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RIP Dave McKenna


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From Songbirds:

I just heard from his sister Jean that Dave McKenna passed away peacefully late last night. As some of you know he'd been sidelined for the past few years -- living out in Pennsylvania close to his son Steve. Worsening conditions from diabetes and other issues kept him from playing in recent years. It was cancer that finally did him in. At least he got to see the Red Sox surprise win the other night.

Just two bars from Dave and he was immediately inside the song. His unique rhythmic thrust that sounded as if three hands were at work are a trademark of this world class piano stylist. But he also could caress a melody in a way that sounded as if he were singing just to you. Dave had an innate sense of just the right harmony to enrich a song without diminishing its integrity. Once he told me that Harold Arlen was one of his favorite writers and thought My Shining Hour to be the most perfect song. They'd met once when Dave was playing for a radio broadcast and the usual self-effacing McKenna seemed quite proud to relate how Arlen complimented his playing. I can well imagine Harold Arlen especially digging Dave.

McKenna admitted he preferred backing horn/reed players (i.e. Bobby Hackett, Zoot Sims, Dick Johnson, Scott Hamilton). He'd bellyache about having to take out glasses to read charts or transpose but Dave really did enjoy playing for singers he liked and he was great at it. I grew up listening to recordings he'd made with sister Jean. Those of us lucky enough to catch him through those years out at the Cape, Boston or in New York might occasionally get asked to sit in. It was like riding in a Cadillac. People on this list will know more extensively just who and how many singers he's recorded with through his career. Donna Byrne has a recent one and I'm grateful to have recorded three with Dave. I'll be interested in reading future posts about this. Of course the Teddi King album is a poignant beauty. I recall that Richard Sudhalter helped produce that project. He loved and wrote a lot about both Teddi and Dave. Hope they're all together somewhere now. Imagine the collective colossal treasure trove of songs these three could toss around. Now, that's an eternity I could dig.

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Sad indeed. Dave was a long-time favorite. We had a few passions in common -- the Red Sox and NY Times crossword puzzles (he would often work on one in between sets at his long-time gig at the Copley Plaza in Boston). I used to ask him to play his tribute to Ted Williams ("The Splendid Splinter") and he would oblige.

Sad news. It seemed inevitable from what I have been hearing lately, but it is the update one doesn't wish for. My thoughts are with the Steve and the family who can take comfort in the fact that Dave's music will continue to reward ears and minds.

mckenna-715943.jpg

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From today's Boston Globe:

Pianist Dave McKenna's signature style resonated

By Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff | October 21, 2008

Dave McKenna liked to call himself a saloon piano player, though the gin joints he graced were as classy as the guy whose hands effortlessly glided over the keys, creating a sound so full that many listeners thought two pianists were in the room.

A decade-long run at the Copley Plaza bar in the 1980s made him an institution in Boston, and critics loved him wherever he went. In 1981, Newsweek called him "the world's best barroom piano player." Critic Whitney Balliett of The New Yorker wrote in 1973 that "a great many jazz musicians of the middle generation consider him the best pianist alive, and it is easy to understand why."

"Yeah, but I'm just a tune player, you know," Mr. McKenna, who never missed a chance to hit a modest note in interviews, told the Globe in 1984.

Diabetes and lung cancer cur tailed his playing in the past several years as he moved from his longtime home in South Dennis to Providence and then to State College, Pa., to live closer to his son. Mr. McKenna died in his State College home Saturday. He was 78.

"Unquestionably, in the annals of pianists, he was right at the top," said WGBH-FM radio personality Ron Della Chiesa. "You could instantly tell Dave's sound because it was unique. Some people say that when they listened to Dave, they thought they were listening to two pianos, but when you watched him, he really had a light touch. It was hardly any effort at all, and yet the sound could fill a room. I guess it's the mark of a genius that he could do that."

Sharing the stage with a who's who of the musically brilliant, Mr. McKenna performed or recorded with such jazz luminaries as saxophonists Stan Getz and Zoot Sims, drummers Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich, and band leaders Woody Herman and Charlie Ventura. Along with his gifts as a solo pianist, Mr. McKenna was a sought-after accompanist.

"Tony Bennett told me that when he sang with Dave, it was like singing with a full orchestra, he had so many embellishments," Della Chiesa said.

While Mr. McKenna may have played to high praise from Los Angeles to New York City, where Balliett hailed his "brilliant six-week solo appearance" at Michael's Pub in 1973, he loved Boston, his musical home for the more than 30 years he lived on Cape Cod.

And his devotion to the Red Sox was such that he often kept a radio, tuned quietly to the game, sitting on his piano at the Copley. He wrote a melody for Ted Williams called "Splendid Splinter," the slugger's nickname. Sunday night during the radio broadcast of the Red Sox game, an announcer mentioned that Mr. McKenna, a legendary fan, had died.

In Woonsocket, R.I., where Mr. McKenna grew up, his father played drums, his mother violin, and his siblings were musical, too. But Mr. McKenna's talent was apparent early on, though not because of formal training.

"All I thought about was music," he told the Globe in 1991. "I'd spend hours playing tunes from the radio, Benny Goodman and Nat Cole. But I wouldn't practice. Never learned the scales properly. I never had the patience, and even now I'm not a good sight reader."

By his late teens he was playing with bands and "when he'd return home, sometimes in the middle of the night after a job, I can remember him playing quietly at the piano when he thought everyone was asleep," said his sister Jean McKenna O'Donnell of Woonsocket. "I would go sit on the stairs and listen, so he didn't know I was there. He'd be playing a piece, maybe by [Claude] Debussy."

Mr. McKenna spent years touring with musicians, and eventually spent time in studios recording. In 1966, he moved to Cape Cod, his home for the rest of his musical career. As he turned principally to solo work, he developed his signature style.

"His left hand is distinctly his own: The moving fingers walked, or strode, or strummed," jazz critic Leonard Feather wrote in 1990 in The Los Angeles Times.

"I think of the melody and bass line - and other things fall into place," Mr. McKenna told Newsweek in 1981. "I do it not so much to sound big, like a big band, as to sound complete. Maybe, too, without knowing it, I've always had a little bit of Bach and Mozart in my playing."

Mr. McKenna's solo performances also exhibited his agile mind as he created medleys by plucking similar words from song titles.

"Take the 'street medley,' which was 26 minutes," Della Chiesa said. "There was "Easy Street," "42nd Street," "Beale Street Blues," "Basin Street Blues," "On the Street Where You Live," "On Green Dolphin Street," and "Don't Forget 127th Street." "

In addition to his sister, Mr. McKenna leaves his wife, Frances of Oak Island, N.C.; two sons, Stephen of State College and Douglas of Dennis; a brother, Donald of Woonsocket; another sister, Patricia Savard of Barrington, R.I.; and one granddaughter.

The family plans to hold a tribute concert, which will be announced at a later date. Della Chiesa said that beginning at 9 p.m. on Saturday, he will devote two hours of his radio show on WPLM, 99.1 FM, to playing Mr. McKenna's recordings and excerpts from interviews.

Mr. McKenna no doubt would have preferred little fuss. The torrent of praise that came his way often made him uneasy.

"I just like to play songs," he told the Globe in 1978 as he shrugged off a compliment, "melodies for dancing."

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  • 1 month later...

Dave's memorial service was held yesterday. This is from today's Boston Globe:

By Matt Negrin, Globe Correspondent | December 8, 2008

WOONSOCKET, R.I. - For the musicians swinging to jazz at the front of the church, something was missing. They had for years tuned their instruments and their ears to Dave McKenna's piano. Now, he is gone.

But in a way he was still with them at St. Ann Arts & Cultural Center yesterday, amid the fluttering brass notes, the thumping bass, and the light chatter of the drums as some of his oldest friends paid tribute to the legendary New England pianist.

"Dave was so supportive. Whenever we were playing solos, we would just become enhanced," said George Masso, a trombonist who had played with McKenna for nearly 50 years, along with trumpeter Lou Columbo and clarinetist Dick Johnson. "He was one of the greatest jazz pianists in the world."

McKenna, who was 78 when he died Oct. 18, became one of the most internationally admired jazz pianists. Noted for his solo flair, he had filled bars and lounges in New England and New York for nearly four decades.

He grew up in Woonsocket with a father who drummed, a mother who played violin, and musical siblings. By the time he was a teenager he was accompanying bands, and would go on to play with Woody Herman and Charlie Ventura. He moved to New York, and then to Cape Cod in 1966. During the 1980s, he could often be heard at the Copley Plaza Hotel, where he was the chief pianist.

Performing with McKenna could be euphoric, his bandmates said.

"It was like partially singing with an orchestra and floating on air at the same time, because he was buoyant," said Daryl Sherman, who had sung with the pianist since the 1980s, including at his final performance in the Oak Room in New York City's Algonquin Hotel. She called McKenna the "Woonsocket hero."

Watching the piano man's friends play and laugh from the front row of the church, his wife, Frankie, was moved.

"I think he would be delighted to see so many friends in such a surrounding," she said, beaming. Although, she said, referring to the 500 people who came to the memorial, "Dave didn't like a whole lot of fuss."

McKenna was a humble man, whether on the piano bench or with friends and family. Columbo, the trumpeter, joked of a recording session 25 years ago when McKenna asked him to lay some tracks for his album, and their roles were quickly reversed. "He said, 'Lou, if you don't want me to play too much, I won't,' " he recalled. "It was his album."

Standing at stage right while guitarist Gray Sargent filled the cavernous fresco-lined church with deep melodies, the three brass men laughed as they shared old stories about McKenna. Remember the time he ate nearly an entire ham? Or when Red Sox slugger Ted Williams stopped by to hear him play at the Plaza? "Ted Williams loved Dave," Columbo said.

Jean O'Donnell, McKenna's sister, sang the slow-jazz classic "My Ship." Before she took the mike, though, she thought of what her brother would do if he were there. "He might like to be up there," she said, "playing with his friends." dingbat_story_end_icon.gif

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There was a nice piece on "Fresh Air" recently:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...toryId=97485041

In incorporates part of an earlier broadcast, including both music and a conversation between Terry Gross and McKenna. The new segments include an interview with McKenna's sister.

I heard that rebroadcast on Thanksgiving day. Well worth checking out. Some funny/interesting stories from Dave's sister.

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