Piano Solos" (1955), "Johnny Costa Plays for the Most Beautiful Girl in the World" (1955), "Costa Living" (1955), "A Gallery of Gershwin" (1958) and "In My Own Quiet Way" (1959) were released by Coral; "Introducing Johnny Costa" (1955) and "The Amazing Johnny Costa" (1955) (reissued on CD as "Neighborhood" in 1989) were on Savoy. Sadly, they're all out of print.

But recording and touring weren't Costa's bag. Before the decade of the fifties closed, he quit a brief stint in Philadelphia as the musical director of Mike Douglas' weekday show and returned to Pittsburgh for keeps. Costa was tired of living out of a suitcase, and he and Helen had two kids, Debbie and John Junior, to raise. He gave up chasing the brass ring to sink his roots deep into home turf.

He gigged regularly at Mercur’s, a downtown club which had featured jazz players like Erroll Garner, at the William Penn hotel, and he still had his KDKA duties. But his KD days were soon to end when he found a new TV challenge in 1967.

That's when "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" first aired. Costa became the show's musical director. His music opened and closed the program, he arranged the music, accompanied guests, and added background melodies during the show's segments.

Costa met Fred Rogers five years before the show was a thought through Josey Carey. When Rogers began planning "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood," he offered Costa $5,000 to arrange, conduct, and play the music for 100 episodes. Costa accepted the job in a heartbeat. At the time, he needed exactly that amount to pay his son's college tuition. God works in mysterious ways.

Who knew that it would end up the most successful children's show ever broadcast, and that Costa would be introducing generations of kids to jazz improvisations? There were no kiddie ditties played on MRN; neither Rogers nor Costa would condescend to their audience, young as it may have been, that much.

None of the music was canned, Rogers allowed him complete freedom, and Costa, along with "Handyman" Joe Negri, created a playlist that led Branford Marsalis to say "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood is the best jazz show on the air anywhere."

Costa and Rogers collaborated frequently on the show's music, with Costa harmonizing and arranging Rogers’ melodies. It's well known that Fred Rogers had degrees in psychology and theology, but maybe not so well known that he also had a degree in music composition.

In the seventies, Costa recorded on a string of LPs released by Rogers featuring Pittsburgh jazzmen like Negri, Bobby Boswell and other contributors.

The first, in fact, was released in 1967, when The Johnny Costa Trio (now with Carl McVicker on bass and Bob Rawsthorne doing percussion, both who performed with him on MRN) on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood Records with tunes like “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Like his other LPs, it's no longer available.

It was a match made in heaven. Rogers got first class musicians, while Costa (and Negri) got steady work, a regular paycheck, and some notoriety to allow them to maintain a club and concert schedule of their chosing.

He was appreciated by his hometown boys for his outside work, too. The City Theater honored Costa as the first recipient of its Performance Award, presented to an outstanding performing artist from western Pennsylvania. The presentation featured performances by Dick Hyman and Peter Nero. Costa was also elected to the Hall of Fame of the Pittsburgh Jazz Society.

Oh, about his discography. Dick Hyman, jazz pianist, keyboardist, composer and Costa admirer, contacted Hank O'Neal, president of Chiaroscuro Records (which had recorded Mary Lou Williams and Earl Hines), and sent him an unlabeled cassette of Costa recordings in 1990.

O'Neal signed Costa after a brief listen, and released four recordings: "Classic Costa" (1992 - American songbook tunes), "Flying Fingers" (1992 - jazz standards), "A Portrait of George Gershwin" (1994 - Gershwin), and "Dream" (1996 - Johnny Mercer).

Heck, even his liner notes are classics. They were written by folk like Elsie and Henry Hillman and Henry Mancini. Along with L&M Records 1997 release of "Christmas Reflections," these LPs are all that's left of Costa's musical legacy.

Johnny Costa died of anemia at the age of 74 on October 11th, 1996.

His personal legacy is that of a regular joe. Costa lived within a few miles of his family home, and used to meet his high school music teacher for breakfast. He never had an agent; Costa just gave out his phone number - unchanged for 30 years - and booked his own gigs. His kids lived nearby. A beautiful musician and beautiful person is how his friends and family describe him. And they're right.

Kenny Klook Clarke

Kenny Clark picture by Karlheinz Klüter from Drummerworld
Kenneth Spearman Clarke was born on Wylie Avenue in Pittsburgh's Hill District on January 9, 1914, to Charles Spearman and Martha Grace Scott. Martha was a pianist, and taught her boy how to tickle the ivories.

But when Clarke was only six and a half years old, his mother died, and his father left the family. He and his older brother Chuck were sent to the Coleman Industrial Home for Abandoned Children to be raised.

At Coleman, Clarke's interest in music grew, and he learned to play the drum, trombone and vibraphone as well as music theory and composition. He first started playing snare drums with the school marching band at the age of twelve.

Around age seventeen, he began to work professionally in Pittsburgh with bands led by Leroy Bradley and George Hornsby. Hornsby's band was taken over by Pittsburgh natives Roy Eldridge and his brother Joe and became the Eldridge Brothers' Rhythm Team.

In 1934, while performing in Cincinnati, Clarke ran into members of Andy Kirk’s band who were stranded when Kirk disbanded his group. One of the artists was East Liberty native Mary Lou Williams. Impressed by Clarke's play, Williams suggested that he audition for the Jeter-Pillars band in St Louis.

Williams even drove Clarke to St. Louis on her way back to Kansas City, and he got the job. He toured around the Midwest for several years with the band, which also featured bassist Jimmy Blanton and guitarist Charlie Christian. By 1935, Clarke was a frequent visitor to New York, where he eventually moved.

By this time, he got bored of playing like Buddy Rich and the other big band bangers, keeping time on the bass drum. He took the main beat away from the bass drum and put it up on the ride cymbal (the single cymbal generally on the drummer's right side). The bass drum was then used for providing accents instead of the beat, or "dropping bombs" as it was called by the players.

It basically took timekeeping away from the bass and allowed the drummer to interact with the rest of the band instead of just boom-boom-booming along. The drum became an instrument instead of a mere metronome. It may sound like a simple innovation, but it placed Clarke in the be-bop triumvirate of holies, along with Max Roach and Pittsburgh's Art Blakey.

In New York, he worked in groups led by Edgar Hayes and Lonnie Smith, and began honing his drumming concepts. Working a little later for big band leader Ted Hill, he was actually fired for "dropping bombs" during the set. He was obviously a man ahead of his time.

But Hill would soon give Clarke an opportunity to father be-bop. One year later he called Clarke and asked him to organize a band for Minton's, a club he was managing on 118th street in Harlem.

Clarke hired pianist Thelonious Monk along with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian, and Charlie Parker as regular players, and that was the birth of be-bop and later, modern jazz.

He still sat in with the traditional music-makers of the time, like Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and the combos of Benny Carter, Red Allen and Coleman Hawkins; he also recorded with Sidney Bechet.

Clarke was drafted into the Army in mid-1943. Like many musicians, Clarke didn't take to the structure of Army life (the only bombs he cared to drop were from behind his kit), and went AWOL for 107 days, during which time he managed to gig with Dinah Washington and Cootie Williams. Make music, not war.

He did eventually serve out his time and returned to New York in 1946. By this time, he had converted to Islam and taken the name Liaquat Ali Salaam. In 1944, Clarke married singer Carmen McRae when she visited him on an Army base in Alabama, and their marriage lasted until 1956.

Clarke worked with Dizzy Gillespie's big band and led his own sessions; he co-wrote "Epistrophy" with Monk and "Salt Peanuts" with Gillespie. Clarke spent the late '40s in Europe, and drummed for Billy Eckstine when he was in the U.S. And he picked up a nickname, too.

The combination of a rim shot on the snare followed by a bass drum accent was known by jazzmen as a "Klook-mop", an imitation of the sound it produced (otherwise known as onomatopoeia, to those who stayed awake during English class).

Clarke's nickname of Klook was immortalized by "Oop Bop Sh'Bam," a song recorded by Dizzy Gillespie in 1946 with Clarke on drums, where the scat lyric to the bebop tune goes "oop bop sh'bam a klook a mop." Guess who the klook doing the mopping was?

In 1951, Clarke was a member of the Milt Jackson Quartet, comprised of himself, Milt Jackson (vibes), John Lewis (piano), and Ray Brown (bass), all musicians he had met through Mintons.

After a gig, the guys were driving home together in Jackson's car, vaguely dissatisfied with the music they were playing. They put their heads together, and the Milt Jackson Quartet had become the Modern Jazz Quartet by the time Jackson parked his Caddy. And they didn't even have to change their MJQ monogram.

Lewis become the quartet's musical director, and the group pioneered what would later be called "third stream", an alternative to the hard-bop blues then in vogue.

Clarke stayed with the MJQ until 1955, when he felt somewhat trapped by the genre, and began contemplating a move to Paris, a place he fell in love with during his European tours of the 1940s. He filled the time with studio work during 1955-56, the results being preserved on a 4-disc retrospective titled "Kenny Clarke: Klook's The Man."

He made the move to Paree in 1956, at the urging of pianist and composer Michel Legrand. Clarke was drawn by the slower paced life style and better pay, and perhaps the more accepting attitude towards African-Americans in France than in his homeland, although he never made an issue of racism.

As soon as he moved to Paris, he regularly worked with other visiting and ex-pat American musicians, as well as forming a trio named "The Bosses" with Bud Powell and Pierre Michelot.

Later in 1961, with Belgian pianist Francy Boland, he formed a band, The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band, featuring leading European and expatriate American musicians. The big band, which had been the idea of Italian producer Gigi Campi, lasted for eleven years.

He was involved a bit with French cinema, playing for the film "Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud" (1957), appearing in "Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960" (1959), and writing music for "On N'Enterre Pas Dimanche" (1959) and "La Riviere Du Hibou" (1961). Clarke also established a drumming school in 1967.

After 1968, Clarke played and recorded with the French composer and clarinetist Jean-Christian Michel for a decade. He continued recording and playing with both U.S. musicians and his regular French band mates until his death.

He had one oddity among the great jazz drummers. Clarke had a life long distaste for drum solos, seeing his role as supporting soloists rather than claiming the limelight for himself. Too bad Ginger Baker didn't have the same sensibility.

Klook had settled in the Parisian suburb of Montreuil-sous-Bois, and in 1962, he married a Dutch woman, Daisy Wallbach. The couple had a son, Laurent, in 1964. On January 26, 1985, Clarke died at home of a heart attack at the age of 71. He is survived by his first son, Kenny Clark Jr. (Liaquat Ali Salaam Jr.), born in 1950 to Clarke and singer Annie Ross.

He was buried at Paris' most celebrated resting place, the Père-LaChaise Cemetery (The "East" cemetery, established in 1804 by Napoleon), not far from his home. In 2005, the city of Montreuil-sous-Bois named a street after him, Rue Kenny Clarke.

In 1988, Clarke was inducted posthumously into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.


Kenny Clarke Septet with Cannonball Adderly - "Bohemia After Dark" 1955

John Papi

John Papi from International Archives for the Jazz Organ
Hey, if you were a South Hills brat like Old Mon and his buds and boogied at the clubs on 51 in the late sixties to mid-seventies, the Panther Room, Garage, and Haunted House were the places to be. And they all had one thing in common; they were run by organ meister John Papi.

Papi, now 70, wasn't originally from the far side of the Tubes; he was raised in Uptown. When he was a boy, the hot sounds of jazz regularly pulsed through the lower Hill District streets of his youth.

He was particularly entranced by Birdie Dunlop's Hurricane Bar and Hammond killers Jimmy McGriff and Wendel Byrd, and he'd sneak in to catch their act. Papi dreamed of becoming a jazz organ maestro, falling hard for the sounds coming from the keyboard of choice in that era, the Hammond B-3.

While the rich and famous might drop a few shekels in the Hill clubs, the locals weren't exactly rolling in green. His family couldn't afford to buy him an organ, so in grand Pittsburgh tradition, he started saving his money from his paper route and put it aside for his own B-3. But it takes a lot of extra editions to raise that kind of cash.

When Papi was 17, he joined the Navy and saw the world during his four year tour. Home at 21, he became a welder at John Harrison Sheet Metal in Glenshaw and started gigging on weekends.

He bought an accordion, taught himself how to play, and put together a wedding band, The Montclairs. But his dreams soared beyond polkas; he still wanted to become the jazz organist that he envisioned himself being as a kid.

So Papi bought a second-hand cordovox (an organ inside of an accordion), took it apart, and packed the pipes into a console. Looked like an organ, sounded like an organ...hey, it was an organ! Gigs and a day job pay a little better than bouncing papers off of people's stoops, and he soon had enough to buy his first Hammond B-3.

He formed his own band, the John Papi Organ Trio, with guitarist Jack Petit, and got to play on his dream stage, The Hurricane. Papi hooked up with an agent, Johnny Adams, who booked the act at The Golden Nugget by the Liberty Tubes and other local night spots. They even recorded a Petit tune “Tribute to Wes Montgomery,” that got a bit of radio love from Porky, charting at #38 on WAMO in 1968.

After tinkering some with the band personnel, Papi's group morphed into Fairchange, featuring soul frontman Chuck Corby and saxman Johnnie Vann, and took off (Papi and Corby were both managed by Johnny Adams, local rep, promoter, producer and club owner.)

Fairchange played across the states on the Holiday Inn circuit. Papi returned home in 1968, and put down some roots when he bought the Panther Room club on Route 51, where his band had a home to rock.

The nightclub was intimate (or small; use your own adjective), and he needed more space to pack in his fans. Papi moved down the road two years later, to Overbrook, and opened the Cocktail Garage.

In its former life, the Garage was a used car lot. Going with the old vibes, Papi hoisted a car body on the building’s roof. The city was not amused, and made him take it down. But a VW Beetle hanging off the inside wall was cool by the City Code, and it made for a pretty remarkable - and memorable - motif.

When the car schmooze got stale, Papi remodeled the building into a horror themed spot he called the Haunted House. He sold the venue in 1973, and went back to club gigs and the hotel circuit.

Papi’s Haunted House band also opened shows at the Stanley Theatre, prepping the audience for acts like Chubby Checker, Joey Dee & the Starlighters, and Gary "U.S." Bonds. The emcee was often Jeff Christie, who you may know better today as Rush Limbaugh.

In fact, the Stanley is where Papi put on one of his most dramatic acts. Called to the front of the stage during his intro, he was blinded by a spotlight and stepped straight down into the band pit. It was a pretty nasty nosh dive, but he just got up, dusted himself off, and the show went on without skipping a beat.

In 1975, he opened Papi's Deli and Restaurant at Pennsbury Village, and led the day job life for four years. He sold the shop in 1979, and went back out on the road with Fairchange. Papi's group became the house band at Joeys Restaurant in McKeesport and Johnny Monzo's in Monroeville. He also tossed in with Corby as part-owner of the Vegas Show Bar in Carrick for a spell.

He married and re-opened the Panther Room in 1981. Papi unloaded it again in 1984, and went back to the club circuit.

1990 is the year when he dropped out of the City's jazz scene. Papi was involved in a serious car crash, and his arm and hand lost feeling. His days as a musician appeared over.

Papi, a fundamentalist Christian, rolled with the punches. In fact, he's part of the musical ministry at South Park Baptist Church in Bethel Park. He took to the sunny side of the street. “It was hard to survive” just doing music, Papi said, “not to mention carrying a 500 pound organ up and down steps six nights a week.”

He went to work for a contracting company that taught him plan drawing and design. Papi eventually formed his own construction firm in 1993, Pap-Pone Builders. And it's been every bit as successful as his musical career.

Pap-Pone Builders designed and built over 150 homes in the region's exburbs. His house in Peters Township, which he designed and shares with his wife of 28 years, Charm, served as a model home. Papi did well enough with his home-building career that he's finally retired from the bricks and mortar business.

He still has his first Hammond B-3 front and center in his music room. And Papi can play again; his bum wing has recovered 100%.

John Papi is the guy that Porky Chedwick called “the man with the thousand fingers” for his playing style (he would hang a mirror above the organ, just so the fans could see his hands fly over the keyboard.) He played with Joe Negri on AM Pittsburgh. Papi's stage act and comic patter were crowd-pleasers; Holiday Inn even put him on the cover of one of its national promotional brochures.

His band's recordings include “For Once in My Life”, “JP's Blues”, “Dude”, “Let Me Be Good To You”, “One More Time”, "Love Is A Hurting Thing," "Boogie Woogie Big Daddy," "Your Mine and Pledging of Love," and “Ebb Tide.” “One More Time” and “Dude” are still selling like hotcakes in England, where they're considered classic “head banging music.”

And guess what? He's not quite done yet.

One of the hotels in Las Vegas called, and they want him to gig. John Papi accepted; he'll be movin' on as soon as he sells his crib. Papi's going to spend his golden years coaxing some blasts from the B-3 and living with Charm in the City of Lights.

Sounds like a sweet start to Part II of a career, swapping Pittsburgh's Route 51 for the Las Vegas Strip. And we'll bet their code allows for roof ornaments, just in case he finds a little club...


You're Mine & Pledge Of Love: John Papi, Chuck Corby & Duke LaManna.

Dwayne Dolphin

Dwayne Dolphin
Dwayne Dolphin, 49, grew up in the Oakland/Hill District neighborhood of Schenley Heights, and graduated from Schenley in 1981.

DD started off banging the drums as a kid. When he was ten, his big bro gifted him with a $10 bass guitar; it ended up being one heck of a smart investment.

By the time he entered Schenley, he had caught the eye of Pitt's Dr. Nathan Davis, who took him out of school for a week to go to Guadeloupe as a member of Davis' Tomorrow Band. The pianist was Geri Allen, who was doing her graduate work at Pitt.

He was also taken under the wing of Spartan band teacher Ken Cook, who introduced him to the music of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley. Dolphin spent his high school years playing with local jazz artists like Roger Humphries, Pete Henderson, and Carl Arter. All in all, a pretty good foundation for a teen with music in his blood.

After graduating from Schenley, Dolphin planned to attend Boston's Berklee School of Music. Fate intervened. He got a yell from Wynton Marsalis to come to work in New York - Dolphin claimed to not even know who Marsalis was at the time; the call was set up by a mutual bud - but hey, a gig's a gig. He accepted.

In 1982, at the age of 18, he joined Marsalis' band in the Big Apple, which also featured Branford Marsalis, Kenny Kirkland and North Versailles native, drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts. They toured the country, spreading jazz in their wake. Hey, they even scored a gig on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show.

After a couple of years, Dolphin joined sax master Hank Crawford. He considered Marsalis to be a mentor, but his time with Crawford was his boot camp in the regimen of jazz, where he truly began to learn his craft and explore its blues' roots.

After his time with Crawford, Dolphin went on to work with Hank Jones, Abbey Lincoln, Kenny Burrell, Clark Terry, Stanley Turrentine (he's on "T-Time"), John Hicks, Geri Allen (he toured the US, Europe, and Japan with her), Fred Wesley (Funkadelic trumpet man), Pee Wee Ellis, Maceo Parker, Wallace Roney, Don Byron, Oliver Lake, Nancy Wilson (he plays on her Grammy Award winnner "R.S.V.P"), Melba Moore, and Pharaoh Sander.

Dolphin is a master player; he plucks the upright, acoustic, electric, and piccolo basses. The piccolo bass is his own creation; it merges the sound of a lead guitar with a bass. In fact, his band has a separate bass man. Dolphin uses his piccolo bass as the lead instrument.

He's been based out of Pittsburgh since after his Marsalis days, first moving to North Side and now living in Franklin Park with his wife Robin and family. Dolphin likes the region's jazz scene, and he's leading his own group, the Piccolo Bass Band.

The PBB members are veteran sax man Lou Stellute, pianist Howard Alexander III, bass player Brian Sanders, and drummer Loren Mann II. Dolphin's also been in the studio, and his piccolo bass can be heard on “4 Robin” (2004 - dedicated to his better half) “Ming” (2006 - dedicated to his pooch Mingus) and "Pretty Girl" (2008 - dedicated to his mom).

He's performed with The Pittsburgh Ballet Theater's production of "Indigo In Motion," and can be heard all over the area performing at venues like the Backstage Bar and other jazz venues.

Dolphin plays at schools, festivals, and jazz-community events, too, befitting his day job as Adjunct Professor of Jazz Guitar at the Mary Pappert School of Music at Duquesne University.

Ya know, it's not odd that Pittsburgh loses its great jazz players to bigger cities; despite the town's tradition, the clubs and crowds are dwindling. What's odd is how many come back home to roost. Must be the water, hey?

But Pittsburgh's jazz flame will never flicker as long as guys like Dwayne Dolphin keep the torch lit.


Dwayne Dolphin and the Piccolo Bass Band

Dr. Nelson Harrison

Doctor Nelson Harrison
Hey, last week we featured one of the great jazz teachers and performers in Pittsburgh, Dr. Nathan Davis, a Kansas City transplant. Today we're sticking with the professional day job theme, but our guy is as Pittsburgh as the Steelers - Dr. Nelson Harrison.

He was born and raised in the East End. His schooling was at Crescent Elementary, Baxter Junior High, Westinghouse High (where he's a member of the Wall of Fame), and the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Harrison, now 69, began his musical career at the age of 13 as a trombonist and bandleader for the Beethoven Bebops 7-piece jazz/dance combo. At the same time, he played for the Junior Pittsburgh Symphony and the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony.

As a Bulldog, he took private trombone lessons under Carl G. McVicker, Sr., the famous band teacher at the 'House, and Matthew Shiner of Duquesne University in the late fifties.

Don't let the classical background fool ya; Harrison didn't end up a longhair by any means. Since the early 1960's, he's gigged with local jazz and R & B groups.

He started playing with bands like the Joe Westray Orchestra, Sonny Gilmer and the Premiers, the Walt Harper Quintet (he recorded "Live at the Attic" with them in 1969), and the Nathan Davis Quintet (he recorded "Makatuka" in 1970 and "Suite for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." in 1971 with Davis).

Want some more Pittsburgh music mavens Harrison backed at one time or another? How about Billy Eckstine, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Kenny "Klook" Clarke, Art Blakey, Stanley "Sugar Man" Turrentine, Sam Johnson, Joe Harris, J.C. Moses, Dakota Staton, Lena Horne, and Grover Mitchell?

As a session trombonist, Nelson was a member of the Heinz Hall and Stanley Theatre Stage Orchestras accompanying national acts like Bobby Vinton, Liberace, Sammy Davis, Jr., Ginger Rogers, Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, Jack Jones, Michele LeGrande, Mel Torme, Perry Como, Nancy Wilson, Melba Moore, Glenn Campbell, and Slide Hampton.

He also played shows with Nelson Riddle and the Pittsburgh Symphony Pops and for several Civic Light Opera productions, along with shows with Marvin Hamlisch and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans (and North Side). What, no KISS?

He's still active in the local club scene. Harrison sits with the Roger Humphries Big Band, Spirit on the Hill, The Blues Orphans, Bill Dell & Wee Jams, Swing Fever, Gary Rican & the Studio-E Band, The Hard Groove Project, and his own bands The World According to Bop, Jazz ‘N Jive, Blue to the Bone, Nelson Harrison & Associates, and Dr. Jazz & the Salty Dawgs. From doo-wop to dixieland, the Doctor has a place to play what he feels.

Harrison has had his share of studio time lately. Recordings he's on from the past few years include "Tuesday Night at James Street" with the RH Factor; "Don’t Give Up" with the Roger Humphries Big Band; "Moonlit River" with songs by Fred Moolten; "21st-Century Musicism" featuring compositions by Karlton E. Hester; "If I Can’t Dance, It’s Not My Revolution" with folkie Anne Feeney; "Schism ‘n Blues" & "Root Rot" with the americana Blues Orphans; and "Not from Concentrate" & "Harmonique" with Genie Walker.

And he isn't just a busy local player. Harrison accompanied some big-league soul acts in his day, like Dionne Warwick, James Brown, The Supremes, The Temptations, Mary Wells, Aretha Franklin, and Little Stevie Wonder.

In fact, he expanded his wings for a while. Nelson gained a wide reputation as a New Orleans-style, Dixieland pianist when he tickled the keys with the Boilermaker Jazz Band from 1991-98. The band hit the international jazz festival circuit, and he's on four albums with them, "On A Coconut Island," "Don't Give Up the Ship," "Burgundy Street Blues," and "Honky Tonk Town."

Harrison has performed at festivals in New Orleans, London, Edinburg, Sacramento, New York City, and Seattle. He's given clinics and lectures in Santa Cruz, San Jose, Quebec City, Montreal, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, New York and Toronto.

He might be best known, though, for playing with the Count Basie Orchestra between 1978-81, touring the US and Japan with vocalists Joe Williams, Sarah Vaughan, Helen Humes, Joe Turner, Eddie Vinson, and Dennis Rowland. He's on their LP "Kansas City Shout."

But hey, idle hands and all...and Harrison's never been accused of having a pair of those. He charts arrangements for local groups and recording sessions, written over 300 original compositions spanning the full range of jazz, pop, fusion, rock, jingles, blues, ballads and kiddie songs. Harrison's the lyricist for 125 published bop tunes, too, by last count.

He produced an original score for the road show of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize winning "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," for the Kuntu Repertory Theatre in 1987. Other scores of his are featured in movies by Georg Sanford Brown and John Russo, and plays by Richard Wright and Rob Penny.

Harrison was the musical director for WQED-TV's award winning "Black Horizons Show," and the on-air host of "Jazz Pittsburgh," an hour-long National Public Radio series produced by WDUQ-FM. He appeared in the TV movie "The Temptations," and is featured on Science and the Outer Streams, a live web cast on "The Metaphysics of Music."

Dr. Harrison is also known as the ultimate historian of Pittsburgh jazz. He served as the project advisor for WDUQ's "Steel City Legacy," which focused on the lives of Pittsburgh musical legends Madame Mary Cardwell Dawson, Mary Lou Williams, Billy Eckstine and Billy Strayhorn.

In addition, he's a contributing partner with the Afro-Centric curriculum for jazz and the "Living Encyclopedia of Global African Music" that includes a Pittsburgh Jazz Legacy project as a component.

He's the founder and online host of The Pittsburgh Jazz Network, a web-based who's who of Pittsburgh boppers.

Harrison formed the first All-City High School Jazz Orchestra for the
Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild. He organized an international cultural exchange tour in Pittsburgh and Texas for the Krakow Youth Jazz Ensemble. The doc has had a hand in putting together segments of the Three Rivers Art Festival and Mellon Jazz Festival.

The good doctor has enough honors to strain a fair-sized high school trophy case, including the East Liberty Gallery of Stars, the Walt Harper All That Jazz Award, the Legacy Arts Project Keepers of the Flame Award, the Manchester Craftsmen Guild Jazz Pittsburgh Legends of Jazz Award, and his latest, this year's African American Council on the Arts Rob Penny Lifetime Achievement Award.

And as a side bar, he's an inventor, too. He come up with the horn he's now famed for blowing, the "Trombetto from the Ghetto," as he calls it. It's a brass piece with four valves that plays a range of six octaves with a trombone mouthpiece. The instrument is kinda a cross between a French Horn and a Flugelhorn, and looks like a burnished pretzel.

Did we mention his day job? Dr. Nelson Harrison received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Pittsburgh in 1974. Along with delivering his musical chops, he's also a college lecturer, business consultant and in-demand speaker on “The Creative Mind” and “The Metaphysics of Music.”

As Doctor Harrison said "A mentor once told me that a person needs a profession and a trade. Art is my trade and psychology has been my profession. I can boldly say that every scientific theory I was taught through Ph.D. level has since been proven wrong. Art is never wrong. Music is...my metaphor for life." Amen.


"This Christmas" - December 7, 2009 at the AVA Lounge, Nelson Harrison on trombetto

Dr. Nathan Davis...Jazz Is The Cure

Nathan Davis from The Pitt Chronicle
Nathan Tate Davis, 72, was born in Kansas City, not far from the childhood home of Charlie Parker. He first took up the tenor sax in high school after starting out on trombone, and was soon playing some local gigs.

After Davis graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in music education, he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1960 and sent to Germany, where he toured with an army band. He grew to like Europe and its opportunity for jazzmen, and when he left the Army in 1963, he stayed across the Atlantic.

Davis played hard bop with some other ex-pats, and Kenny Clarke heard him honking in Berlin and invited Davis to join him in Paris at the club St. Germain des Pres. He blew his sax with Clarke for seven years. Erroll Garner and the MJQ sat in with them, and he played with Woody Shaw, Donald Byrd, Art Taylor, Ray Charles, and Eric Dolphy.

In 1965, the saxophonist got a call to work as Wayne Shorter's replacement with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers on a European tour. At the end of the gig Blakey asked Davis to return stateside with the band. But his daughter had just arrived, and he was happy raising his family on Paris' Left Bank; the answer was "no". Blakey said that Davis was the only musician in America who ever turned him down.

Davis did come home eventually. In 1969, at the urging of Donald Byrd and Dave Baker, he joined the University of Pittsburgh as director of the first full-time, accredited jazz studies program in the nation. He planned to play it by ear during his first three-year contract with Pitt; forty years later, he's still here.

It's sorta ironic. He made a home in Europe because he wanted a chance to play instead of coming back to teach. Que sera, sera.

Pitt's not his only educator gig. He's a past director of the Thelonious Monk Institute Summer Program in Aspen Colorado, spent five years teaching sax at Ohio's Oberlin College, and since 2002, he's been a director & faculty member of the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead Program, based out of the Kennedy Center.

During his Pitt tenure, he's founded the annual Jazz Seminar and Concert, established a Jazz Hall of Fame, and developed the Jazz Outreach Programs in Dubai, Ghana, Bahia, and Jordan. The program he put together is a model for schools around the country.

Davis found time to earn his doctorate in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan, paid for by the GI Bill. His dissertation was "The Life and Music of Charlie Parker and the Kansas City Environment." Meanwhile, he still performed and recorded a handful of albums as a band leader.

He played with the Charlie Mingus All-Star Band at the Kool Jazz Festival, in Saratoga, New York, in 1982.

In 1985 he got back together with Woody Shaw to form the Paris Reunion Band, an all-star aggregation that included Johnny Griffin, Joe Henderson, Nat Adderley and Slide Hampton.

They broke up after seven years when Shaw passed away, but not before they took their show on the road to Scandinavia, Greece, Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland, England, France and Switzerland.

In the 1990s, he formed the band Roots, with brother saxmen Arthur Blythe, Chico Freeman and Sam Rivers, followed by Benny Golson. They toured Scandinavia, Greece, Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland, England, France and Switzerland. Guess Davis never quite got over that European thingie.

He played the Blue Note in New York with Dizzy Gillespie and toured as part of The Three Tenors with Grover Washington, Jr. and James Moody.

His discography includes "The Hip Walk," "Peace Treaty," "Happy Girl," "Rules of Freedom," "Makatuka," "Sixth Sense In The Eleventh House," "If," "London by Night," "Faces Of Love," "I'm A Fool To Want You," "The Other Side of the Morning - Dedicated to Eric Dolphy," "Live: Jazz at Pitt: The 25th Anniversary Concert," and 2009's "The Best Of Nathan Davis '65-76."

Good luck finding many of them, though, especially his European tracks. Most were printed by small labels with limited runs, and a couple weren't even released. So putting together a Davis collection is quite the challenge.

His ex-pat buds were hot items when they returned to the states. But when he chose an academic track, the labels treated him as if he didn't exist, even though Davis' playing was as hot as ever. Their loss, and unfortunately, ours too.

Davis has also penned "Writings in Jazz" and "African American Music in Society," while founding and editing the "International Jazz Archives Journal." He's also had a book written about him, Gisela Albus' "Paris to Pittsburgh, a Story in Jazz, the Life of Nathan Davis."

Hey, Pittsburgh was once called "The Foundry of Jazz." Many of its great performers began here and left for greener pastures. Somehow, it seems fitting that the City has claimed a sax man from Kansas City to keep the tradition alive.


Nathan Davis - "Stick Buddy" from the album "If" - 1976