Mike Longo Trio Celebrates Oscar Peterson Live
Pianist Mike Longo had the distinct privilege of studying, for six intense
months in 1961, with his idol Oscar Peterson in Toronto. Among several key
principles imparted by Peterson to his pupil was the importance of "not
playing like anyone but yourself," says Longo. "He told me that
people who are trying to play like Art Tatum are making a big mistake in that
they are trying to be Art Tatum instead of trying to be as good as Art Tatum.
'So don't make the mistake of trying to play like me, Mike.'"
Longo
plays for Peterson on the terrific new The Mike Longo Trio Celebrates Oscar
Peterson Live, to be released October 7 by his CAP (Consolidated Artists
Productions) label. Recorded on June 25, 2013, at the John Birks Gillespie
Auditorium in the New York City Baha'i Center with onetime Gillespie bassist
Paul West and former Peterson drummer Ray Mosca, the disc finds Longo playing
very much like himself in a well-chosen set of tunes the prolific Peterson had
recorded over the years. Six were composed by jazzmen: Duke Ellington's
"Love You Madly," Thad Jones's "A Child Is Born," Fats
Waller's "Honeysuckle Rose," Nat Adderley's "Work Song,"
Thelonious Monk's "52nd Street Theme," and Clifford Brown's
"Daahoud." The remainder come from the Great American Songbook:
"Sweet Georgia Brown," "Always," "Fascinatin'
Rhythm," "Love for Sale," "Yesterdays," "Tenderly,"
and "I Remember You."
Mike Longo Longo enjoyed a 27-year association
with Dizzy Gillespie, one of Peterson's major musical influences and one of
Longo's as well. He held down the piano chair in Gillespie's quintet from 1966
to 1973 (following Kenny Barron) and became Dizzy's music director, composer,
arranger, and devoted blood brother, continuing to work with the man long after
going out on his own.
By the
time he'd joined Gillespie, Longo pretty much had the entire history of jazz
and related idioms at his fingertips. Born in Cincinnati in 1939, he taught
himself to play boogie-woogie at three. As a teenager in Fort Lauderdale, where
the family had moved when he was in the third grade, he spent a year playing
gospel piano at a black Baptist church. After earning a bachelor's degree in
classical piano at Western Kentucky University, in 1959, Longo spent two years
touring with the Salt City Six, the Dixieland group, and was hired at the
Metropole Café in New York as one of the club's house pianists. In his two
shifts a day, he backed Coleman Hawkins, Gene Krupa, and Henry "Red"
Allen, among many others.
Gillespie,
who first heard the young pianist at the Metropole, hired him in 1966. Longo
went on to make nine albums with the trumpet legend, beginning with Swing Low,
Sweet Cadillac in 1967, and has also recorded with Astrud Gilberto, Lee Konitz,
Buddy Rich, and Moody, to name just a few. He cut the first album under his own
name, A Jazz Portrait of Funny Girl, in 1962, and has since done two dozen
more. The last 18 have appeared on CAP, a musicians' cooperative label managed
by Longo and his wife. The catalog now boasts some 150 releases, with four volumes
of Gillespie at Ronnie Scott's London club in 1973 due out shortly.
Mike Longo Since January 6, 2004, the
anniversary of Gillespie's death, Longo has presented concerts every Tuesday
evening in the Gillespie Auditorium of the New York City Baha'i Center, where
his new CD was recorded. He has booked such jazz greats as Charli Persip, Benny
Powell, and Annie Ross and appears regularly with his own three groups: the
Mike Longo Trio, the 17-piece New York State of the Art Jazz Ensemble (with
four CAP CDs to its credit and 160 of his own charts in the band book), and the
six-member Mike Longo Funk Band (playing material from the pianist's three
highly collectable fusion albums for the Mainstream, Groove Merchant, and Pablo
labels in the '70s). He also has enjoyed a successful second career as an
educator and creator of instructional books and videos.
"One
of the most important things I've learned was discovering the place inside you
where real music comes from," says Longo. "You don't really compose something,
you uncover it. Dizzy used to say music is out there, waiting for someone to
come get it."
WebSites: jazzbeat.com, mikelongojazz.com
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