When bassist Martin Pizzarelli (right in photo above) celebrates the centennial birthday of his father, guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli (left in photo), on Sunday, January 11, at Morristown’s Morris Museum, he’ll begin with Duke Ellington’s “Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me” because “it’s the song he liked to open with.”
That will be followed by music from Bucky’s Benny Goodman years and Zoot Sims years, “and I’ll let the guitar players pick the songs they want to honor Bucky with.” The two guitarists are David O’Rourke and Walt Bibinger, and they will be joined by saxophonist/clarinetist Linus Wyrsch and pianist Hyuna Park.
Bucky Pizzarelli, who died April 1, 2020, at the age of 94, would have celebrated his 100th birthday on January 9, 2026. “This is going to be a family style concert,” Martin Pizzarelli said. “It will be very loose and, hopefully, very entertaining. I may even have people ask questions, and I may bring some of Bucky’s artwork to put in the lobby. He loved Paterson (where he grew up), and some of his paintings depict the Paterson Falls.”
Martin’s childhood is filled with memories of jazz musicians and other celebrities who visited the Pizzarelli home in Saddle River, NJ. “When I was in seventh grade,” he said, “my mother got me out of class. ‘You’re going on a road trip to Valley Forge with your dad,” she said. “We picked up Benny Goodman along the way.” There were also visits from pianist Teddy Wilson, tenor saxophonist Sims, and many others.
Pizzarelli’s bass playing began when he was 14 or 15, and, he recalled that, “It wasn’t jazz yet. My brother, John, had a rock band, and he didn’t get along with his bass player. So, he said, ‘Learn these songs.’ Then, after that, I started to play on a mini bass my dad had gotten from his father.” Martin’s jazz prowess was helped by visits to his home by such veteran bassists as Milt Hinton, George Duvivier, and Jerry Bruno.
Bass advice from Bucky? “He always said, ‘Just support the beat.’ I was never a big soloist. My dad said, ‘Just play the roots of the notes, and everybody else will do the rest.’ It’s only in the last five to seven years that I’ve been soloing more with a trio. I played in my brother’s trio for 25 years.”
O’Rourke first visited New York from his native Ireland 43 years ago.”As a 22-year-old,” he recalled, “I had the great fortune to be put in contact with Bucky Pizzarelli by (guitarist) Louis Stewart, Ireland’s most accomplished jazz musician — he toured with Benny Goodman’s band alongside Bucky.
“Bucky invited me to bring my guitar to the Pierre Hotel where he played every night, and to sit in. I called ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ and took just one chorus in my solo. Bucky emphatically told me to ‘go on!’, and, despite how long ago it was, I still remember him calling ‘In a Mellow Tone’ and how amazing it felt to play with his trio.”
Although Bucky tried to get O’Rourke some gigs, the Irish guitarist didn’t have a green card. When O’Rourke moved permanently to the United States, Bucky told him: “I have every guitar you need, so if you get a call and need something specific, call me.’ I just cannot ever forget how welcome Bucky made me in my earliest days. Without that, my whole life might have taken a completely different direction. He encouraged me to follow my dreams, and nowadays I do the same for young musicians. Paying forward the kindness Bucky showed a wide eyed 22-year-old back them.”
O’Rourke has his own big band, The O’Rourkestra, and, for several years, he directed the Jazz Standard Youth Program at the Jazz Standard jazz club. He has played with such legends as pianists Cedar Walton and Tommy Flanagan and alto saxophonist Jackie McLean.
Bibinger’s first gig with Bucky happened in 2006 at the Deer Head Inn in Delaware Water Gap, PA. “When the club formed a record label with VectorDisc records,” Bibinger said, “the first release, in 2014, was Guitar Trio: Live at the Deer Head Inn, Bucky Pizzarelli Ed Laub and Walt Bibinger.
“Bucky,” Bibinger continued, “was so kind and encouraging on stage and off. I met him 35 years before we ever played together when my parents took me to see him in a duo with (bassist) Slam Stewart. I never would have thought I’d get to perform and release a CD with Bucky and (guitarist) Ed Laub all those years later.” Playing with Bucky, he added, “was like a year of lessons. It was truly an honor to have played the last decade with Bucky and now, for a few years, with Martin.”
In addition to performing with Bucky, Bibinger has played with guitarist Howard Alden, organist Jimmy McGriff, and alto saxophonist Phil Woods, among many others. He studied for 15 years with the late guitarist Harry Leahey.
Wyrsch, originally from Switzerland, was about 15 years old when he saw Bucky play at Lucerne’s Jazz Club Luzern with trombonist George Masso, vibraphonist Peter Appleyard, and drummer Jake Hanna. “Later, around 2011,” he said, “I saw Bucky and Martin at the Blue Note with (pianist) Monty Alexander. When I met Martin again around 2016, I met guitarist Ed Laub; and Ed and Martin made it happen that I would play at Bucky’s birthday and a number of other concerts, a dream come true. Bucky’s infectious smile, joy, and playfulness on the bandstand stayed with me — and I’ve tried to live up to them ever since.”
Bucky Pizzarelli was one of the few musicians able to maintain a positive rapport with Benny Goodman over several years. Asked about that by Jersey Jazz‘s Schaen Fox in January 2008, Bucky said, “Benny could pick a wise guy out before he even walked into the room . . . If you tried to outsmart him, you couldn’t do it . . . I knew what he wanted: With Benny, you had to know what tempo he was doing. That’s all. When he played by himself, there was the tempo before you started playing. If you interpreted it the wrong way, you were out.”
Martin Pizzarelli remembered his father telling him about “the Benny Goodman glare. My father said that when he did that, ‘He’s thinking about the next song, he’s thinking about the gig, which I understand.’ My dad said the same guys who complained about how nasty Goodman was would list him first on their resume as people they had played with.”
Zoot Sims was a Bucky Pizzarelli favorite. “To me,” he told Fox, “There was nobody like Zoot. He was the happiest guy whenever he had that saxophone… Nobody could beat him.” In 1998, Bucky and tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton released a duo album on the Concord Jazz label called Red Door, a tribute to Sims. AllMusic‘s Scott Yanow wrote that, “Pizzarelli’s mastery of the seven-string guitar allows him to play bass lines behind solos, so one never misses the other instruments . . . Both Hamilton and Pizzarelli sound inspired in this format, stretching themselves while always swinging.”
Another Bucky favorite was pianist John Bunch. Shortly after Bunch died in March 2010, Bucky told me Bunch was Goodman’s favorite piano player, adding that the pianist always, “had everything planned. You could never play two ballads in a row or two songs in the same key. He was adamant about that.” They were scheduled to play together at Smalls the week that Bunch passed away.
At the Morristown Jazz & Blues Festival in 2019, guitarist Frank Vignola described a typical Bucky Pizzarelli set. “Bucky,” he said, “always had a great way of starting a show, usually with a medium tempo song that everyone knew. This would draw the audience in and give the band a chance to get comfortable on stage. Then, the second song, he would swing it a little, and the third one, bingo! Knock it out of the park.”
That resonates with Martin. “You don’t go for ‘Cherokee’ in the beginning,” he said. “You build up to it. Bucky always taught us to do that.”-SANFORD JOSEPHSON
The Morris Museum is located at 6 Normandy Heights Road in Morristown, NJ. The Celebrating Bucky Pizzarelli concert begins at 3 p.m. For more information or to order tickets, log onto morrismuseum.org or call (973) 971-3700.
PHOTO BY NANCY TRIGIANI