Phil Urso has passed

[Christiern]

Tenor saxophonist Phil Urso passed earlier today (April 7). He was born in 1925. Details to come.

Here's what AMG says about Urso's career.

Subtlety and restraint defined the playing of Phil Urso, a member of the 1950s' cool school who owed a strong artistic debt to Lester "Pres" Young but never came across as a clone of him. Urso started out on clarinet, but the tenor sax became his primary instrument after he studied it in high school. Though not that well-known, Urso was a solid and expressive jazzman who played with Woody Herman, Jimmy Dorsey, Miles Davis, Terry Gibbs, Oscar Pettiford, and others in the 1950s. In 1954, he co-led a quintet with trombonist Bob Brookmeyer that recorded for Savoy, but Urso's best-known association came in 1955 and 1956, when he was a sideman for Chet Baker. Urso was prominently featured on some of the trumpeter's Pacific Jazz recordings of 1956, which make one wish he had become more visible instead of less so. But after the '50s, very little was heard about Urso on a national level, although he did remain active in the jazz scene of his adopted home of Denver well into the 1990s. ~ Alex Henderson,

All Music Guide

Edited April 7, 2008 by Christiern

[BillF]

One thing that stuck in my mind about Urso is that Richard Cook and Brian Morton use the term "mentholated" to describe his ultra-cool tenor on Chet Baker's At the Forum Theater and Cools Out. That's an adjective I haven't met elsewhere in jazz criticism!

[jazzbo]

That Savoy date is very nice. . . .It's too bad there aren't many more Urso sessions available, now there won't be. An interesting player. Rest in Peace Mr. Urso.

[AllenLowe]

great player, nutty guy - and I mean that in the best possible way -

I had a 10 minute phone conversation with him about 10 years ago - and to this day I could not tell you what we talked about -

[GA Russell]

RIP. I saw in the True Blue thread last week that an album he did with Chet Baker in '64 called The Most Important Jazz Album of 1964-1965 is going out of print. I've been meaning to pick that one up.

[youdig]

I heard he was a member of the N.R.A.

[Chuck Nessa]

I heard he was a member of the N.R.A.

and I heard he was lactose intolerant.

[JSngry]

Which means that he was hell on cows.