Pianist Mike Longo's
Consolidated Artists Productions
To Release His New CD,
"Only Time Will Tell,"
With Bassist Paul West & Drummer Lewis Nash,
March 31
Consolidated Artists Productions
To Release His New CD,
"Only Time Will Tell,"
With Bassist Paul West & Drummer Lewis Nash,
March 31
March 3, 2017
Connoisseurs of jazz piano trios will welcome the release, on March 31, of Only Time Will Tell, the new trio recording by piano master Mike Longo with Paul West on bass and Lewis Nash
on drums. The disc is Longo's 20th for the CAP (Consolidated Artists
Productions) label, and his 26th since debuting as a leader in 1962.
Included on the CD are two compositions by Dizzy Gillespie, with whom Longo worked as pianist and musical director for 26 years, until Gillespie's death in 1993. The up-tempo "Wheatleigh Hall" was first recorded by the trumpeter in 1957 on an album with Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt. The gently swinging "Just a Thought," written by Gillespie in the '60s as a piano feature, had never been previously recorded.
Longo's trio-mates had their own associations with Gillespie.
West had done two stints with the trumpeter -- in the '50s with Dizzy's
big band and again in the '60s with the quintet that included Longo.
Nash had worked with Gillespie on several occasions in subsequent
years.
Longo, West, and Nash play two Thelonious Monk tunes -- "Nutty" and "Brilliant Corners" -- on Only Time Will Tell and also offer their takes on Oscar Pettiford's "Bohemia After Dark"; "Exactly Like You," delivered at an ultra-slow tempo; and Eubie Blake's "Memories of You," which closes the album. Among the Longo originals are the bossa nova-propelled "Stepping Up"; "Conflict of Interest,"
first recorded for a 1994 quintet album dedicated to Gillespie; and the
gently waltzing title track, inspired by a documentary about Lyndon
Johnson.
"I started feeling sorry for him and went to the piano and
wrote it," says Longo. "The point of the title is that after the passage
of time, things may appear different than when you originally perceived
them." (Pictured at left: Lewis Nash, Mike Longo, Paul West.)
The son of a band-leading bassist father and a church organist mother, Michael Longo Jr. was inspired as a child by boogie-woogie pianists Sugar Chile Robinson in his native Cincinnati, and Jack Fina
later in Fort Lauderdale, where the Longos had moved when he was in the
third grade. While in Florida, Longo was later inspired by jazz piano
master Oscar Peterson, with whom he would eventually spend six months studying privately.
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; his last 20 have appeared on Consolidated Artists Productions
(CAP), a musicians' cooperative label managed by Longo and his wife. He
also has enjoyed a successful second career as an educator and creator
of instructional books and videos. Web Site: jazzbeat.com
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