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AFRO-AMERICAN MUSIC INSTITUTE CELEBRATES 36 YEARS

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PITTSBURGH JAZZ

 

From Blakey to Brown, Como to Costa, Eckstine to Eldridge, Galbraith to Garner, Harris to Hines, Horne to Hyman, Jamal to Jefferson, Kelly to Klook; Mancini to Marmarosa, May to Mitchell, Negri to Nestico, Parlan to Ponder, Reed to Ruther, Strayhorn to Sullivan, Turk to Turrentine, Wade to Williams… the forthcoming publication Treasury of Pittsburgh Jazz Connections by Dr. Nelson Harrison and Dr. Ralph Proctor, Jr. will document the legacy of one of the world’s greatest jazz capitals.

 

Do you want to know who Dizzy Gillespie  idolized? Did you ever wonder who inspired Kenny Clarke and Art Blakey? Who was the pianist that mentored Monk, Bud Powell, Tad Dameron, Elmo Hope, Sarah Vaughan and Mel Torme? Who was Art Tatum’s idol and Nat Cole’s mentor? What musical quartet pioneered the concept adopted later by the Modern Jazz Quartet? Were you ever curious to know who taught saxophone to Stanley Turrentine or who taught piano to Ahmad Jamal? What community music school trained Robert McFerrin, Sr. for his history-making debut with the Metropolitan Opera? What virtually unknown pianist was a significant influence on young John Coltrane, Shirley Scott, McCoy Tyner, Bobby Timmons and Ray Bryant when he moved to Philadelphia from Pittsburgh in the 1940s?  Would you be surprised to know that Erroll Garner attended classes at the Julliard School of Music in New York and was at the top of his class in writing and arranging proficiency?

 

Some answers  can be gleaned from the postings on the Pittsburgh Jazz Network.

 

For almost 100 years the Pittsburgh region has been a metacenter of jazz originality that is second to no other in the history of jazz.  One of the best kept secrets in jazz folklore, the Pittsburgh Jazz Legacy has heretofore remained mythical.  We have dubbed it “the greatest story never told” since it has not been represented in writing before now in such a way as to be accessible to anyone seeking to know more about it.  When it was happening, little did we know how priceless the memories would become when the times were gone.

 

Today jazz is still king in Pittsburgh, with events, performances and activities happening all the time. The Pittsburgh Jazz Network is dedicated to celebrating and showcasing the places, artists and fans that carry on the legacy of Pittsburgh's jazz heritage.

 

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Duke Ellington is first African-American and the first musician to solo on U.S. circulating coin

    MARY LOU WILLIAMS     

            INTERVIEW

       In Her Own Words

In Memoriam: Pat Martino (1944–2021)

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Martino dazzled as a player and demonstrated amazing resilience in overcoming life’s challenges.

(Photo: Mark Sheldon)

Jazz guitarist Pat Martino passed away Nov. 1 at age 77 following a long illness.

Known for his incredible guitar chops and a kind heart to match, Martino died after battling a chronic respiratory disorder that prevented his lungs from bringing in oxygen and required around-the-clock treatment. Martino had not worked since 2018 due to the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Word of Martino’s passing spread quickly over social media with an outpouring of love from musicians and supporters.

“He’s gonna be missed — he certainly left us all an incredible legacy of music and will always be remembered as one of the greatest guitarists of all time,” said Joey DeFrancesco, a fellow Philadelphian who had performed with Martino over the years.

“Pat Martino 1944–2021 … my teenage hero, and still … when I hear him, I try to play guitar like that, but it can’t be done,” wrote John Scofield. “He was such a nice man to us younger players. Thank you, Pat. R.I.P.”

“His legacy is a gift to us all,” said Joe Donofrio, Martino’s long-time manager. “From the moment he first picked up the guitar to his last day on earth, Pat never wavered from his true calling.”

“I am not sure I can put into words what the loss of Pat Martino means for me or for the jazz world,” said fellow guitarist Mike Allemana. “When Fareed Haque (who is probably the encyclopedia on Pat) started teaching at [Northern Illinois University], he had me transcribe Pat’s solo on ‘Sunny.’ That solo opened up a new world of music and guitar that I’ve been exploring ever since. When teaching my students, I can’t help but draw from Pat’s approach to the guitar.”

“I had the pleasure of creating an album called The Philadelphia Experiment with the great Pat Martino,” wrote drummer Questlove Thompson, another Philadelphian. “Philadelphia legend. Guitar master. Who even became more legendary when, at the hands of a seizure due to an arteriovenous malformation, had amnesia at age 36 in 1980 and had to start all over again. ... He joked with me when I asked about playing simple songs like ‘Body And Soul.’ He countered, ‘I couldn’t even play “Mary Had A Little Lamb” … let alone tell you what a lamb was.’ Can you imagine that? Shy of 40, you forget everything, including your passion. It woulda been hella easy to just wallow in depression and rely on friends and family to just tell you who you once were. But instead, he decided to not only start over again but surpassed the level that took him three-plus decades to get to. He did it, advancing way, way past his pre-amnesia levels to ensure his god status. … May he rest in melody.”

Born Patrick C. Azzara in Philadelphia, Martino was introduced to jazz through his father, who sang locally and studied guitar with Eddie Lang briefly. Martino began playing guitar himself at the age of 12 and left high school to pursue music, studying with famed teacher Dennis Sandole, who also taught John Coltrane.

He became active in the rock scene around Philly, playing with the likes of Frankie Avalon, Bobby Darin and more. His first touring gig in jazz was with organist Charles Earland, who was a friend from high school. As his reputation grew, Martino played with artists such as Slide Hampton and Red Holloway, but also R&B stalwarts like Lloyd Price.

As a solo artist, Martino was initially signed to the Prestige label and knocked out five albums of material between 1967 and 1970: El Hombre, Strings!, East!, Baiyini (The Clear Evidence) and Live! He went on to record for Muse, Evidence, Blue Note, High Note and others over the years. His last recording, Formidable, came out in 2017 on High Note.

But his greatest achievement may have been recovering from surgery for a severe brain aneurysm that also damaged his memory. Through intensive study of his music, and with the help of computer technology, Martino was able to reverse the memory loss, and resumed his recording and performance career.

Prior to his death, crowdfunding efforts had raised nearly $250,000 to help cover Martino’s medical expenses. In March, guitarist Joel Harrison dedicated an evening of his online Alternative Guitar Summit to Martino with a dozen jazz guitar masters playing Martino’s compositions. Benedetto Guitars, the company that made his signature model, built and auctioned off a guitar to contribute to the effort. DB

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Pat Martino 1944 – 2021

The venerated guitarist was a peak performer on his instrument—both before and after a potentially life-ending brain seizure


Pat Martino, Yoshi's, Emeryville, CA 2002 Pat Martino, Yoshi’s, Emeryville, CA 2002 (photo: Lee Tanner)

Pat Martino, a renowned guitarist and composer who overcame remarkable adversity to retain his place in the top echelon of jazz guitarists, died November 1 at his home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was 77.

His passing was announced by Joe Donofrio, his longtime friend and manager, in a post on Facebook. Cause of death was not given; however, Martino had for several years been afflicted with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which had prevented him from public performance.

Martino was esteemed as an improviser, known in particular for his epic-length solos and his remarkable speed, which did nothing to dim the clarity and precision of his lines. A child prodigy, he was a professional musician by the age of 15 and by his early twenties was working with the likes of Lloyd Price, Willis Jackson, and Brother Jack McDuff. Beginning his career as a leader in 1967, Martino maintained his roots in soul jazz, but also welcomed influences of the avant-garde and fusion.

His career reached its greatest heights, however, after it nearly terminated in 1980. A severe seizure left him near death; doctors determined that the cause was an abnormal tangle of blood vessels in the left side of his brain (known as an arteriovenous malformation, or AVM). The resulting emergency surgery removed 70 percent of his temporal lobe. It saved Martino’s life. However, it also left him with severe amnesia that blocked all of his memories before the seizure—including his ability to play guitar.

With the help of his father, his own recordings, and a small home computer, Martino spent several years rebuilding his musical acumen. He documented his struggles in a documentary film, Martino Unstrung (2008), and in his 2011 autobiography Here and Now.

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“My attitude was ‘let me pick [my guitar] up and see what that does,’” Martino recalled in his memoir. “And when I did that, some innate powers were ignited. Little by little, just a minute here and there … and I was back to the kid again, exploring the instrument with the kind of playfulness and openness that I had as a child. And this toy would become the escape route from the pain I had endured … the guitar, in effect, became my life preserver.”

He returned to performance in 1984, and in 1987 recorded a celebrated comeback album, The Return. His reputation soared, and Martino made nearly 30 more recordings (as both leader and sideman) in as many years, collaborated with a bevy of high-profile musicians, and toured the world several times over. His recovery also became an important case study in the fields of neurosurgery and psychology, making him the subject of multiple studies and peer-reviewed articles over the ensuing years.

Martino himself suggested that the experience with amnesia had heightened his ability to improvise, because with no memory of the past he could focus on nothing but the present. “I remember, since the operations, the importance of being actively involved in the moment,” he told JazzBridge in a 2016 interview. “Not tomorrow, not thinking about the past, not learning what I did before, and not evolving toward what I would like to be, but focusing on what I am, where I’m at, and what I’m doing in the moment and what it produces for me.”

Patrick Carmen Azzara was born in Philadelphia on August 25, 1944 to Carmen Azzara, a lapel presser and musician, and the former Genoveffa (Jean) Orlando, a housewife. His father worked in tailor factories by day and played local clubs and dances at night under the name Mickey Martino—a stage name that his son would eventually assume for himself.

When Pat was 12, his father bought him a guitar of his own, and he began learning to play from records and radio, soon forming a band with future rock & roll singer Bobby Rydell. By 15, he had a renowned teacher named Dennis Sandole (who had also taught John Coltrane and Benny Golson) as well as a manager, and had moved to New York City’s Harlem to play professionally with organist Charles Earland.

Martino soon also worked with saxophonists Willis Jackson (with whom he made his first recordings in 1963) and Eric Kloss, as well as with R&B vocalist Lloyd Price and a succession of organists that included Earland, McDuff, Don Patterson, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Jimmy Smith, and Trudy Pitts. Pitts would in turn accompany Martino on 1967’s El Hombre, his first album under his own name and a recording that, while dyed-in-the-wool soul jazz, offered tantalizing hints of modal explorations and unusual timbres. His experiments grew more pronounced on 1968’s Baiyina (The Clear Evidence), an early example of fusion with then-trending psychedelic rock, and 1972’s free-ish Live!, whose “Sunny” offered a favorite Martino solo for students to transcribe and emulate.

By that time Martino, who had experienced strange headaches and seizures since childhood, found those problems intensifying. Doctors diagnosed depression, bipolar disorder, and even schizophrenia, subjecting him to extreme treatments (including institutionalization and electroshock therapy) that uniformly failed. After a particularly violent seizure in a Los Angeles hotel room in 1980, the guitarist was hospitalized and scans revealed the AVM near his left ear. Told that he needed surgery immediately, Martino nonetheless traveled home to Philadelphia to have the procedure. Having done so, he awoke with no idea who he or his family was, no memory of being a musician, and no ability to play.

Mickey Martino played Pat’s old records for him and urged his son to begin practicing on the instrument again, which he finally did to please his father and to preoccupy himself in miserable circumstances. As he practiced, Martino recalled in his autobiography, “flashes of memory and muscle memory would gradually come flooding back to me—shapes on the fingerboard, different stairways to different rooms in the house[.]” He regained both his musical aptitude and (some) memories of his earlier career, and began performing again. The Return, an eagerly awaited and acclaimed recording, followed three years later.

Save for another brief retreat to care for his ailing parents (his mother died in 1989 and his father in 1990), Martino remained a strong and welcome presence on the jazz scene for the next three decades. It was during these years that he became a true jazz star: a collaborator much sought after by the likes of Joe Lovano, Eric Alexander, Cyrus Chestnut, and Joey DeFrancesco; an acclaimed bandleader whose recordings—especially his late-1990s albums for Blue Note and 2010s albums for HighNote—were celebrated; and an educator who authored several textbooks and appeared in a series of instructional videos. In 2017, however, Martino’s struggles with COPD, a respiratory disorder, forced him to retire from active performance.

He is survived by his wife of 26 years, the former Ayako Asahi. Final arrangements are forthcoming.

Pat Martino: At Home (2008 feature)

Pat Martino: Formidable (2017 album review)


MICHAEL J. WEST

Michael J. West is a jazz journalist in Washington, D.C. In addition to his work on the national and international jazz scenes, he has been covering D.C.’s local jazz community since 2009. He is also a freelance writer, editor, and proofreader, and as such spends most days either hunkered down at a screen or inside his very big headphones. He lives in Washington with his wife and two children.

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