Bill Crow: Bassist and Storyteller Supreme

There aren’t many musicians still around who began their careers in the late 1940s. Far fewer have the incredible memory of bassist Bill Crow, who is an articulate repository of jazz history. I recently had the pleasure to chat with Bill via Zoom. Our conversation dwelt mostly on his early life and career and this story will concentrate on that. Born in 1927, Bill grew up in Kirkland, Washington, across Lake Washington from Seattle. His mother taught piano and singing and played the organ in church. In an era where much programming was local, she sang professionally on the Gold Shield Coffee Hour on radio station KIRO. The family wasn’t well off and through the 1930s, recorded music in the home was supplied via an Edison wind-up gramophone, which played cylinders, mostly of light classical music and vaudeville routines (Bill still remembers the words to “Young Johnny Jones,” which he sang to me on the Zoom). The family eventually got a radio and Bill was glued to it. He showed a musical ear right away and started to acquire knowledge of popular and swing tunes. Bill’s mother had tried to start Bill on piano when he was in Kindergarten, but it didn’t take. Not long after, his grammar school teacher showed students pictures of instruments they might play and Bill picked out the trumpet. It may have been because the teacher had played Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues�