Jay Leonhart

[David Abrams]

We should have a thread to discuss Jay Leonhart, one of the most musical jazz bassists alive today. He studied with Ray Brown, who like his mentor, has marvelous arrangements, melodically beautiful and creative walking lines, and probably one of the best bass solo's of the very top handful of jazz bassists in history. I think he may have developed this musical soloing from practicing singing along with his bass soloing, which Ray Brown always recommended.
I recently attended a workshop Jay Leonhart did at the David Gage Bass Shop in New York City, where Jay discussed how Slam Stewart, who was a tenor singer, would play arco solo's and sing wordlessly along with the arco solo's an octave above what he was playing on the bass. Major Holley developed his own individual sound by playing arco solo's on the bass and singing wordlessly along in unison with the bass. Jay has developed his own, unique approach, which seems totally impossible, but sounds wonderful--playing either arco or pizzicato solo's and singing either wordlessly or with the lyrics of the song a perfect interval of a tenth above the bass soloing. Jay told us, "It's a difficult mind set to do in the beginning, but it really works."
I totally agree with what Dondi said in this forum in the "Working on Grooves" thread about having studied with Jay Leonhart and feeling that, "Jay is one of the great underrated players out there."

[arnoldschnitzer]

I had the pleasure of attending Jay's show at ISB. He was entertaining, funny, musical, and played great bass. His bit about Gasparo daSalo had me in tears...

[David Abrams]

While the Marsalis family has the father, Ellis II, and 4 of his 6 sons (Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo, and Jason) all working as jazz musicians, there are other families with a lot of professional jazz musicians. We can think of such families as father Dewey Redman and son Joshua Redman, father John Coltrane, mother Alice Coltrane, and son Ravi Coltrane, father Thelonius Monk and son TS Monk Jr., mother Sandy Stewart and son Bill Charlap, father Bucky Pizzarelli and son John Pizzarelli, and wives and husbands, such as Renee Rosnes and husband Billy Drummond or Geri Allen and husband Wallace Roney.

However, Jay Leonhart's family may be one of the rare ones where the father, Jay, on bass and vocals, mother, Donna, on vocals, son Michael on trumpet and other instruments (piano, guitar, drums, melodica), and daughter, Carolyn on vocals, are all competent, talented, and superb jazz musicians. In addition to Jay's scores of albums, Donna has a nice album on Sunnyside, Being Green, (2001) and Michael and Carolyn each have nice recents albums. Michael also arranged and produced all the tracks on Donna's album and he and Jay also play on most tracks.

A highlight of Donna's recent album is a charming vocal duet on the love song, "Deed I Do", between Donna and Jay with Jay also on bass and Michael on guitar.

Jay's recent album, Jay Leonhart: Rodgers and Leonhart, on Sons of Sound Productions (2002) has all his family members nicely featured.

[Jimmyjazz]

I picked up a copy of his video "The Bass Lesson" which is not an actual bass lesson but rather him playing and singing his solo live set. Very funny it is too. Amazing to see someone playing the doghouse and singing with such ease.

[David Abrams]

Where can you get this video, "The Bass Lesson"?

[Jimmyjazz]

I picked up the video at one of his shows.

He has a website at:
www.jayleonhart.com

There is also a website relating his live shows/video at:
www.thebasslesson.com

You can also get Jay Leonhart t-shirts, lunchboxes, mousepads etc. (I kid you not) at:
http://www.cafeshops.com/sonsofsound/12982