Coronavirus Pandemic

Three jazz musicians die

Both jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli (above) and pianist Ellis Marsalis died of complications from Covid-19 on Wednesday.
Both jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli (above) and pianist Ellis Marsalis died of complications from Covid-19 on Wednesday. PHOTOS: NYTIME, EPA-EFE
Both jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli (above left) and pianist Ellis Marsalis died of complications from Covid-19 on Wednesday.
Both jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli and pianist Ellis Marsalis (above) died of complications from Covid-19 on Wednesday. PHOTOS: NYTIME, EPA-EFE

NEW YORK • Three jazz musicians in the United States have died of complications from Covid-19.

Jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, who after many years as a respected but relatively anonymous session guitarist became a mainstay of the New York jazz scene in the 1970s, died on Wednesday in New Jersey. He was 94.

A master of the subtle art of rhythm guitar as well as a gifted soloist, Pizzarelli was sought after for recording sessions in the 1950s and 1960s and can be heard on hundreds of records in various genres, although he was often uncredited.

He also toured with jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman and was a long-time member of the Tonight Show orchestra. But he was little known to all but the most knowledgeable jazz fans until he was in his 40s.

In 1980, he began performing with a new duo partner: his son John, 20 at the time, who went on to become a jazz star in his own right.

Pizzarelli was among the few guitarists (his son was another; George van Eps is believed to have been the first) to play an instrument with seven strings rather than the customary six.

The extra string, tuned to a low A, enabled him to provide his own bass line, an important advantage when he played unaccompanied or in a duo setting.

Meanwhile, Ellis Marsalis, a pianist and educator who was the guiding force behind a late-20th-century resurgence in jazz, while putting four musician sons on a path to prominent careers, died on Wednesday in New Orleans. He was 85.

Marsalis spent decades as a working musician and teacher in New Orleans before his eldest sons, Wynton and Branford, gained national fame in the early 1980s embodying a fresh-faced revival of traditional jazz. Marsalis' star rose along with theirs and, he, too, became a household name.

Virtuoso trumpeter Wallace Roney, whose term as jazz trumpeter Miles Davis' only true protege opened onto a prominent career in jazz, died on Tuesday in New Jersey. He was 59.

By the time Roney linked up with Davis, he was already a leading voice in what came to be called the Young Lions movement, a coterie of young musicians devoted to bringing jazz back into line with its mid-century sound.

He was already associated - sometimes distressingly so - with Davis' legacy. Many dismissed him as a musical clone: ravishingly talented, but lacking the necessary distance from his idol to claim creative agency.

Yet as his career went on, Roney managed to neutralise most of those criticisms.

His nuanced understanding of Davis' playing - its harmonic and rhythmic wirings as well as its smouldering tone - was only part of a vast musical ken. His style bespoke an investment in the entire lineage of jazz trumpet playing.

NYTIMES

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on April 04, 2020, with the headline Three jazz musicians die. Subscribe