Bucky Pizzarelli R.I.P.

[EKE BBB]

https://www.njarts.net/music/legendary-guitarist-bucky-pizzarelli-dies-at-94/

https://jazzlives.wordpress.com/2020/04/02/bucky-january-9-1926-april-1-2020/

 

[jazzcorner]

Playing now

[Hardbopjazz]

It's been a busy week with the deaths of musicians. 

RIP, Bucky. Thanks for all the music and your military service in WWII. Thoughts with your family. 

[Brad]

RIP. I saw him play a few times out here in New Jersey. 

[Chuck Nessa]

This should be reissued.

[EKE BBB]

6 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

This should be reissued.

Agreed. Gorgeous date!

[Justin V]

I saw Bucky Pizzarelli twice, once with Aaron Weinstein and once with Ed Laub.  I'll always remember the radiant smile he had on his face as he gleefully strummed away.  He swung so hard!  It was touching to hear John Pizzarelli talk so warmly about his father during a blindfold test last year.  Thank you for the music, Mr. Pizzarelli, and rest in peace.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

RIP

 

[sgcim]

RIP, Bucky. I met him at a club he was playing at where I agreed to pick up my 1935 D'Angelico guitar, which was getting a new bridge made by a well-known luthier. Before I got there, the luthier let Bucky play my guitar, and he said Bucky got such a strong sound out of the acoustic archtop that he could hear Bucky playing it, even when he was in the men's room!

Bucky also had a 1935 D'Angelico that was displayed in the recent Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition of the work by D'Angelico and D'Aquisto, celebrating the work of Italian-American immigrant luthiers in NY. We talked about our guitars for a while, and he reprimanded me for having lighter gauge strings on my guitar than he felt I should have, and I felt like my Italian-American father was yelling at me, whom I had inherited the guitar from.

I told him about the many times I saw him and George Barnes playing live all over the place in NYC when I was a kid, and he told me that George Barnes gave him his 1935 D'A when Barnes started using a different guitar.

[mikeweil]

This was the first time I heard him, and it convinced me. R.I.P.

[duaneiac]

This sums it up nicely:  "The length and breadth of the work with all the different people was a testament to how hard he worked at it," John Pizzarelli said. "Everybody from Benny Goodman and Les Paul to Carly Simon, Janis Ian and Paul McCartney. All kinds of people requested his services because he was the best at what he did."

Rest In Peace, Mr. Pizzarelli and thank you for your enduring legacy of music.

[GA Russell]

RIP Bucky Pizzarelli!

He was on my first Verve album, Walter Wanderley's Rain Forest.

Edited April 3, 2020 by GA Russell

[HutchFan]

Very sad news.

R.I.P.

[Larry Kart]

I heard Bucky about five years ago in concert with a George Wein-led group that included a lot of would-be heavy hitters in that mainstream style -- Anat Cohen and my old friend Randy Sandke among them, maybe Harry Allen too. Bucky was by far the most interesting soloist.

P.S. Randy was having an off day.

[EKE BBB]

His wife Ruth also died yesterday. They were married for 66 years. 

R.I.P.

[J.A.W.]

A contact of mine in the 1970s was a big Pizzarelli fan. Sad news.

[duaneiac]

15 hours ago, EKE BBB said:

His wife Ruth also died yesterday. They were married for 66 years. 

R.I.P.

Oh my goodness.  That's so sad..  My thoughts are with the Pizzarelli family at this sad time.

[EveryMann]

I chanced across this Al Caiola record at some point in my youth, and few tunes have captivated me the way Strait Ahead did in my formative years. The LP was first released on RCA in the late 50s as High Strung, and it features Pizzarelli prominently. I cut my teeth on this one and learned all the parts on my first guitar: a beat-up ES 125TC that's long gone. 

So sorry to learn of his passing now.