Conversations with Bucky Pizzarelli

His guitar mastery made him a top first-call artist in the New York recording scene for decades. His quiet and friendly manner made one club owner say that Bucky could be the governor of New Jersey if he wished, because everybody who ever met him liked him. I’m proud to say that for about 50 years, he called me and my wife “The kids.” Why he picked that I never asked.

He was born in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1926, and if he had told me that he began practicing the guitar later that same day, I would have considered it a possibility. His first name was John, but his father dubbed him Bucky due to his own childhood fixation on cowboys, and the name stuck.

He remembered that one grandfather played fingerstyle classical guitar “like Segovia,” but it was two uncles, both professional guitarists, who taught him to play. He seemed always eager to learn, if only to fit into the joyful and frequent family gatherings that always offered good food, drink, and live music created by the family.

During his youth, quality live music was also easily accessible in town, in part because Paterson was prosperous then. So, music was taught in his schools and the numerous venues employed many of the talented local and touring national musicians. One local with a national reputation was the blind accordion player Joe Mooney. He employed one of Pizzarelli’s uncles in his quartet, and sometimes the youth was an attentive audience member.

By age 17, Pizzarelli sometimes sat in with Mooney. That drew the attention of bandleader Vaughn Monroe who hired the youth and, except for the guitarist’s combat service in WWII, kept him until the band broke up in 1951.

Monroe’s band was popular and worked steadily. The young guitarist earned $160 a week while the average working man made $50; but while the bandstand looked glamorous, the uncomfortable band bus was bouncing on lonely and dark dirt roads for hundreds of nights per year. Pizzarelli said, “I remember many times at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning the driver would say, ‘Everybody off.’ He would go back about a quarter of a mile then go flying over a weak little bridge. Then, we would all walk over and get back on the bus.”

When Monroe finally ended his band in 1951, Pizzarelli returned home to New Jersey. He soon married and started a large and close-knit family. (His two sons, John and Martin, both followed him into musical careers. The former on guitar and the latter on bass.)

He soon started a decades-long primary gig at NBC, first on the Kate Smith Show. It was on the air five days a week and proved to be personally important because, “that is how most of the guys in New York got to know me. Then, the recording thing started. They were using a lot of guitars, and I got in on that.”

His mastery was such that he was called to play in a variety of musical genres, and for a great variety of performers. He was a featured anonymous backup on a vast number of early rock and roll 45s, commercials, show, jazz and almost any other recording made in those years. Often, he had two or three recording sessions per day.

Another factor in his constant employment must have been his amenability. It was not unusual that during his breaks on club dates, he was sometimes approached by parents with their children. The parents would explain that their child was learning how to play the guitar, and ask for help. Pizzarelli would often give up that free time to offer whatever help he could, and do it gratis.

Son John, who both gigged and recorded with his father for many years, once gave me this insight about working with his dad. “The best analogy I can think of is when you are Bucky Pizzarelli’s son you do anything you are requested to do. Like, if somebody said, ‘Oh yeah, you are supposed to do this gig without pants.’ Bucky would say, ‘Yeah, that’s no problem, I could do that.’ Then you go and you are saying, ‘I don’t have any pants on.’ Every once in a while, I’d go, ‘You know, dad, we’re going to wear pants for this gig. I think it’s only right.’ ‘Oh, you know the guy said…’ ‘I don’t care what the guy said. We are going to wear pants.’ My father basically will do anything.”

I first became aware of just how sociable and unassuming the great guitarist was one summer day at a jazz picnic. We arrived early to find a good location, and be well prepared for the music. Soon after we settled in, another family claimed a large area near us. As they set up, Bucky Pizzarelli came over and introduced himself. He explained that his large group would grow even larger as the day progressed, and as they would have plenty of food, etc. we should feel free to come by and join them. That was how we met, and became “members of the family.”

At a similar event, his good friend Zoot Sims attended and, as the two spoke, I asked the great saxophonist to autograph an old album with his photo on the cover. After signing, Sims looked at it for a moment and wistfully said, “I’ll never sound this good again.” Bucky mischievously added, “You’ll never look that good again either.”

We never saw his family and friends at their home in Saddle River, New Jersey, but over the years, we heard wonderful stories about music there. Neighbors and friends, like Ray Brown, Al Cohn, Joe Venuti, Slam Stewart, and Zoot Sims, would often visit and jam sessions were included. Much to my dismay, when I asked if he recorded these at-home sessions, he replied, “No, one night we had George Barnes and Les Paul just playing on the porch, but I never recorded any of that stuff.”

In his wonderfully entertaining autobiography World on a String, John Pizzarelli recounted a most unforgettable five hours of playing on that same porch, between his father and Zoot Sims— shortly after the legendary saxophonist had learned that his lung cancer was so advanced that he had only a short time left to live. The two good friends played for five hours on a warm August night. John described it as “one of the great nights of my life” as he witnessed “the raw, deep, and emotional love of musicians for their music.”

Pizzarelli’s long employment at NBC lasted until Johnny Carson moved his Tonight Show, with its great big band, to California in 1972. Doc Severinsen, trumpet master, the band’s leader, and often the show’s “fashion” icon, was most unhappy about Pizzarelli’s decision not to relocate and long tried to change his mind, but deep family roots, numerous area friends, and unease about relocating his children to the Los Angeles area kept him anchored in New Jersey.

Pizzarelli never lacked for work and could have probably played in any size venue, but like his friend Les Paul, he preferred a small club where he could be close to his audience. Unlike Mr. Paul, however, Pizzarelli seldom spoke from the bandstand, preferring to communicate with his music and his ever-present smile. When it was his gig, it was usually a small group performing, most often a duo, sometimes a trio. If he was in a larger assembly, he was rarely the boss.

For several decades, up until he died, Benny Goodman was often his boss and also a friend who sometimes could be found napping on Pizzarelli’s couch or taking him to a gig at the White House. He explained, “The first time I played at the White House. I played for President Reagan in Benny’s quartet with Buddy Rich, Hank Jones, and Milt Hinton.”

That quartet was assembled especially to play for the visiting King Hussein of Jordan who, Pizzarelli explained, “was a big fan of Buddy’s and wanted Buddy to play with Benny.” The impeccable yet mercurial Mr. Rich, “respected Benny like you can’t believe. When Benny called him to come and play, he was excited and we went down to Washington. When we played, he even played ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ the way Gene Krupa did it. I have a tape of that. It is very exciting.”

“Gene was Benny’s favorite. On the Merv Griffin Show, Benny said, ‘I always thought [Buddy] played too loud.’ But boy, when they played together, they really made some good music. I would do that show occasionally when Benny came in. They would put me on for the week, but it was specifically to play for Benny.”

Reflecting on The King of Swing’s personality, the guitarist mused, “If Benny didn’t like you, it was your fault. Benny could pick a wise guy out before he even walked into the room. That was the last thing for him; if you tried to outsmart him you couldn’t do it. No matter what you did, he could beat you to it, because he knew all the answers. With Benny, you had to know what tempo he was doing. If you interpreted that the wrong way, you were out.”

President Reagan had Pizzarelli back to play for another head of state, the president of Italy. That night the rest of the band included Tony Mottola, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Vin Falcone, Nick Perito, Irv Cotler, and Gene Cherico. Pizzarelli suspected that “someone purposely put so many Italian- American musicians together for the event.”

It must have gone well, because when it was over “President Reagan came up and mentioned our names and said: ‘I just found out you are all here illegally. We are having you all shipped back to Italy.’”

His last White House gig was backing Savion Glover in a trio with Fiddler Williams and Keter Betts. “It was very exciting. We spent like three days rehearsing and putting it together for President Clinton.” Sometimes as they rehearsed, “the president would walk around talking to everybody. He said that he stayed in touch with Zoot Sims’ widow, because Zoot was his favorite sax player.”

Another trip to Washington indirectly came about because one of Pizzarelli’s heroes was George Van Eps, the pioneer of the seven-string guitar. Years before, when Van Eps visited New York to demonstrate the possibilities that extra string gave a guitarist, Pizzarelli was there and interested. He soon had his own, the first made by the famed Robert Benedetto. He used it from 1978 until 2005, when at a special ceremony at the Smithsonian he donated it and a six-string bass guitar that he had used on so many of those early rock and roll recordings to the National Museum of American History. That became the first Benedetto guitar in the Smithsonian’s collection.

Gigs in the New York City area and tours all over the world kept him constantly on the bandstand. Once while setting up for his gig at the Plaza Hotel, the head waiter took Pizzarelli to Andres Segovia’s table. “I sat briefly with him.” The august classical master asked some questions about Pizzarelli’s seven string guitar, and then said he wanted to hear him play. “I was working with Tony Monte and Jerry Bruno. We played a couple of numbers, then Mr. Segovia walked up, shook everybody’s hand, and left.”

That was a special memory because his love of classical guitar music probably began as a young child listening to his grandfather play. Jazz was his primary musical love, but not his only one. Some classical works appear in his discography, such as the 2001 Sonatina (Victoria VC4337) and the 2007 Generations (Arbors ARCD 19345). Finally, in 2015, he recorded Renaissance A Journey from Classical to Jazz (Arbors ARCD 19448). He was especially pleased with it, and it’s well worth having.

He seems to have gigged with everybody, and his long discography is probably impossible to definitively fix. There are recordings with son John Pizzarelli, Frank Vignola, Roberta Flack, Howard Alden, Ken Peplowski, Stéphane Grappelli, Bud Freeman, Buddy Rich, Ruby Braff, Dick Hyman, Lee Wiley, Jay Leonhart, Tony Mottola, Annie Ross, Bill Crow, Gene Bertoncini, Vaughn Monroe, Rosemary Clooney, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Oscar Peterson, and so many, many more.

He even appears on two tracts of Sir Paul McCartney’s 2012 CD Kisses on the Bottom (HRM-33369-02) and was impressed. After spending two days in the studio with McCartney, Pizzarelli told me, “He’s a fabulous artist. He didn’t mind if we had to do 20 takes. He would do it until he got it. It was a great pleasure. I thought my career was over when Benny Goodman passed away then I ran into Paul McCartney.”

He lived to be 94, and as he neared the end, it was mostly off the bandstand, but not by choice. Weakened by a serious stroke, he then endured two months of pneumonia. When he could, he began practicing often with Ed Laub, who was first his student, then his friend, then his years-long gig partner.

A great musician once said, “To make a mistake is unimportant. To play without passion is unforgivable.” The senior Pizzarelli never needed forgiveness, and after months of practicing, primarily with Ed, the still weak-in-body, but strong-in-spirit maestro made a few local engagements that I saw. On one, Ed Laub was joined by Frank Vignola and his son Martin Pizzarelli.

That day, the room was overflowing with devoted fans. The selections were all long favorites, but his playing was somewhat different as he slowly restored his life-long skills. It was a success, and we saw that great smile appear when something he played pleased him. Then it spread among his bandmates. As Frank put it, “Have you ever seen grown men have so much fun with their clothes on?”

Finally, the Covid pandemic ended his life, (on the same day that Covid took the great Ellis Marsalis, Jr.) That club owner may have been right, but if he had become a governor the world would have missed a marvelous musical talent who for so many decades freed so many people from the day-to-day cares so often caused by politics.