From Deseret News archives:

Pizzarelli duo strikes a chord

Published: Sunday, Sept. 9, 2007 12:16 a.m. MDT

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At 81, Bucky Pizzarelli remains a standard-bearer for, well, standards — jazz, that is.

And he'll be returning to Salt Lake City with his son, John Pizzarelli, for a concert featuring music from the Great American Songbook, including composers Cole Porter, Duke Ellington and Johnny Mercer.

"We read each other beautifully, you know," said Bucky Pizzarelli. "Nobody gets in any trouble."

Although they live relatively near each other (Bucky is in New Jersey and John is in New York) and see each other a lot, Pizzarelli said that they only get to perform as a duo a few times each year.

The rest of the time, they stay busy with their individual careers. This year, Bucky Pizzarelli has already performed in Japan, England, France, Israel, Scotland and various U.S. venues.

It's par for the course for someone who has worked as a professional musician since age 17, when he toured with Vaughan Monroe's dance band. He served in the Army during the 1940s, and on his way home almost ran into Django Reinhardt. "He was in a town called Nancy, in France, when I was coming home. We stopped in that town, but I had no way of getting there, where he was, but I wish I'd met him."

Years later, Stephane Grappelli asked Pizzarelli to take Reinhardt's slot in Grappelli's trio. "I was fortunate enough to be with Grappelli for a long time," Pizzarelli said, adding that he was given the freedom to play his own way and bring his own style. "I didn't have to play like Django. Everybody does that in France. They must have had 50 kids that played exactly like Django Reinhart."

Pizzarelli said that Benny Goodman — with whom he also played — was the same way. "He didn't want Charlie Christian, he wanted just whatever you did, you know.

"Benny Goodman was a big thrill of mine. You dream about playing — you saw the band so many times at the Paramount Theater in New York. And all the time I was going to high school I kept an eye on all the bands."

Pizzarelli said he was a lifelong fan of Goodman's sextet and Reihnardt and Stepohane Grappelli's recordings. "We had no television, but we heard the records — if you were fortunate enough to get ahold of some of those records, you had the whole music business, right there."

Pizzarelli also played for "The Tonight Show" with Doc Severinson. When the call came, it was nice, he said, because he had been doing so much studio work for RCA. "In the heyday, we were doing as many as three recordings a day."

But after a merger with Columbia Records, "the music was getting so bad that when there was an opening for 'The Tonight Show,' I went back to NBC."

Both Pizzarellis have carved out a somewhat unique spot for themselves in the jazz world by playing the 7-string electric guitar. Cranking the extra string to A allows them to play a deep bass line alongside their own solos — although, Pizzarelli said, it's something they didn't start until about 1970.

If you go . . .