Thesis - Bio And Musical Analysis - Harry Leahey

© 2006 Philip M. Peters ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

HARRY LEAHEY: MASTER GUITARIST, MUSICIAN AND TEACHER By Philip M. Peters

A thesis submitted to the Graduate School-Newark Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Graduate Program in Jazz Studies Written under the direction of Professor Lewis Porter and approved by ____________________ ____________________

Newark, New Jersey May, 2006

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Abstract Harry Leahey was a guitarist and guitar teacher who lived, taught and performed primarily in New Jersey. His career began in the early 1960s and continued until his death in 1990. He studied guitar with Lou Melia, a local guitar teacher, Al Volpe, the renowned studio guitarist and teacher of such players as Joe Pass and Sal Salvatore, leading jazz and studio guitarist Johnny Smith and Dennis Sandole, teacher of such students as Pat Martino and John Coltrane. He studied theory and composition at Manhattan School of Music. Although he never achieved a high degree of fame he played and recorded with Phil Woods, Gerry Mulligan, Al Cohn, Jack Six, Warren Vaché and numerous other well known jazz artists, all of whom held him in the highest esteem. He performed with local artists, both jazz and commercial. From 1978 to 1990 he performed with his own trio and in duo settings with various bass players. He recorded one album with his trio, one duo album with Steve Gilmore and one solo album. A dedicated and practical family man, he chose to devote himself to teaching the guitar. He taught privately at his home in Plainfield, New Jersey and from 1974 to 1988 at William Paterson University (then William Paterson College). He died in 1990 at the age of 54. This thesis provides a biography of this neglected artist, tracing his musical and professional development. In addition there are two musical analyses, one analyzed solo and an analysis of one aspect of his teaching method, his approach to teaching chords. Finally a bibliography and a discography are included. Regrettably there is very little in print about him. His bibliography includes two

iii books in which he is briefly mentioned and several magazine and newspaper articles about him.

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Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the myriad persons who provided support and encouragement throughout the pursuit of this project. In particular: Dr. Lewis Porter, Dr. Henry Martin and Dr. John Howland of the Jazz Masters Program at Rutgers University for their help and guidance; Deborah Leahey, Tom Anthony, Edie Eustice, Roy Cumming, Glenn Davis, Phil Woods, Ron Naspo, Ronnie Glick and Walt Bibinger for their generosity in sharing their remembrances and documentary materials with me. In addition the author acknowledges and gives special thanks to the Morroe Berger - Benny Carter Jazz Research Fund for a generous research grant and to the Institute of Jazz Studies in Newark, New Jersey for opening the Harry Leahey archives to me.

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Preface From 1968 to 1974 I studied guitar with Harry Leahey. From 1974 until his death in 1990 I studied with him intermittently and frequently went to hear him play. Harry was my first guitar teacher. He took an eighteen year old self-taught folk strummer and patiently guided him through the treacherous waters of modern jazz harmony and correct guitar technique. He revealed secrets to me that he had spent years uncovering. He was generous in the extreme with his time and his knowledge. It is not unusual for someone to speak of his teacher, especially his first teacher, in superlative, even hyperbolic terms. But in Harry’s case there is the recorded evidence: his recordings with Phil Woods, the concert with Al Cohn that was captured, his own albums and the informal recordings done by students, fans and fellow musicians. There’s the unanimous agreement among those who played with him, those who studied with him, and those who heard him perform, that he was a brilliant musician. And there’s the list of professional musicians and educators who put in their biographies “studied with the great jazz guitarist Harry Leahey.” Harry Leahey’s playing, like that of certain jazz greats like Miles Davis, Stan Getz and Dave Brubeck, appealed to jazz fans as well as people who thought they didn’t like jazz. Perhaps that’s because his incredible technique and deep theoretical understanding of music were never an end unto themselves, but rather a vehicle through which he expressed the feelings of a warm and gentle soul.

vi It’s been a little over fifteen years since we lost Harry Leahey. For those of us who were privileged to have been close to him Phil Woods’s simple words ring true: “I miss him dearly.”

Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... iv Preface ............................................................................................................................v Harry Leahey Bio ............................................................................................................1 The Harry Leahey Chord Method ..................................................................................39 Analysis of Harry Leahey’s solo on Django’s Castle (Manoir de Mes Rêves) ................56 Interview with Tom Anthony.........................................................................................72 Harry Leahey Discography ..........................................................................................121 Harry Leahey Bibliography .........................................................................................141

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Harry Leahey Bio Harry Leahey was born on September 1, 1935 in Plattsburg, New York. His parents were Henry Leahey and Edith Leahey, née Lamonde. The senior Leahey, originally a resident of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, was stationed in the US army in Plattsburg, New York when he met Miss Lamonde. The historic Plattsburg Barracks is located on the west side of Lake Champlain, about one mile from the village of Plattsburgh, New York. Miss Lamonde was from Potsdam, New York, north of the Adirondack foothills in central St. Lawrence County, New York. The Leaheys had four children. His siblings were two brothers Michael and Patrick and a sister, Edith (now Dillon.) Upon Mr. Leahey’s discharge from the Army, the Leaheys moved first to Perth Amboy and then to Plainfield, New Jersey. The elder Leahey wanted Harry to be a professional prize fighter. Young Harry was athletically gifted, as photos of him playing baseball and other sports illustrate. As a small boy, Harry went to the YMCA every morning with his dad. There, he trained and became a Mosquito Weight boxer who could take on anyone his own size and weight.1 At the age of thirteen Leahey received his first guitar. As he recounts: When I was thirteen years old my mother and father placed a guitar in my hands and said "Play" - and I did. My uncle Al was a guitarist and I wanted to play like

1

Summer 1991 All Music Things Harry Loved.

-2him. It was unconditional love from the start. I barely made it through high school because of all the time I spent with the instrument.2 His first instrument was a Stella guitar.3 Stella was an inexpensive brand favored by such blues artists as Muddy Waters and Leadbelly and folk and hillbilly artists as Woody Guthrie. Shortly thereafter he began to study at Sayer's Studio in Plainfield with a teacher named Lou Melia. It was here that Leahey met his lifelong friend, musical associate Tom Anthony who was studying with Lou Melia’s brother, John. Tom performed with Harry in several groups and eventually became his brother in law. Leahey was an avid student who practiced diligently. He would often play late into the night, hiding with his guitar under his bed covers. Edie Eustice tells a story of Harry getting into trouble with his father with his practicing and his sense of humor. In the summer while Mrs. Leahey was mowing the lawn, Harry would be sitting by the window practicing scales. As his mother pushed the mower across the yard Harry would follow her movements going back and forth across the guitar neck, arousing his father’s ire.4 Like many guitarists of that time, Melia taught a picking technique known as consecutive picking.5 In this type of picking the guitarist employs alternating down and up strokes until two notes in a row require the pick to cross from one string to the next. At that point the player uses two down strokes in a row. The movement is primarily from the wrist which is loose and flexible. Arpeggios can be played with mostly down strokes. Fingerings are often arranged to allow many of these consecutive down strokes. The sound can be very legato but can lack definition as the attack is relatively light. This older 2

Liner notes to Unaccompanied Guitar, 1989. C. Macey Productions. Conversation with Tom Anthony. 4 Conversation with Edie Eustice. 5 Conversation with Tom Anthony. 3

-3style of picking is in stark contrast to what would become one of the cornerstones of formidable technique the Leahey would attain: strict alternate picking from the elbow with a stiff wrist. After a few years with the Melia brothers, Harry and Tom began to study with renowned guitarist Harry Volpe. Volpe had been a studio musician and recording artist since the 1920s. He had run a teaching studio in New York City on 48th Street for years and had taught such people as Johnny Smith, Joe Pass and Sal Salvatore. Little is known about Leahey’s time with Volpe. The only thing Tom Anthony remembered for certain about the lessons was that Volpe also taught consecutive picking. While still in his early teens Leahey began performing in public with his sister Edith who went by the nickname “Sunshine”. Sunshine sang and played the guitar and Leahey played guitar. Leahey’s first guitar idol was Les Paul. Paul had invented multitrack recording and various special effects including overdubbing and speeding up tracks. He and his wife, singer Mary Ford had a string of hit recordings including How High The Moon, Mockin' Bird Hill and Tiger Rag. The Leaheys patterned themselves after the famous Les Paul and Mary Ford act. The young guitarist was able to master the repertoire, if not the speeded up layers of guitars. Tom Anthony, who by that time had begun to play the bass, joined the group. The group played in various theaters in Plainfield. They appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, then the most prestigious television variety show. They also appeared on the Ding Dong Show, a popular children’s television show.6 Edie Eustice related Leahey’s account of the Sullivan appearance. While Harry was backstage Sullivan saw the teenager with his guitar. He asked him if he

6

Conversation with Edie Eustice.

-4would accompany a Sara Conk, yodeler.7 Harry agreed and made his big time debut accompanying a yodeler! It wasn’t until Harry and his sister performed a piece by Rachmaninoff that Sullivan realized what a serious musician the young guitarist was.8 A neighbor of the Leaheys, a saxophone player by the name of Bill Pfeiffer introduced the guitarist to a man who would have a profound impact of him, professionally and personally. Pfeiffer was in the army with renowned guitarist Johnny Smith. Pfeiffer told Smith about his talented neighbor and asked him if he would teach him. At the time Smith, who was already established as a leading jazz and studio guitarist did not have a teaching practice. As a favor to Pfeiffer he agreed to take Leahey as a student. It was Smith who introduced Leahey to alternate picking. Leahey, ever the conscientious student adjusted to the new technique and mastered it. Smith, who was an amateur pilot, used to fly from Long Island, New York where he lived to Hadley Airport in Plainfield. He would fly his young student to Long Island where the two of them would make a day of it. After about six months of tutelage, Smith one day upon delivering their son back to them announced to Mr. And Mrs. Leahey that he had taught Harry all he could about the guitar, but that he would be happy to teach him to fly a plane!9 Leahey, in 1968 during my second lesson with him, referred to those “Johnny Smith chords that no one can play”. He then proceeded to play a beautiful chord melody solo using those “impossible” chords. The influence of Smith’s characteristic piano-like voicings and moving inner lines can be heard in Leahey’s solo recordings, such as Some Other Time from “Unaccompanied Guitar”.

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Summer 1991 All Music Harry on TV. Conversation with Edie Eustice. 9 Conversation with Tom Anthony. 8

-5Leahey attended North Plainfield High School from which he graduated in 1953. At Christmas time of that year pianist Bill Evans, another Plainfield resident came home on leave from the service. While he was home he and Leahey played together informally.10 No recordings are known to exist of this encounter. Tom Anthony recalls at least a couple more occasions when Leahey and Evans played together. Harry Leahey and Tom Anthony practiced together every week, playing in the chicken coop in the Anthony family’s yard. Tom recalls that the two young musicians played together once a week but after a while Harry began to show up more frequently. Tom then observed that Harry was paying more and more attention to his younger sister, Karen. In their junior or senior year of high school, Leahey and Anthony met another musician who would profoundly influence them and with whom they would share many professional experiences. Drummer and singer Richie Moore was deeply into jazz and the music of performers like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. Moore educated the impressionable young musicians about music other than Les Paul and Mary Ford. At the same time, Sunshine was becoming discouraged with music. Harry, who studied with great teachers and practiced constantly, was making great strides technically and was performing challenging music. In one of their theater performances, the siblings performed a specialty number Nola, the 1915 Felix Arndt piano novelty piano solo. The arrangement was supposed to have the two guitarists trading phrases, with Harry taking the first. Sunshine was unable to keep up. It was events like this that led to her leaving the group and Harry and Tom to form a band with Richie Moore. 10

Conversation with saxophonist Bob Miller.

-6Moore, Leahey, Anthony and pianist Romolo (Rom) Ferri became The Richie Moore Four in around 1951. The Four was a professional, rehearsed band, complete with promotional photos. Plainfield in the early 1950s had a thriving nightclub business. Route 22 was a busy strip with many clubs. The Four played club gigs doing the popular songs of the day. In addition to his skill as a drummer, he taught other area drummers including Ronnie Glick. Moore was a talented singer who excelled at the Frank Sinatra material with which he had familiarized his young band mates. He was also a very entertaining showman. Rom Ferri recalled that Moore would announce the group as “Tom, Dick, Harry and [pause] Romolo?” Plainfield in the early 1950s had two interesting characteristics. Its downtown area was a well known central New Jersey shopping area. People would come from surrounding towns to shop there. And it was a racially mixed town, with generally good relations between the races. Plainfield had two record stores, Brooks Record Shop on Watchung Ave near East 4th Street and Gregory's Music on Front Street. Gregory’s dealt primarily with the white clientele while Brooks dealt with the African American clientele. In about 1952, Leahey who had been a patron of Gregory’s became friendly with Edie Linzer, an employee of the store. Edie, who is now Edie Eustice, recalls Leahey as a shy, soft spoken jazz fan. She showed him a Johnny Smith record and asked him if he liked Smith. Leahey told her he had studied with Smith. When she didn’t believe him he invited her to come hear him performing, adding that he would do some Johnny Smith style playing. The two of them became good friends. Edie lent Leahey a 10 inch Django Reinhardt record. She doesn’t recall if Harry had ever heard Reinhardt before but does remember that he loved the record. The record was a collection of some

-7of Reinhardt’s 1940s recordings. Two of the songs on it were Manoir de Mes Rêves and Nuages, both Reinhardt compositions. In a short time Leahey learned both songs and incorporated them into his repertoire. Edie recalled that whenever she would go into a club where Harry as performing, as soon as he saw her he would play Nuages for her. He continued to perform both songs for the rest of his life. In fact, he recorded them both with the Phil Woods Quintet in the late 1970s, Nuages as a solo vehicle on Song for Sisyphus and Manoir de Mes Rêves with the full band doing his arrangement on Live at the Showboat. Leahey didn’t confine his musical studies to the guitar. In 1954 or 1955 Leahey studied theory and harmony at Manhattan School of Music. Unfortunately the exact dates are not available.11 At this time Manhattan School of Music did not yet have a jazz program. It was at the urging of Rom Ferri that Leahey enrolled at Manhattan. Leahey however was dissatisfied with this course of study and left after about one year. He chose at that point to pursue his dual career as a teacher and performer and to study music, both on his own and with private teachers.12 Throughout the early 1950s Leahey continued to work the local circuit with Richie Moore as well as with other local groups. One of the clubs they worked was Dudley’s in West Orange, New Jersey. At Dudley’s they had played Dixieland with and augmented group. In the summer of 1955 the group was playing at the Cabana Club on Eagle Rock Avenue also in West Orange. Stan Rubin’s Dixieland band, The Tigertown Five had been booked to play on the Grote Beer (Great Bear), a ship that was sailing from 11

Email correspondence from David L. McDonagh, Registrar of Manhattan School of Music. February 09, 2006. 12 Conversation with Rom Ferri.

-8Hoboken, NJ to Rotterdam, Holland. At the last minute The Tigertown Five had to back out of the gig and Richie Moore was asked to fill in. Moore quickly put together a Dixieland band, mostly made up of musicians who had played the Dudley’s gig with him. Moore and the group took a big chance taking this gig. The only compensation they received for playing on the boat their passage. Since they had been booked on such short notice, they had no work lined up in Europe. But they took the plunge. Upon arriving in Rotterdam they debated whether to look for work in Paris or Copenhagen. They decided on Paris. Once in Paris they played July 14th, Bastille Night on the streets of Paris. This performance led to a gig at a club called Le Riverside near Notre Dame. It was at this club that they met expatriate clarinetist Albert Nicholas who would sit in regularly with the group. The Paris gig lasted through July. Now they needed another gig to finish out the summer. Fortunately pianist Rom Ferri’s friend Tony Camillo was in the Army, stationed in Frankfurt, Germany. Through him the group was able to get a booking at the Topper Club, an officer’s club. The band members had to sneak onto the base and pretend that they were authorized transients. From 1960 to 1962 Leahey served in the United States Army. While in the Army he played with Ira Sullivan. He also played saxophone in the Army Band. Edie Eustice recalled Leahey’s account of how he learned the saxophone on short notice. The band needed a sax player. Leahey knew that if he could play with the band he would be traveling and performing for the officers. So he applied for the position, stating that he played the saxophone but did not have one. The director of the band got him one. Leahey then spent one day with the instrument and by that evening had figured out how to play it

-9enough to get into the band. In the spring of 1960 Tom Anthony’s younger sister Karen left home to join Leahey at Fort Dix. On May 4, 1960 the two of them were married. Harry Leahey taught guitar from an early age. Glenn Davis who would become the drummer in Leahey’s trio recalls “I think he was always teaching. Even when he was a kid people told me that he used to teach. Cause Ritchie Moore taught too. There was a place I used to teach in Westfield. And that was one of the places I think Harry you know spent one day there and different places. But he was always teaching. He'd case load. Like sixty plus a week.” By the 1960s Leahey had become well established both as a teacher and as a player on the thriving New Jersey nightclub scene. Bassist Ronnie Naspo recalls working with Leahey, both of them side musicians when still in their late teens or early twenties. Naspo is a Montclair, New Jersey based bassist whose performing credits include work with Bucky Pizzarelli and Vic Juris. He also served on the Faculty in the jazz program at William Paterson University (then William Paterson State College). Naspo talks about them being hired for commercial gigs that “didn't turn out too commercial.” By that Naspo meant that he, Leahey and the other musicians would invariably infuse their own jazz oriented personalities into whatever music they played. The earliest gig Naspo recalled was in Seaside Heights, New Jersey at what he described as a “young people's club” in the late 1950's or early 60's. He spoke of five and six night a week steady gigs where he and Leahey would “occasionally wind up together.” He also stated that there were “lots of musicians” in the Plainfield area and frequent jam sessions, particularly in clubs on Route 22. When I asked Naspo what he felt distinguished the young Leahey’s playing most he replied “his eighth note swing feel. Even on the early gigs he had that

- 10 good swing feel. You know he played eighth note runs you could tell it was Harry ‘cause the eighth notes had a certain feel. And I've always admired that about Harry… Subtly different, but it's that subtle difference that gave him that really the infectious feeling that he has.”13 That subtle difference is evident in Leahey’s later playing as well. For instance in his solo on “Django’s Castle”, which is analyzed later in this paper, Leahey varies the eighth note values from straight to varying degrees of swing values over an even eighth note Bossa Nova rhythm section. He uses this as an added dimension in the same way he uses dynamics and variety of timbre. Leahey’s versatility was already apparent at this time. In addition to playing commercial gigs featuring the pop tunes of the day and playing jazz at jam sessions Leahey played Dixieland. Again Naspo: “Harry did a Dixieland thing around South Orange. Bob Miller was in it. We would go down and hear them in the mid to late 50's. Dixieland was popular among young people.”14 It was in the early 1960’s that Leahey began several associations that would prove to be extremely important to him. It was then that he met bassist Roy Cumming and drummer Glenn Davis with whom he would later perform as the Harry Leahey Trio. Cumming and Davis both have impressive playing credentials. Cumming has performed with Teddy Wilson, Al Haig, Chick Corea, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, Phil Woods, Booker Ervin, Johnny Hartman, Sarah Vaughan, Tony Williams, Roy Haynes, Phil Markowitz and others. Davis is Marion McPartland’s long time drummer and has performed with Stan Getz, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, Phil Woods, Phil Markowitz and others. It was also this association that would lead to Leahey becoming a member of the Phil Woods Quintet. In

13 14

From an interview with Ronnie Naspo. From an interview with Ronnie Naspo.

- 11 an October 12, 2005 interview Cumming and Davis shared their recollections of their initial meeting and subsequent relationship with Leahey with me: RC: We were just talking about the first time we met Harry. Glenn met him first. GD: I met him first. I met him, I can't tell you the date, it was the early sixties when he got out of the army and it was uh at Joe Cappowanna's club in Bound Brook New Jersey, the Hideaway was across the tracks and I forget who I was, I was telling Roy, I forget who I was sitting with but Tom Anthony was there with Harry. They were sitting at the bar. It was during the week. And whoever I was sitting with said, “See that guy over there? He's a helluva guitar player.” And I looked over and these guys were all smashed (laughs) and giddy. And I said “which one?” and he said “well, they're both great guitar players but I mean the one closest to us.” And that's sort of when I met him. And then later when I was doing the El Morocco gig with George Cort you know and Wayne Wright was on the gig and there was, you know different guitar players subbing, I'd go out to Jersey and I knew Harry was playing at the Alibi on Route 22. Ring a bell? FP: Yeah I remember that club. GD: Yeah. And he was playing with Hay Jackson, he was playing saxophone. The band was so bad, he didn't really need to play guitar (laughs). So he was playing saxophone which fit better with the band cause he didn't play the saxophone that well. And I kept on telling Harry “I'm playing with all these guys in New York, you play much better than they do” you know, I mean hello, you know. FP: What was his response to that?

- 12 GD: Well, Harry was like, he was always involved in Ritchie Moore, you know local guys. Ritchie Moore Four which you know they used to do Hi-Los and RC: Did Harry sing? GD: Yeah. RC: I didn't know that. GD: They all sang. RC: Wow. GD: And they would do, what's that other band, the ones with singers? Not the Hi-Los but FP: The Four Freshmen? GD: Yeah, The Four Freshmen. They used to cover The Four Freshmen. And they were working five, six nights a week and they would rehearse and have all these. FP: It would be great if there were any recordings of that. GD: I don't remember, but I thought they were the greatest band cause every time I'd go out they'd get off the wall… And they would just you know they would just be off the wall. They would do Dixieland tunes and Ritchie Moore would get up on the bar. You know with a cymbal and they'd go around the bar walking RC: Steal drinks GD: (Laughs) Steal drinks. RC: I remember those days. FP: And that was just basically a regulation commercial band of the time. GD: Yeah, but all friends.

- 13 RC: They were all working six nights a week. That's what they were doing, working all the time. RC: First time I met Harry was down in Barry Miles' house I recall. FP: When was that? RC: This was like early sixties. Probably around sixty, maybe sixty three or four. GD: And I don't know how many times we played before Harry started playing with Mike, Mike Melillo and Roy. RC: Well I played with him once before that before we played I think. Remember John Dense? A great drummer who was around before he moved to California. He's a brother, he married my sister. So, he had a night at The Cove. Like a Monday night or something. And he said “I've been hearing about this guitar player Harry Leahey and I want to get him.” So he calls him. And Harry says “sure” he comes down and we played. In fact I brought my tape recorder. I actually have a tape of that. GD: And Mike was on that gig? RC: No, it was a trio, guitar, bass and drums. FP: So that was a jazz gig. RC: Yeah. It was amazing, it was just great. I'll play it for you. I have that. FP: If you can get me a copy of that I'd love to hear it. RC: Yeah. I will. And that's the first time I actually met Harry. We had talked. Because before that he was very shy. And we just said hello at Barry Miles. Just so quiet, he didn't say anything. FP: What were you doing at Barry's, a session?

- 14 RC: Yeah. I think Barry was maybe just starting to play piano or something maybe. I'm not sure if he was playing drums or piano. I can't remember. That was way back. Cause his father used to call me. Cause Barry never called anybody. GD: Barry was shy too. RC: His father would call and say “why don't you come down and play with Barry?” And I'd go down and play. But I remember meeting Harry and every body saying so much about him. I remember liking his playing. And I remember trying to talk to him at the end and he was just so painfully shy or something. GD: Yeah he was shy. RC: I remember leaving saying “who is that guy?” GD: Who is that masked man? RC: He was just so quiet. You couldn't get anything out of him. He wouldn't talk. Way back then. The early sixties I guess. Cumming goes on to describe the circumstances of Leahey’s meeting with pianist Mike Melillo: RC: But then Mike called him, right Mike called him GD: Yeah. RC: to come out and play at the farm which he had from like 1970 to about '75 or so. FP: Did he know Mike earlier? GD: Not really. He knew of him. Cause I mentioned that I was playing with Mike and he aught to come up to the farm and play or something some time. RC: That's right.

- 15 GD: Because he was just doing commercial you know, commercial. Blue Hills Manor. All this like Route 22 work you know I mean which was really not really I mean he was so much better than that. I mean heads above that. And I always tried to encourage him but (laughs) you know he always looked at me like I was bullshitting. FP: Why did he, did he do that because he didn't think he was you know GD: Hard to say Flip. RC: I think his kids and stuff. GD: Yeah I was playing with Mike. I was hanging out and playing. Through Roy I met Mike. And we did some gigs down the shore and I got Mike on it. RC: That's right. GD: Do you remember Lou Stewart? FP: No. GD: That name. He died of cancer but you know he was doing this gig down the shore with this vocalist. And he said “you know somebody who wants this gig? Cause I'm teaching in the school and I'm wearing.” He was sick. And he didn't say he was sick. But you know he said. So I called Roy you know cause I'd heard tapes of Mike and I said “is he working?” He said “yeah he's not working but he's a hard guy to get out of the house.” Then I called him up and he went for it. It was two or three nights a week. And that's how I met Mike and then I started playing at the house and I don't know. You moved up there after Mike got divorced or split or whatever. RC: That's right, about a year.

- 16 FP: Moved up to where? RC: The farm. GD: Allamuchy, that was north of Hackettstown. Off the main road, old farm house. I mean a real farm, a working farm. RC: Way off the road. FP: Like the ones you see around here. GD: They just rented the house. So it was a hang. FP: Right. RC: Perpetual session. FP: Nice. RC: Musicians every day. FP: He was from Newark originally, right? RC: He went to Arts High, went to Newark. Before that Mike was playing he played with Sonny Rollins. FP: He had played with Sonny Rollins before that? RC: Before that. In '64 or '63. He was one of the first piano players I heard at the Clifton Tap Room. That's how I met Mike at the Clifton Tap Room in the early sixties. His first club, Amos's. And then I became friends with Mike. I knew him you know through the years. GD: I think I met you through John Scully, right? You came out to my studio. RC: That's right. GD: And played. RC: That's right. That's when I just got out of the army.

- 17 GD: And we did those things with Ritchie Bierach. Those sessions right? (Laughs) RC: That's right. GD: (Laughs) it’s pretty out. Pretty out scenes. RC: New York scene man. GD: Yeah. RC: That was really out. That's right, Glenn used to have this place you could play. It was right next to a railroad track. GD: An old switchman's shack. I had it for seven years. Cost me a hundred and twenty five dollars a month rent. RC: There was like an old upright piano in there. GD: I had an old upright piano. RC: And John Scully. GD: A lot of history going down. (Laughs) A lot of hang after gigs. RC: Probably Harry used to hang out there. RC: I remember the first time Harry came up to Mike's. Man, he was just amazing. First time those guys played it was like they played forever. GD: They just hooked up. RC: Piano and guitar is always like FP: It can be a conflict. RC: It can. FP: But they locked in? RC: It was amazing.

- 18 GD: They just hooked up immediately. RC: It was like boom. Mike was so gassed. That was the band. That was it! GD: Yeah that was it. FP: So that was the beginning of In Free Association? RC: In Free Association. GD: Pretty much. RC: Absolutely. Melillo, the son of a bass player, had played piano from the age of five. As Davis stated he went Arts High School in Newark, New Jersey. In 1962 he received a BA in music composition from Rutgers University, also in Newark. From 1962 to 1964 he worked in the house trio at the Tap Room in Clifton, New Jersey with bassist Vinnie Burke and drummer Eddie Gladden. It was with that trio that he first accompanied Phil Woods. He then played with saxophonist Sonny Rollins from 1965 to 1967. He, Leahey, Cumming, and Davis came together as In Free Association in 1970. In 1973 he moved to the Pocono region of Pennsylvania. He, Woods, bassist Steve Gilmore, and drummer Bill Goodwin then formed the Phil Woods Quartet 15 Leahey’s association with Melillo led directly to his being asked to join the Phil Woods Quintet, or rather to be added to the Phil Woods Quartet, making it a quintet. Woods had moved to France in 1968. That same year he formed the quartet the European Rhythm Machine which remained intact until 1972. After briefly leading an experimental electronic quartet in Los Angeles Woods moved to Delaware Water Gap,

15

Barry Kernfeld: ‘Melillo, Mike', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 24 August 2005), .

- 19 Pennsylvania. In October 1973 he formed his quartet with Melillo, Gilmore, and Goodwin. 16 In a September 25, 2005 interview Woods talked about adding Leahey to his band: FP: How did you meet Harry? Were you introduced to him by Mike Melillo? PW: Yes, Mike Melillo introduced me to Harry. [He] brought him over. When I first came back from Europe we used to have jam sessions over at Mike's house. I was staying with Bill Goodwin at the time. And Steve Gilmore and Bill had been working together a lot so we started jamming at Mike's house and he invited Harry over and that's how we eventually formed the Quintet from those jam sessions. FP: Around when was that? PW: Seventy four, seventy five, something like that. Mike, Bill and Steve and I first started as a quartet. And then when we had the Showboat gig that's when we added Harry because I had written a Brazilian Suite. I wanted to have the guitar and I wanted to use the soprano and I thought the soprano and the guitar would work well. So that's how that all happened. The Showboat album was kind of a catalyst for adding guitar. And we used percussion too on that.17

16

Barry Kernfeld: ‘Woods, Phil', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 24 August 2005), . 17 From an interview with Phil Woods.

- 20 The album to which Woods refers, "Live From The Showboat” recorded in November of 1976 and released in 1977, won the group a Grammy award. The album won the award for best live jazz performance. Leahey considered this award the high point of his career.18 The album also received a five star review in Down Beat Magazine. Writer Russell Shaw was positively effusive in his praise of the band and the album. He starts by stating that he is rarely “moved to superlatives” and then proceeds to heap them on the album. He praises the audience at The Showboat and then compares the band, most favorably to the “overrated European Rhythm Machine” stating that they were “glorying in wave after wave of musical triumph.” He singles Woods out as “consummately masterful.” He does add some praise for the sidemen but confines his discussion of Leahey to the phrase “not forgetting the Djangoish guitar of Harry Leahey.”19 Regrettably this comment does justice to neither Django Reinhardt nor Harry Leahey. However it was at least positive and no doubt well meant. Sadly Leahey’s wife, Karen was in the early stages of the illness that would eventually take her life at the time that Phil Woods had offered Leahey the spot in the band. Leahey’s daughter Deborah recalls that her mother insisted that he go on tour with the band. The 1970s was a busy time for Leahey. During the time period when he began his associations with Melillo and Woods he maintained an extremely busy teaching schedule and continued to perform with local commercial groups. One night he would be playing Bebop, the next night he would be playing a Carlos Santana solo (both to perfection.) It

18 19

Richard Skelly. December 2, 1988 The Home News He keeps on pluckin’. Russell Shaw. October 20, 1977 Down Beat Magazine p. 28 Record Reviews.

- 21 was during this time that he also began working regularly with bassist Ronnie Naspo. In this October 3, 2005 interview Naspo recalls this period: RN: I think my main association w/ Harry started in the seventies. It was from a job I did with Harry that I met Bucky. Harry and I, when we were playing as a duo got a job at Gulliver’s, Amos's guitar night -- It was our first guitar night there and we had prepared some stuff -FP: When was that? RN: Closest I can come is the seventies -- we go and we set up, a little uneasy, I was a little uneasy -- respected jazz club and I knew that a lot of players came in, guitar players to hear Harry. So we're just getting set up we're on the stand -- the end of the bar was directly in front of the bandstand, about six feet away -- with just a few minutes tuning up, whatever, getting things set up and who comes in but Bucky Pizzarelli and Les Paul and sit right down in front -- Les Paul was one of my heroes, and one of Harry's too -- so we did what we did -- they were very cordial -- they had to respect what Harry did, cause he was such a wonderful player FP: They must have known about him. RN: Yeah, they, “hey let's check this guy out” -- Harry at that point, his name was around -- Then we continued to play together as a duo. That started cause I started taking lessons from him.20 Comparing Harry as a teacher to the old school of guitar teaching, as taught by his first teacher Mickey Vest, Naspo said this: "The chord studies I got with Mickey were

20

Interview with Ronnie Naspo.

- 22 like Mel Bay, the barre chord book. But with Harry, I guess he got it from Sandole, the five different systems of chords, the sets. My jazz training with Mickey was we would play duets. And he would play a chorus and then I would [pause] attempt. He said ‘just keep listening and keep trying.’ That was my jazz education -- He didn't talk about the relationship of a specific type of scale to a specific type of chord -- That’s what jazz education was at that point, when he was a young fellow, nothing, listen to the records and try to copy them, figure it out, sort of. Cause he could play jazz. But Lord knows how those guys learned it, strictly by ear. There were no methods.” The Gulliver’s that Naspo referred to was Amos Kaune’s club in West Paterson, New Jersey. In the early 1970s and into the early 1980s Gulliver’s was the biggest jazz club in northern New Jersey. Kaune’s first club, the Clifton Tap Room was where bassist Roy Cumming had first met pianist Mike Melillo. In 1970 Kaune started a Monday guitar night. Leahey was regularly featured on Monday guitar night. His growing reputation and large number of students assured a busy night every time he appeared there. The night was so successful that it was written up in Guitar Player Magazine. When interviewed for the article Kaune singled out Leahey among the many guitarists who appeared there. One of the most popular jazz rooms among guitarists on the east coast is a tavern called Gulliver's. Located in West Paterson, New Jersey, about twenty miles from New York City, the club presents jazz seven nights a week. And this room, opened in 1970, has been the home away from home for many outstanding jazz guitarists. The setting is a warm and handsome one, dominated by a huge rectangular bar. The bandstand, off in a corner, can be easily seen from any part of the room. The

- 23 tables along the walls are made from shuffle boards which were cut and polished by the club's owner, Amos Kaune. Walls are lined with pictures of the various jazz musicians who have worked there over the past couple of years. The piano is lighted by a bulb in the bell of a trumpet which hangs from the ceiling, and the rest of the room is just as dimly lit. The whole feeling is one of intimacy, a good background for the listening audience. Monday nights are reserved for jazz guitarists to perform. Week in and week out, Guitar Night is one of Gulliver's' biggest attractions. Amos Kaune admits that not only is it one of his best weeknights, but it's when he gets a chance to hear his favorite instrument, the guitar. What gave you the idea to make Mondays into Guitar Nights? In prior years, here and at the last place I owned, I had tremendous success with guitarists, and a lot of guitar players came to hear one another. On Mondays at my old place we used to feature recognized jazz people, but somehow we always did better with guitarists. We brought in Tal Farlow. Chuck Wayne, Jim Hall, Kenny Burrell and Attila Zoller among others. Because of that previous success, I brought Guitar Night to Gulliver's. Which guitarists have you featured here? We've had Pat Martino, Chuck Wayne, Joe Puma, Joe Cinderella, Skeeter Best and some local players. The one who stands out most in my mind, though, is Harry Leahey. Everyone who has heard him play agrees that he is the Johnny Smith of the Seventies.

- 24 Which ones have been the biggest Monday night draws? They've all done quite well, even local guitarists like Jimmy DeAngelis and Pat Mahoney who are two excellent players who just need breaks. The biggest Mondays were ones when we featured Pat Martino, Harry Leahey, Bucky Pizzarelli and the combination of Chuck Wayne with Joe Puma.21

In April 1973 Leahey was involved in Don Sebesky’s Giant Box project. Sebesky, who along with Bob James was a house arranger for Creed Taylor’s CTI label had assembled an all-star cast for this ambitious project. This double LP featured such CTI stars as flutist Hubert Laws, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, saxophonist Joe Farrell and guitarist George Benson. Leahey is heard, albeit faintly on a medley of Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird and John McLaughlin’s Birds Of Fire. For this recording Yamaha custom built a twelve -string guitar for Leahey to play. The guitar is currently in the possession of James Leahey, Leahey’s older son and an excellent guitarist in his own right. Unfortunately Leahey’s work on this track is confined to section playing. In fact, the twelve-string guitar could easily be mistaken for a harpsichord. Leahey told me that Sebesky had recorded a tribute to Wes Montgomery, another CTI artist who had died 1968. Sadly that track was not released. One can only speculate as to the effect that performance might have had on Leahey’s career. In 1974 Leahey began teaching guitar at William Paterson University (then William Paterson College) in the jazz program. He was one of the first adjuncts in jazz. He continued to teach there until 1988.

21

Robert Yelin April 1973 Guitar Player Magazine Two unique nightclub experiments that worked.

- 25 Another musician that Leahey worked with around this time was saxophonist Eric Kloss. Again Cumming and Davis: RC: We used to do gigs at a place called Richard's Lounge. Way back in the early seventies. FP: With Eric? RC: In Free Association, and Eric. GD: And Eric. Yeah. Actually I think we got our foot in the door with Eric. Eric came out to the farm a couple of times and played just you know just session. And then he got the gig down there and he hired us as a rhythm section. Bad move. (Laughs) FP: Why do you say that? GD: Cause we were so out. RC: It was like anarchy. GD: Yeah. We were so out. Poor Eric was on his own. RC: Mike liked to do certain tunes and that was it. That was the tunes we did. Basically that's what we did. (Laughs) FP: And if Eric called tunes that Mike didn't want to do. RC: Well, all my tapes are of all the stuff that we did with Free Association. GD: Yeah. I have some things with Eric but they were with Harry, at Wallace's. FP: At Wallace's? RC: And also at Gulliver's. I remember playing a couple of gigs with Harry and Eric at the first Gulliver's. 22

22

From an interview with Roy Cumming and Glenn Davis.

- 26 Leahey also performed with pianist John Coates. He appears with Coates on the 1981 OmniSound LP “Pocono Friends.” From 1974 to 1978 drummer Buddy Deppenschmidt led a band called Jazz Renaissance “which at various times included Coates, Richie Cole, Mike Melillo, and the guitarist Harry Leahey.”23 In the mid 1970s Leahey also performed with bassist Jack Six. The duo made several appearances at Sweet Basil’s in New York City. When guitarist John Scofield left Gerry Mulligan in 1976 Six recommended Leahey to Mulligan. Six recollects that Mulligan was “knocked out” by Leahey, who subsequently performed with his band at five or six engagements. Deborah Leahey recalls seeing her father with Mulligan at Carnegie Hall but no documentation has surfaced as to the date of that concert. Harry Leahey did perform at Carnegie Hall with the Phil Woods Quintet. As part of the Newport Jazz Festival, the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra and the Phil Woods Quintet shared the bill at a midnight concert on June 28, 1977. Unfortunately the New York Times review the group’s performance received was somewhat less than favorable. Writer John S. Wilson said that Woods was “in high virtuoso form on both alto and soprano saxophones” but that “his group seemed bland by comparison, serving him with strong support for his solos but not finding any solo ideas of its own that could stand up against Mr. Woods’s”.24 Apparently Wilson felt that the Phil Woods Quintet had gone very far downhill in a very short period of time. About one month earlier he had written of the band “Phil Woods, who has been a consistently interesting jazz saxophone soloist for the last two decades, while he played, for the most part, with pickup groups is now 23

Barry Kernfeld: 'Deppenschmidt, Buddy', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 24 August 2005), . 24 John S. Wilson New York Times Jun 30, 1977 Newport Jazz: Vibrant Virtuosos.

- 27 leading a quintet that functions as an ensemble rather than merely a backdrop for his solos. At Hopper's, Avenue of the Americas at 11th Street, where the quintet is appearing this week and next, Mr. Woods, playing alto and soprano saxophones, Mike Melillo on piano and Harry Leahy[sic] on guitar, develop ensemble passages, backed by Steve Gilmore, bass, and Bill Goodwin, drums, that are unusual in this generally solodominated music. Like the Modern Jazz Quartet, the group as a whole is as important as the individual members. And when the soloists enter, they sustain the level of interest established by the ensemble.”25 In 1978 Leahey left the Phil Woods Quintet. Again Woods: Harry didn't stay with us that long. Harry was not a road rat. He made a couple of tours, but he actually was a family man and he preferred teaching. He preferred staying home and teaching. He didn't like those long days in the motel room watching CNN. That was not his bag. And I can dig it.26 The May 19, 1978 issue of the Courier-News ran a feature on Harry Leahey entitled Guitar teacher Harry Leahey looks at his performing as just a hobby, written by staff writer Kenneth Best. Best refers to Leahey as “a musician who is most at home conveying his knowledge to students rather than performing on stage”. He quotes Leahey as referring to live performing “a hobby”. According to Leahey in this article he had been added to the group for the Live at the Showboat album at the request of producer Norman Schwartz and was originally “just supposed to do the album”. Leahey’s humility and respect for Woods came out in his statements that “It took me a while to get used to

25 26

John S. Wilson New York Times May 26, 1977 Jazz: Phil Woods 5. From an interview with Phil Woods.

- 28 playing with Phil. He had been someone that I had listened to for years. I had a hard time holding my pick.” Anyone who had ever seen Leahey play live could attest to the fact that he certainly had no trouble holding his pick! The article goes on to describe the making of Song for Sisyphus, released in 1978 by Gryphon but listed in the article as a Century release. The album was recorded direct-to-disk meaning that the group had to the entire set with no mistakes! Again Leahey: “We had to make three (disk) masters because each one can only produce a limited number of copies. It took us 11 hours and there were many starts. The music is all the stuff we were playing on the road, but it was still difficult.” Deborah Leahey stated that her father did not enjoy recording. This session must have been quite a chore for him. On this album he contributes a beautiful solo rendition of Django Reinhardt’s Nuages as well as burning solos on the title track and several others. Although the article does not give an exact date to Leahey’s departure from Woods’s band it states that “earlier this year [he] had to decide whether to stay on the road for the 200 days per year Woods required or return full time to his students and his family.” Leahey of course chose the latter. His explanation for his decision is a sad commentary on the musician’s lot in the field of jazz performance. One must look at his statement in light of the fact that he was performing with a winner of the Down Beat, Playboy and Metronome polls and with a Grammy Award winning band. “It was a really great year. I think my playing improved and I learned more in that time than in all my years studying. But to survive playing jazz and trying to support a family is difficult. Being on the road all the time is not always a very good life. It takes tremendous energy. Most of the (jazz) money today is in the schools.” He goes on to give a plug to a gig he is holding down on Thursday s at a club called TJ’s in Meyersville, NJ. Upon his return

- 29 from the road, Leahey found the demand for his tutelage extremely high. “Now I’m teaching five days a week, sometimes 12 hours a day.” At the time of this article he had recently recorded with Michel LeGrand on the LeGrand Jazz album released in 1978 on the Gryphon label. 27 After Leahey stopped touring with the Phil Woods Quintet, he resumed playing with his In Free Association band mates Cumming and Davis. It was this band that was at TJ’s (although neither Davis nor Cumming remembered the name of the club.). From the October 12, 2005 interview: GD: So then we started rehearsing again. FP: So that's about '78. RC: Yeah exactly. GD: Yeah. Then we went into The Golden Putter. I think that was the first gig. We had RC: That's right. Steady gig for a year. GD: What night was that anyway? It was a Thursday night? RC: It was a Wednesday or Thursday. GD: Wednesday or Thursday. And we got, we built that to the point where she added a Sunday, a matinee Sunday. But she had two bars going. And we still couldn't get any RC: With two bands. They had a band after us.

27

Kenneth Best May 19, 1978 The Courier-News Guitar teacher Harry Leahey looks at his performing as just a hobby.

- 30 GD: We still couldn't get any money out of her. Every time we'd go in the room she'd start whispering right. (Whispers) "Oh I can't do that right now. I wish I could. You're certainly deserving." We couldn't get (laughs) and she's making lots of money. At the same time you know I was trying to interest Yosho Inomaha into doing something with OmniSound. RC: Shawnee Records. GD: Shawnee enterprises. RC: That was the record company. GD: Subdivision of Fred Waring’s press. And John Coates was doing all this recording and John loved Harry. RC: Cause they played together years ago. GD: They played together too. John was instrumental and I kept on Yosho and that's how that recording came. But it took him over a year. We were ready a year before that. RC: We were really hot on that stuff. GD: We were hot. We actually weren't playing that material that we have on the record. We had sort of moved on from that. So we had to go back and like sort of redo it. You know, work it up again. RC: We always felt that we had played that stuff better a year before we made that record. GD: Yeah I think we had. FP: But that is a great record. RC: Yeah everybody likes that record.

- 31 FP: That record really holds up. GD: Yeah it does hold up. We've actually listened to it lately. (laughs) RC: Yeah because we wanted to make a CD of it. Cause the masters are gone. FP: Didn't you tell me that you found a pristine copy of it? RC: Yeah. So I brought it to a friend who's got a really high class system. FP: The thing about your trio that was so great was that it was in the tradition but it was extending the tradition. It was modern but it was not out. Just like a logical extension. GD: Right. Using all the elements. We did a concert in '85 or '86, something like that up in RC: Rochester? GD: Rochester at a college and we did a concert with a choir. Mainly trio and then a couple things they'd arranged for choir. Still Waters. RC: The musical director arranged them. GD: And the next day we did a workshop. I worked with drummers and Harry did this thing about how you could play on notes, predominant notes in the chorus and kept changing the ways that you could play off all this stuff. And we were just looking at him like (laughs) what?28

The 1980s began with great promise for Leahey. His association with Phil Woods including his participation on a Grammy Award winning LP had given him greater name recognition. As he had stated in the Courier-News article he was now carrying a

28

From an interview with Roy Cumming and Glenn Davis.

- 32 tremendous teaching load. In addition to his private students he served on the faculty in the jazz program at William Paterson University. He was also playing a fair number of jazz gigs. Listings in the New York Times announce performances with his trio, with Ron Naspo and as a soloist. In March of 1981 Leahey was profiled in the Newark Star-Ledger. George Kanzler was the paper’s jazz critic. In the article Kanzler states that while Leahey’s name doesn’t appear in the Encyclopedia of Jazz, “the omission is an error on the part of the encyclopedia’s editors for, Harry Leahey is a terrific jazz guitarist and the leader of one of the finest small combos in this area as well as a near legendary guitar teacher who has influenced dozens of younger jazz and rock guitarists in New Jersey.” He then goes on to praise a performance by Leahey’s trio with a guest appearance by saxophonist Leo Johnson. He singles out a rendition of “Sweet and Lovely”. Of note in this profile is the statement from Leahey that when he studied with Johnny Smith, Smith “liked me so much he never took a dime from me.”29 On June 30, 1981 Leahey performed at the sixth annual jazz picnic sponsored by the New Jersey Jazz Society and presented as part of the Kool Jazz Festival. He appeared as part of the Don Elliot Quintet which also included pianist Derek Smith. The set was called a “bright contrast to the dominant traditional tone of the day” and was noted for performances of “My Funny Valentine” and “Here’s that Rainy Day”. 30 He continued to be featured at Gulliver’s. Other venues that featured Leahey included the Plainfield Public Library; Seton Hall University, where on March 25, 1982 his trio split the bill with a duo of his brother in law Tom Anthony and his son James Leahey performing classical

29

Joseph F Sullivan June 30, 1981 The New York Times Twenties Classics Recreated in Jersey In a Festive Part of Jazz Festival. 30 George Kanzler March 8, 1981 The Newark Star-Ledger A family man by day and top artist by night.

- 33 duets; William Paterson College; the William Carlos Williams Center in Rutherford, New Jersey; the Unitarian Fellowship in Morristown, New Jersey and the Small World Jazz Café in Hoboken, New Jersey. On March 18, 1984 Leahey gave a solo concert at the Oldwick, New Jersey Community Center. That concert was recorded and contains versions of “I Concentrate on You”, “St. Louis Blues”, “Stardust”, “My Funny Valentine”, “C Jam Blues”, “Embraceable You”, “You Stepped out of a Dream”, “All the Things You Are”, “Strings and Things” and “Satin Doll”. In these performances Leahey displays his mastery of the solo jazz guitar idiom. In his melody statements and improvised choruses he moves effortlessly between block chords, single notes, octaves, melodies with chord accompaniments and two and three part polyphony. In “St. Louis Blues” he moves the melody seamlessly between registers, from the treble accompanied by lower chords to the bass with chords on the top, much as a pianist might. He opens “My Funny Valentine” with a classically influenced arrangement that takes full advantage of open strings within rich chords. He then plays a chorus of melody as a waltz followed by and improvised chorus containing all the aforementioned elements. A modulation up a whole step leads into the out chorus with a tag in 3/4 time. Although the influences of Wes Montgomery, Barney Kessel, Joe Pass and Johnny Smith are evident Leahey never imitates. Even while playing within the tradition of these great players he always maintains his own unique identity. In both the melody and improvised choruses of “C Jam Blues” he turns the guitar into a miniature big band. Between 1984 and 1986, in addition to leading the Harry Leahey Trio, performing solo and performing with Ronnie Naspo, Leahey performed with a trio consisting of himself, organist Dave Braham and drummer Ronnie Glick. Glick, a Plainfield native had

- 34 moved back to North Plainfield. Within two weeks of having moved there he noticed a sign outside of Jones Chateau, a local club about six blocks from his house at 44 Watchung Avenue in Plainfield, advertising live organ trio jazz. He went into the club and found that he knew the club’s owner, Willie Jones, from the Newark, New Jersey jazz club scene. Glick had worked for Jones when he was the manager of the Cadillac club. The two of them struck up a conversation. Jones knew who Harry Leahey was and Glick told him that he could bring an organ trio into the club. Jones booked the trio for a steady Tuesday night. After about a year he added Thursday nights. The group continued at the club for about three years until “an incident in the club, unrelated to the band” brought the gig to an end. In fact this (unspecified) incident “put the club under” and it folded shortly after the band left. In 1985 Leahey suffered a heart attack. During his recovery guitarists Vinnie Corrao, Bob DeVos and others subbed for him. Leahey’s quick recovery allowed him to return to the gig after a few weeks. During the trio’s extended gig at Jones Chateau musicians, both local and well known, would stop by to hear the trio. Fortunately there exist a small number of recordings of this group. In these recordings one can hear an extremely cohesive and swinging group. All three musicians contribute equally to the overall sound and demonstrate their abilities both as ensemble players and as true virtuosi in the jazz idiom. Leahey is featured on Body and Soul. He proves in this performance that his harmonic, melodic and rhythmic mastery of jazz guitar were second to no one. During this time period the group also performed regularly at O’Connor’s in on 1719 Amwell Road in Somerset, New Jersey. In addition to trio gigs the group also hosted a guest artist series. The headliners who appeared with the group were Al Cohn, who did two evenings with the trio, David (Fathead) Newman and Lou

- 35 Donaldson. Again, fortunately, a recording survives of the Donaldson performance. Performing tunes such as Charlie Parker’s Billie’s Bounce the four musicians don’t sound like a star with a local house rhythm section, but like four peers, four masters of jazz. Other venues where Leahey performed in the 1980s included The Cornerstone in Metuchen, New Jersey, where he played as a duo with Ronnie Naspo and with cornetist Warren Vaché. On November 8, 1987 Karen Leahey succumbed to a long illness and died. This was the second blow to a man for whom the future had looked so bright a few short years earlier. On April 24 1988 Leahey participated in a concert with pianist Derek Smith’s sextet. The concert was at the Hunterdon Hills Playhouse in Hampton, New Jersey. The group also included trumpeter Randy Sandke, saxophonist Harry Allen, bassist John Goldsby and drummer Chuck Riggs. The concert had been presented by the New Jersey Jazz Society. Afterwards he went to visit his old friend Edie. After spending the evening together he told her that he would call her and he left. The next day he went to the VA Hospital in Watchung, NJ where he was diagnosed with stage-four cancer. Four days later Edie asked singer Rosemary Conti if she had seen Leahey. Rosemary told her that Leahey was still in the hospital recovering from surgery. Leahey began to study macrobiotic cooking as a way to help him fight his illness but it was Edie and Leahey’s mother who did the cooking. Harry Leahey had touched many people’s lives and there were several benefits held to raise money to help defray his medical expenses. On June 5, 1988 a marathon

- 36 benefit concert was held at The Strand Music Mall in Hackettstown, New Jersey. Among the participants were Phil Woods, pianist Barry Miles and guitarist Vic Juris. On July 11, 1988 there was a benefit concert at Gulliver’s in Lincoln Park, New Jersey. Among the performers were guitarists Tal Farlow and Vic Juris, saxophonists Bennie Wallace, Harry Allen and Tom Hamilton, clarinetist Kenny Davern, pianists Keith MacDonald, Morris Nanton and Rio Clemente, singers Grover Kemble and Kit Moran and others. Harry Leahey had expressed that he wished, like saxophonist Al Cohn, to play right up to the end. Between his diagnosis and his death he performed regularly at Trumpets in Montclair, New Jersey at Café D’Angelico, also in Montclair, New Jersey and numerous other venues including Zanzibar in New York City. During this time period he frequently performed in a duo setting with bassists Gary Mazzaroppi and Rick Crane as well as with his trio. He was the first call sub for guitarist Tal Farlow, whose base of activity was the New Jersey shore. He also got together with veteran jazz guitarist Chuck Wayne for informal sessions. On September 15, 1989 he performed at the Watchung Arts Center in Watchung, New Jersey. On June 8, 1990 he performed there again in a duo with Gary Mazzaroppi. Readers of the June 1990 Watchung Arts Center newsletter were advised to make reservations for this performance. “When Harry Leahey picks up his guitar, the packed hall goes quiet. His nimble fingers dance over the strings in seemingly effortless sweeps. Yet the sound that emerges is lively, circling around the melody as he improvises his own interpretations of recognizable tunes. At the end of the evening, the crowd is reluctant to let him go.” On June 24, 1990 he participated in George Wein’s JVC Jazz Festival performing in the Super Jazz Picnic in Waterloo Village, Stanhope, New Jersey. Leahey shared the bill with such players as Flip Phillips,

- 37 Dave McKenna, Jake Hanna, Kenny Davern, Frank Vignola, Randy Sandke, Ken Peplowski, Buck Clayton and others. On Monday, July 16, 1990 Leahey made his last appearance with In Free Association at Trumpets. On Saturday, July 28, 1990 he performed at Café D’Angelico with Gary Mazzaroppi. Mazzaroppi says “His playing was brilliant despite a fluid retention problem that made him swollen and uncomfortable. It was impossible for Harry to ever sound bad.”31 The following day Leahey entered Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J. On Sunday August 12, 1990 Harry Leahey died. Although he received very little critical acclaim, fellow musicians were unanimous in their praise for Harry Leahey. A few representative quotes: “Harry was a master.” – Glenn Davis. “The most complete guitarist I ever heard” – Vinnie Corrao. “I was flabbergasted by his playing” –Warren Vaché. “He was the top of the heap. He was the best guitar player that I had ever played with and I played with every [one]” – Phil Woods. “I don’t think there’ll ever be another Harry Leahey.” – Jack Six. “He was a great guitarist and a very beautiful man.” – Leo Johnson. Over the course of a thirty year career as New Jersey’s premier guitar teacher Leahey taught literally thousands of students, many of whom went on to successful careers. Among his former students are Vic Juris, Bob DeVos, Jon Herington, Warren Vaché, Jack Six, Walt Bibinger, Larry Barbee, Chuck Loeb, Jeff Mironov, Donovan Mixon and Tom Kozic.

31

Summer 1991 All Music And the music was unforgettable.

- 38 In addition to his devotion to music, the guitar and to his family Harry Leahey was also an intellectually curious man with a deep interest in spirituality and philosophy. Deborah Leahey told me that both of his parents were well read and would have philosophical discussions long into the night. Because of this, and because of his somewhat portly physique, Leahey was affectionately known to friends as “The Buddha” of jazz. In fact bassist Roy Cumming wrote a tune in dedication to Leahey called “The Buddha.”

- 39 -

The Harry Leahey Chord Method For this discussion of Harry Leahey’s approach to teaching chordal playing on the guitar I have drawn from lessons which he gave to me in the late 1960s and early 1970s and from conversations with two of his former students, Walt Bibinger and Larry Maltz. I am grateful to them for their help putting this together. Leahey taught a system of chords built on five groups of four strings to which he gave letter designations from A to E. With the highest string (in pitch) as 1 and the lowest as 6, the sets were: A: 6432, B: 5432, C: 5321, D: 6543 and E: 4321. The basis of the system was five types of seventh chords. Here in Leahey’s own hand is his explanation of the derivation of the chord types or qualities:

Although there are five chord sets, there are only two distinct sets of voicings. The voicings of letter A are duplicated by letter C and letters B, D and E are all the same voicing.

- 40 The chord study began with the progression C Major 7th, A minor 7th, D minor 7th, G7th. The chords are to be learned as a progression in four positions and as four chords in four inversions each. The following pages illustrate the chord progression worked out in five chord sets. Each set is represented by a grid. The grid’s rows are the progression and its columns are the chord inversions.

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The following pages illustrate the five seventh types worked out in all five chord sets. Each set is represented by a grid. The grid’s rows are the five chord types and its columns are the chord inversions. Although the sets are shown together they are meant to be studied individually, each one mastered before going on to the next one.

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The next step towards mastery of a chord set is a series of “root exercises” which consist of, in four inversions each CM7, FM7, BbM7, etc. through the circle of fifths. This is repeated for each of the 7th chord types. Short chord progressions are given to figure out. Here is an example:

- 51 Dm7 (#5), G7 (b5), CM7 (b5), CM7 (#5). Each chord is to be played in four inversions and the progression is to be played in four positions. From the 7th chords the 9th, 11th and 13th chords are derived as follows. Ninth chords are built by replacing the root with the 2nd, 11th chords are built by replacing the 3rd with the 4th and 13th chords are built by replacing the 5th with the 6th. Once the student has learned the 9th, 11th and 13th chords the progressions become more complex as this next example illustrates: Fm (M7), Bb7 (b5 b9), EbM13 11, cm11 (#5). Harry Leahey stated his philosophy of teaching in an interview published in the Home News, a Plainfield area newspaper. “Most of the time what I’m dealing with is mechanics. Since I lean toward improvisation, I like to give the student a tune to play as soon as I feel he can handle it. With guitar, you can go on teaching the mechanical and technical aspects for years. You can take scales and go on to modes and intervals, and the student can have all this knowledge and still not know how to play a tune.”32 Here an example of a tune from a lesson he gave to me in late 1968.

32

Richard Skelly December 2, 1988 The Home News He keeps on pluckin’.

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Standard songs such as “Tenderly” would be harmonized using these chord forms by playing the melody on the highest string and finding the chord voicings that went under the melody notes. While harmonizing a song using just one group of strings can necessitate awkward leaps and occasional register changes, it opens the door to rich chord melody arrangements. Using this system it is possible to create “instant” arrangements that are serviceable and often sound great “right out of the box”. After the student had done all five sets, Leahey would write out simple melodies with chord progressions to harmonize with the melody on each of the six strings, using set C for the first string, B for the second string, D for the third string, E for the forth string, C for the fifth string and A for the sixth string. The first three combinations had the melody in the treble note of the chords, the other three in the bass notes. Here is an example assignment and its solutions.

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Harry Leahey once told me that it is not how many chords you know, but how you use the chords you know that is important. While it is certainly true that a guitarist can make wonderful music with a limited chord vocabulary, in the hands of a creative musician the

- 55 encyclopedic knowledge with which the diligent student of this system will be rewarded can provide the basis for beautiful harmonic explorations.

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Analysis of Harry Leahey’s solo on Django’s Castle (Manoir de Mes Rêves) Harry Leahey’s solo on Django’s Castle (Django Reinhardt) from “Live From The Showboat” by the Phil Woods Six (1977) RCA LP 12": BGL2-2202 is a masterpiece of construction and motivic development. He uses Reinhardt’s melody as a point of departure and builds upon it in extremely creative ways. While he doesn’t use any of Reinhardt’s signature licks, his glissandi, tremolos, bent notes, etc, his improvisation stays connected to the melody throughout, sometimes in very subtle ways. His uses of motives and contour give the entire solo coherence. His approach to the song is dramatically different from Reinhardt’s. Where Reinhardt played the song as a slow, Swing style ballad, Leahey gives it a Bossa Nova treatment. He retains the original key of D Major. In the early part of the structure Leahey uses the same chords as Reinhardt but alters the harmonic rhythm. Later he introduces chord substitutions. Even when his chords go the furthest from the original they always sound “inside” and logical within the framework of the song. Reinhardt’s melody, as recorded by Django Reinhardt on February 17, 1943 for the Swing record label and reproduced here, is based on an ascending two note motive which is answered by a descending motive. Both motives are stretched out over two measures. The theme is almost entirely built on this pattern, with decorative figures in the half cadence at mm 12-16 and two ascending motives in the climax at mm 25-28. The harmonic rhythm of the song, starting with the half note pickup note up to the last eight measures at m 25, consists of a chord lasting two beats followed by a chord lasting for six beats. This harmonic rhythm follows the melodic rhythm. At mm 25-28 the chords

- 57 sustain for eight beats each. Finally at mm 29-30 there are two chords per measure, two beats each. Measures 31-32 are essentially the tonic chord with two fill-in color chords at beats three and four of m 31. For the first twenty four measures of his solo Leahey employs the same chords as Reinhardt but alters the harmonic rhythm. Instead of the repeating short/long pattern he smoothes out the rhythm and gives each chord four beats. Measures 25-28 of the melody are the climax At this point the harmony consists of two measures of the IV chord and two measures of the II7 chord. At this point, where Reinhardt has slowed the harmonic rhythm, Leahey speeds it up. The two measures of GMaj become one measure of GMaj7 followed by one measure of Em7. The rhythmic momentum is heightened by a scale wise descending bass line from G to D in half notes, effectively doubling the harmonic rhythm. At m 27, instead of progressing to an E7 chord as Reinhardt does, Leahey continues the movement of the bass to a C#, as the root of a C#m11 chord. This chord lasts for two beats and acts as a secondary ii chord to B minor, the relative minor to the song’s tonality. The C#m leads to an F#7, a secondary V chord to B minor. In m 28 Leahey progresses to a B minor chord for two beats, and finally in the second half of the measure to the E7 chord that was in the original. This entire two measure sequence of chords has served as a way of delaying the entry of the E7 harmony. In Leahey’s melody statement he keeps the F# melody note as a common tone over this series of chords. It is worth mentioning that this sequence of chords appears in the same place in Richard Rogers’s My Romance. Whether this was intentional on Leahey’s part will never be known. Measures 29-30 of the original contain a chromatic sequence of #iim7 #V7 iim7 V7 leading to the final cadence. At this point Leahey applies an interesting substitution. Where Reinhardt leads to the ii V from a half step above, Leahey

- 58 puts a bivm7 bII7 progression in m31. He has used the chromatic ii V movement but moved a half step down from Bm7 E9 sequence in m 28. Since Bbm7 and Eb7 are a tritone away from Em7 and A7, this pair of chords serves as a substitute for the ii V progression in D Major. Since the melody note in m 29 is an F it fits perfectly on top of these substitute chords. In m 30 Leahey uses the original chords, Em7 to A7. Placing the basic chords after the substitute chords has the effect of making the standard chords sound surprising and fresh. At mm 31-32 Reinhardt breaks up the two measures of tonic chord by putting a ivm6 and a #iv diminished 7 on the third and fourth beats of m 31, returning to the tonic chord for m 32. Leahey takes this I ivm change and expands it into a two measure interlude, one measure for each chord. This gives the soloist a sort of a dénouement in which to wrap up the ideas expressed in the body of the solo. These reharmonizations occur at the climactic part of the song and heighten that effect. They also provide fertile ground for melodic invention. Leahey’s solo is one chorus long (thirty two bars plus the two bar interlude). He expands on the song’s call and response motif. Throughout the solo he builds a series of call and response phrases, each one like a pair of perfectly matched bookends. The original melody is almost entirely “inside” the chord changes. In keeping with the spirit of this almost completely diatonic melody Leahey chooses almost exclusively notes that fall within the scale or that relate closely to the chord against which they are played. Any chromatic (relative to the chord) notes that he uses are either decorative, passing tones between chord notes or clearly outline substitute chords. His use of chord substitutions is masterful; in one place he presents three different sonorities against one basic harmony in the space of one measure. He does this in such a melodic way that the listener is unaware

- 59 that he has been taken on this sonic walk around the block. He uses rhythmic variety to propel the solo forward and accentuate his note choices. There is not one single measure of uninterrupted eighth or sixteenth notes. Instead there is a combination of syncopated eighth and sixteenth note runs, with generous doses of sustained notes and rests. Moreover he plays with the eighth note values. Never quite straight, never quite swing, the runs float over the Bossa Nova-like rhythm section, gently playing with the listener’s ear. He uses subtle dynamics as well. Although most of the solo is played within a limited dynamic range, at one point he plays a short figure, almost as an aside very softly, immediately bringing the level up the match the intensity of the next phrase. Finally there is his tone. Leahey used extra heavy strings on his guitar and played with a very small polished stone pick. This gave his guitar an incredibly rich warm sound which was captured beautifully in this recording. His sustained notes are given a lovely wide vibrato and have an incredibly bright ringing sound for an amplified acoustic guitar. Here are the first two phrases of Django’s Castle, mm 1-8 plus the pickup note:

- 60 This alternation of a two note ascending motive with a two note descending motive sets the pattern for most of the melody of the song. Here is the opening phrase of Leahey’s solo, mm 1-4:

He begins the first measure with F# to A, the motive with which Reinhardt begins his original melody. Measure one ends with F# to E, the motive with which Reinhardt answers the first. The C# and the second A in the middle of the measure serve to outline the tonic D Major 7 chord. Just as Reinhardt did, Leahey sustains the last note of m 1 into m 2 making a two bar motive. However Leahey has compressed the call and response of Reinhardt’s first phrase into one motive. Reinhardt placed the F# in the pickup to the first full measure. Placing it against the A7 (b9) chord gave the note color as it functioned as a 13th. Giving it two full beats further accentuated it and reinforced its status as an important melody note. Leahey, on the other hand played a G note, the 7th of the Dominant A7 chord as a pickup note. He plays it as an eighth note on the “and” of four, giving it a definite upbeat feeling, as if he were taking a breath before going to the important F# note on the downbeat. Like Reinhardt Leahey completes his phrase with a two measure answering motive. Measures 3-4 are virtually identical in rhythm and very similar in contour to mm 1-2. Rather than outline the chord, he plays a short scalar passage from B, the 6th of the harmony to D, the tonic before descending to G. The G is sustained and serves as a sort of a reverse suspension. Within the D Major 7 chord the G is a dissonant non-chord note, the “avoid note”. In m 4 it becomes the 7th of the A7 and

- 61 thus “resolves”, albeit to the most dissonant member of the chord. The original melody places a pickup note prominently on the third beat of m 2, leading to the “answer”. By contrast, Leahey leads into his, again on the third beat, with a three note stepwise figure in a descending sequence that dovetails beautifully into m 3. The four measure phrase is symmetrical, consisting of two semi phrases of two measures each. While it is primarily made up of ascending figures the overall contour is descending. The main motivic material is in eighth and longer notes and the connecting sequence uses sixteenth notes to move it forward. The pickup note leading into the phrase and the final note of the phrase are G notes. Here is the second phrase of the solo, mm 5-8, with the pickup note:

Again Leahey leads into the phrase with a pickup note on the “and” of four leading down stepwise to the downbeat. He then continues with a variation of Reinhardt’s up/down motif. In m 5 he plays on lower pitches than m 1, but they function as higher voices within the chord. He sustains the last note of m 5 into m 6 and plays an arpeggio as a lead into the motive that begins in m 7. There is a subtle subtext to the up/down pattern in these two measures. He expands on the pickup note stepping down to a stressed note. The second half of m 6 is a C# diminished 7th arpeggio, which forms the upper notes of an A7(b9) chord. A D note on the “and” of two leads down, stepwise to this arpeggio. The Bb note on the “and” of four leads stepwise down to an A note in m 7. This A note in turn

- 62 begins another up/down figure. There are two interesting features to this measure. First of all, a more common figure for a guitarist to play would have been this:

The B note would have continued the forward motion (and been easier to play.) But Leahey was not finished with his pattern of stepping downward into accented notes. He then goes up to a D, or the 11th of the chord in anticipation of the D7 chord that is about to follow in the nest measure. Continuing the up/down pattern a C to E leap strongly establish the A minor sonority. The E note sustains into the downbeat of m 8, beginning the measure on the 9th. In m 8 he varies the three techniques he has used earlier in the solo. He arpeggiates an Eb diminished triad which is the upper notes of a D7(b9). He leads to this arpeggio with a D, reversing the downward stepwise movement of the previous pickup notes. He is also using the tonic note, usually the most important note of a chord, on a weak beat, while the 9th sounds on the downbeat. The four note figure that ends m 8, and serves as a pickup to m 9, tricks the ear rhythmically and harmonically. B goes to C and it sounds as though there will be some kind of scale pattern based on a D7 chord. The Ab and Eb notes that follow tell us that this really an Ab triad, or a tritone substitution on the D7 chord. Now the four note figure reveals itself to be a standard jazz figure, even a cliché that has been made fresh by surprising the ear. In one measure Leahey has used a D9, an Eb diminished triad and an Ab triad to function as a D7 chord. And he has done this without sounding in any way clinical or contrived.

- 63 Here are the next two phrases in the melody, mm 9-16.

Measures 9-12 are the opening phrase transposed up a perfect fourth with its up/down call and response. Measures 13-16 contain the only rhythmic variety in the song, and the only departure from the basic up/down motif. Here is the next phrase of Leahey’s solo, mm 9-14 (note the six bar phrase length):

Leahey has taken the first two notes of Reinhardt’s original phrase, B and D and inverted them. The resulting large ascending leap, which outlines the chord, becomes the motive in a figure and sequence pattern that he develops over the next six measures. After the

- 64 sixth leap Leahey plays the same third leap that appears in the melody, reinforcing the solo’s connection to the melody. Three times he plays an ascending sixth in this rhythm:

and follows it with new material that serves to connect the figures and move the solo forward. The top notes of these leaps are B, A and G#. In m 11, as part of his connecting material he plays a Bb which receives an agogic accent by virtue of its length relative to the notes around it. This Bb note creates a chromatic line pulling strongly to the G# notes which are stressed in mm 14-15, both in the bass and in the solo line. This G# being a tritone away from the tonic adds great color to the solo, all the more so because of the strong pull of the chromatic line. A burst of sixteenth notes, interrupted by some syncopation serve as a lead in, or pickup to the second half of the chorus.

Before going into this double time run Leahey leaves three beats of open space, one half from the previous measure and two and a half in this measure. This gives the listener’s ear a moment to breathe. In addition to doubling of the speed, Leahey introduces more chromaticism into this run. This is over chord changes that are chromatic ii V sequences. It is interesting to note that the last four notes of this measure, which forcefully lead into

- 65 the second half of the chorus, are another up/down pair. The first half of the chorus ends on the same note it began with, giving it continuity. Reinhardt’s melody at mm17-24 is identical to the melody at mm 1-8. Here is the opening four bar phrase of the second half of Leahey’s chorus, mm 17-20:

Although it may not be apparent at first glance, or on first hearing, Leahey is continuing the up/down pattern and choosing notes in key places that are strongly connected to the melody. The contour of m 17 ascends from F# 5 to C# 6, and then descends to G 4. Measure 18 ascends from G 4 to D 5 and descends back to G 4. Measures 19-20 is a two bar up/down pair, ascending from F# 4 to E 6 and descending to E 5. The connection to the song’s melody is subtle. The first two notes of m 17 are the first two notes of m 17 in the song, sped up by a factor of eight. The last two beats of m 20 consist of two eighth notes followed by an eighth note and two sixteenth notes. The note on beat three, m 20 is an F#. The last note in the group is an E. The notes in between these two are decorative connecting notes that pull strongly to the final E. The F# to E motive comes from the melody. The E is in turn tied across the barline to the downbeat of m 21 as the E in m 19 of the melody is tied over the barline to m 20. Behind the accelerated rhythm and flurry

- 66 of sixteenth notes is a clear reference to Reinhardt’s melody. In fact, it could be argued that Leahey has taken Reinhardt’s four notes phrase and fleshed it out into a syncopated, highly animated line. As he was earlier in the solo, Leahey is ever mindful of the chord changes. In m 17 he clearly outlines a D Major 7 with an added 6th. He ends the measure on a G, again sustaining over the barline to give the effect of the reverse suspension as in mm 3-4. In m 18 he superimposes what sounds like a G Major tonality over the A13 in the first two beats with a short ascending run. On beat three he lands squarely on a C# 5 giving a feeling of G Lydian before arpeggiating down the A7 sonority. Once again a G on the “and” of four leads to an F# in m 19 where we come to rest for a beat and a half. An ascending leap of a Major 7th takes us to a blue third, resolving immediately to a natural third in a blues motive that sounds remarkably un-bluesy. Leahey then takes us up the Major 9th of the chord, E, which he sustains over the barline for another reverse suspension as the chord changes to A dominant. In a reversal of what he had done in m 18, he superimposes the G Major tonality with a descending arpeggio. As mentioned above, the last two beats of m 20 are dominated by the F# E motive. In a twist on a guitar cliché, A13 to A7(#5) to DMaj9, Leahey approaches the F natural, the #5, by a whole step and the E, the Major 9th by a minor 3rd. The E falls on the last sixteenth note of the measure and is tied over to the next measure and next phrase. Here is the next phrase of Leahey’s solo at mm 21-24:

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Measure 21 begins on an E 5 which is tied over from m 20. This is very similar to the melody where four measures begin with an E which was tied over from the previous measure. On the second beat he outlines a G triad, the IV chord at a pianissimo. This triad gives the effect of a suspension, gently decorating the I chord to which he returns on the third beat. He then plays a delicate figure that serves as a brief rest stop between the busyness of the previous phrase and the intensity that will ensue. In fact, it could be argued that this measure really belongs to the previous phrase, making another pair of phrases of uneven length. The decision to place it in this phrase was purely arbitrary. Measure 22 begins with a beat of silence. From there it builds tension. In this measure Leahey borrows two ideas he has used previously in the solo. From m 18 he takes the G Major run superimposed over the A7 harmony leading to a C# note with a Lydian feel. This time he has increased the intensity with sixteenth note syncopation. The last beat of the measure is another up/down pair, one that he is reprising from m 16. This is the last four note group, two up followed by two down of the solo, although he continues to use the up/down contour. In mm 23-24 Leahey creates a striking variation on a Bebop cliché. The chords are Am7 to D7, one measure each. Here is a line that would have fit perfectly over these changes:

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This line, which is used by every aspiring jazz improviser and many true jazz improvisers would have clearly outlined the chords and lead seamlessly to the next measure. It would also have been uninspired and boring. What Leahey has done is to extract the power of this line, (after all it didn’t become a cliché because it wasn’t powerful), and create something new, exciting and fresh. The descending Am7 arpeggio is there, but its entrance is delayed for two beats. In those two beats, Leahey places his most Reinhardtinspired line of the whole solo. Reinhardt often played what sounded like chromatic runs. However, when the run crossed from one string to the next he would play a whole step. Since he played these runs at supersonic speeds he would fool the ear into “hearing” a complete chromatic run. Leahey has borrowed a short piece of this type of run, placing the whole step between G and A. He has started and ended on an F#, anticipating the D7 that will appear in the next measure. After this he states the Am arpeggio as a sixteenth note pickup to the following measure. He then takes the G# and the G notes which will ultimately lead to an F#, the 3rd of the D7 chord and places them against the D7 chord. The clichéd lick places these notes against the Am chord where they function as the Maj7 and min7 of the chord. Against the D7 they function as a #11 and 11. In the clichéd version, the E pedal tone adds rhythmic momentum and pulls melodically toward the F# from below, while the chromatic line pulls from above. Leahey plays a repeated E note above and below the chromatic line. The lower E pulls upward toward the F#, as in the

- 69 cliché. The upper E pulls down to the b9, written here as a D# for ease of reading. There is now voice leading going in three directions at once. Here are the last two phrases of the melody, mm 25-32 with the pickup from m 24:

In mm 25-28 Reinhardt breaks with the up/down pattern and presents two two-note motives, both going up, with the second on reaching the highest note of the song, F# 5. The last phrase, mm 29-32, contains the chromatic chord progression #iim7 #V7 iim7 V7 resolving to the tonic. Melodically there is one last up/down pair. Measure 31 has on beats three and four ivm6 and #iv dim7 chords respectively. As we have seen this last group of eight measures is the only part of the song that Leahey has truly reharmonized. Here is the melodic line he plays against this section:

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This is the busiest part of the solo, matching the intensity of the chord changes and the climactic nature of this part of the song. Again there are examples of the up/down contour. For example, starting on the second half of the second beat of m 26 the line ascends from A# 4 to D# 6 on the first beat of m 27. The line then descends to G# 4. The D# 6 is the highest note in the solo, coinciding with the highest note in the song occurring on the same beat. Measure 27 ends with another up/down pattern and mm 28-32 each have a similar contour. In m 31 the speed of the line begins to wind down and mm 32-34 gently wrap up the solo in relaxed eighth notes. Leahey concludes the solo on G 5, the note with which he began the solo and ended the first half of the solo, bringing the solo full circle to a logical ending which could only be followed by the closing melody statement.

- 71 In this solo, Leahey has built sophisticated lines from the simplest material. He has used motivic development, rhythmic variety, and an incredible harmonic sense to create new melodies that, while remaining connected to the source material are fresh and exciting. There are no wasted notes, no stock phrases, and no filler. This solo is an example of the reason Phil Woods referred to Leahey as “the best guitarist to come down the pike.”33

33

Conversation with Phil Woods.

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Interview with Tom Anthony Tom Anthony recalls when he first met Harry in his freshman year at North Plainfield High School. Harry was one year ahead of him: TA: I met Harry; we both went to Sayer's studio. Bill Sayer was a trumpet player and he had a place on Park Avenue in Plainfield and Harry and I both studied with the Melia brothers, John and Lou. I studied the mandolin. My uncles gave me mandolin lessons. That's when I was about twelve years old, something like that. And Harry of course was a guitar player so we met and he was studying with Lou and I was studying with John. And John would teach me (makes tremolo sound and gesture) the mandolin. In those days, Les Paul's, the beginning of the wire recorder, the Webster or whatever it was, the first wire recorders and that's when Les Paul was doing these multiple recordings where he'd speed up. FP: He did that with wire recorders? TA: I believe it started with the wire recorder. That was pre-tape recorder (laughs). So they listened, he and his sister, Edith and they called her Sunshine, they started as Les Paul and Mary Ford kind of and they copied all of Les Paul and Mary Ford's things. FP: So Harry was able to copy TA: He was copying Les Paul. Of course he wouldn't speed up as fast but he would do all the same material, How High the Moon and stuff like that that they did. And of course Sunshine was Mary Ford. And then they met me and I was a mandolin player. Then I started playing the guitar. Then I went to high school and they said "we don't need a mandolin player in the orchestra or the band."

- 73 (Laughs.) So I started playing the bass. They said "we need a bass player". So not long after that we had a trio. FP: Guitar, bass and vocals. TA: Uh huh. And we played in the Oxford Theater, some of the theaters that were in Plainfield at that time. They had five theaters, believe it or not in Plainfield. The Liberty, the Oxford, the Strand, I can’t remember all of them but I think there were five theaters. FP: So you would do live shows? TA: We would do volunteer kind of things. A lot of it was talent shows. Like Ted Mack’s kind of thing. We’d do talent shows. The Oxford Theater was a place they’d have shows they’d have comedians come in, some of the old timers, Henny Youngman, I remember seeing him there, people like that, you know. And they’d have amateur night and we’d do things like that. But then as he went through high school, Harry and I became very good friends… But as we got later in high school, like juniors and seniors then we met people who were jazz players like Richie Moore was a good friend of ours, drummer. And he started educating us and we started learning other things than Les Paul and Mary Ford. FP: So you were fifteen or sixteen? TA: Yes, very impressionable age. Thank goodness we met Richie. FP: Were you both still studying at that studio? TA: He studied with Lou. The studio finally folded up I think. They closed down. And then we would go to their homes. Then I started studying with Lou, the guitar.

- 74 FP: So you were both studying the guitar? TA: We were both studying with Lou. We’d go to Highland Park, to his home. FP: What kind of stuff was Lou teaching you? TA: Lou was a jazz player and he was very much, oh I would say into Tony Mottola, and he would be a hero of his, Tony Mottola and people like that. He was kind of a funny guy. He told me that in order to play the guitar you should have strength, so I dug a hole for an oil tank for him. (Laughs.) That’s one way he got someone to do his oil tank hole for him. And then it was interesting that Harry loved to practice, always. He liked to practice. FP: How about you? TA: I didn’t like to practice, no. I used to like to listen to Harry practice. But Lou would have us practice by the hour and the technique then was, you know later when he studied with Johnny Smith, Johnny Smith would alternate his picking. And it was pretty much like a tremolo technique and he would just strictly alternate picking. Lou Melia would use sometimes double down strokes you know when you go from string to string and that was a technique that up to this day I’m sure that some people use that. FP: Consecutive picking. TA: Yeah. And I was, being a mandolin player for me the alternate picking was just natural. So I had to fight to learn how to play the way Lou Melia said “that’s not the way to do it, you know.” I had to practice his way. Besides digging the hole (laughs.) So Harry just followed Lou’s instruction and he learned to do it that way. So in the meantime we’re getting to play more jazz with Richie and he’s

- 75 introducing us to singers, Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee and people like that. And we’re starting to hear some good music, Tony Bennett and whoever. And Richie even sang like Frank Sinatra. He had very much a Sinatra voice. And then we started playing jazz things. I think we worked at a place called The Lodge on Route 22 a little trio and that kind of thing. Guitar, bass and drums and Richie singing Frank Sinatra. So then I think Harry had a neighbor, a saxophone player whose name was Bill Pfeiffer. And he was in the army with Johnny Smith. So then through Bill Pfeiffer Harry met Johnny Smith. He said “I have a friend Johnny Smith who at that time lived on Long Island. And Johnny Smith was also a pilot had we had an airport here, Hadley Airport. So Johnny Smith would actually pick up Harry at Hadley Airport and fly him to his place on Long Island. And he’d give him a lesson and they’d have an afternoon of it. Johnny Smith didn’t have any students so he was doing this as a friend kind of with Bill Pfeiffer. FP: So he must have been really impressed with Harry’s playing. TA: Yeah. But the first thing he did was to say “you have to alternate pick.” And after all this working with Lou Melia. FP: I thought that Harry studied with Harry Volpe too before he studied with Johnny Smith. TA: Yeah in the interim or maybe just before he met Johnny Smith yeah. We both would go to 48th Street and study with Harry Volpe. TA: Well, we both went in together. FP:

You took the bus into New York?

- 76 TA: Took the bus into New York or the train. I guess it was mostly the bus and studied with Harry Volpe on 48th Street. FP: And Harry Volpe was probably also a consecutive picker? TA: I think yeah. He was more like Lou Melia, I believe. FP: Right. TA: Actually, I can’t quite remember. That’s a long time ago, but I think so. So then Harry Volpe would write his own songs, his own music, and we would play of course out of the Harry Volpe book and that kind of thing. So yeah, he was in there too, and who else might he have studied with? I think that was the guitar teacher. So it would have been Lou, Harry Volpe, Johnny Smith, maybe in that order, yeah, exactly. FP: And so Johnny Smith, in the late ‘40s, early ‘50s was really coming into his own. TA: Yeah. In the meantime, Johnny Smith, we’d go… You could go to New York at 18 and go to pubs. So we were lucky enough to sit on the side of the Birdland and then drink out of the cardboard cups, the beer out of the cardboard glasses. You know that kind of thing. FP: But you really weren’t 18 at that point, were you? TA: Well, I think we, no, you know what? That’s true. But P.B. Marquette was the guy who would take the tickets. He was pretty strict, so I can’t remember whether we could get away with that. I really don’t remember, but. FP: But Johnny Smith. TA: So we might have been around 18 before we went in to see Johnny Smith.

- 77 FP: Had he already recorded Moonlight in Vermont? TA: Yep. I think Eddie Safransky was the bass player then and Stan Getz was on those early Roost. Was it Roost Records? FP: Yeah. TA: And the 78s. They were 78s. So we all fell in love with Johnny Smith, and then Moonlight in Vermont and all those ballads that he played. Johnny Smith was playing Birdland quite often. So we’d go to Birdland with him with our jaws dropping and watching him play. FP: So after Harry was introduced to Johnny Smith by his neighbor… TA: By Bill Peiffer. FP: Bill Peiffer, and then he heard Harry play and then he invited him? TA: Well, I think he just took Harry, just because Bill was such a good friend, I think he said sure, I’ll teach your friend. So I don’t know if he ever heard Harry before he started teaching him. But of course when he heard Harry, then he took him under his wing and he was… FP: So Harry was already a great player by then, right? TA: Well yeah. Harry always had great technique cause as I said he loved to practice. So whatever, whether it was Lou Melia’s technique or whatever. So he had to switch gears then when he went with Johnny Smith and do the alternate picking. Then he came home one day. I remember he said “Tom, guess what? Remember how you used to play when you played the mandolin technique? That’s how I have to play now.” So I went back to my regular way of playing. FP: Did you keep studying too?

- 78 TA: I didn’t study jazz guitar except for with Lou Melia. So then I was more or less… And I had good technique cause I played the mandolin. But I never studied it with any one else after Harry Volpe. So I would have been John Melia, Lou Melia, Harry Volpe, and Harry was – never studied with John – but Lou, Harry Volpe and Johnny Smith at that time. So then we kind of were getting close to 18 or 19 I guess, when we were watching them in Birdland, Johnny Smith in Birdland. Then we formed a Dixieland band. So we started playing at places where you live in the Oranges. There’s a place called Dudley’s. We played there. It was a converted… It was a church. FP: Was Bob Miller in that band? TA: Bob played with us, but he wasn’t in that particular band. FP: Oh. TA: But Buddy Wood was a trombone player and George Egbert, a clarinet player, and of course Richie on the drums. And who else? Harry played the guitar. We were the rhythm section. FP: So in the Dixieland band and Harry’s playing guitar with… TA: Harry’s playing the guitar. He wasn’t nuts about it, but every once in a while the had to play the banjo. FP: He ended up quitting, right? TA: He quit the tenor banjo; he didn’t fit the banjo too well. He didn’t like the banjo that was. It was thrown off the ship, but later, a couple of years later while we were playing on the Grote Beer, the Health American Ship Line with the

- 79 Dixieland band. We found summer school trips to Rotterdam, Holland and we spent the summer there. That’s another story, but… FP: Well, you’ve got to tell me that story too. TA: Yeah, okay. So that’s kind of… In the meantime, we’d meet some interesting people like from this area. There was – Alvie Dealeman was a drummer and Harry went to a couple of sessions with Bill Evans. FP: He did? He did make a couple of sessions? TA: Yeah, and it was like Alvie Dealeman’s house or something. TA: So Alvie would say “Oh, I know this kid who plays a nice guitar” and Bill Evans had to be home at that time cause he lives in North Plainfield. FP: Was Bill Evans in the army or something at that time? TA: I can’t remember. FP: He was a little older than you guys, right? About nine years older, wasn’t he? TA: Something like that, yeah. So it wasn’t often but maybe a couple, two or three times that Harry would go and play with Bill Evans. FP: So that was before Bill Evans became really famous. TA: Yeah, that was before he met Scott LaFaro and people like that, Bob Moses. So then I’m trying to get the order now. So we had those little things happening here and there. Then as I said, the Richie Moore Trio, it was the Richie Moore Trio; we did The Lodge and some pubs. We were just starting. FP: You said Richie did the Frank Sinatra stuff. TA: Yeah, Richie was the Frank Sinatra. FP: Did Harry sing?

- 80 TA: No, Harry was not a singer, nor was I. FP: Because Glenn and Roy were telling me about going to hear the band and they were doing some Hi-Los tunes… TA: Oh, yeah. But that was like a joke, but I mean we tried. Well, it wasn’t – didn’t mean to be a joke. But yeah, we tried to do some… FP: Cause he said that everybody in the band sang. TA: The Four Freshman and the Hi-Los. We tried to do that, yeah. Now there’s another person. I’m glad you mentioned that because Romolo Ferri - I don’t know if you know that name – Rom Ferri. FP: Rom Ferri, yeah. TA: Yeah, so now he… Then we started, we had Rom. He was a pianist. Then we became a quartet. FP: Was that the Richie Moore Four? TA: Yeah, exactly the Richie Moore Four then. So Richie was the leader for a long time. So then Rom was going to Manhattan School of Music and he was quite a pianist to this day. He still lives on Charles Street down in the Village. He married Linda, another pianist, classical pianist. FP: Well, that’s another question that I’m going to have to ask you at some point cause Harry went to Manhattan, right? TA: Yes, he did, but not long. FP: That’s probably a little later on in the story. TA: When did he go to Manhattan? FP: Did he go…

- 81 TA: I think it was after we had taken a trip to Europe. It was. FP: Okay. So when we get there you will tell. TA: Yeah, right. But anyway, that’s kind of how we evolved from this Les Paul Trio to meeting Richie Moore, and then starting to play jazz gigs. FP: So after you met up with Richie, is that kind of the end of his… TA: Yeah, that whole thing just… FP: His sister was no longer… TA: His sister, no, she kind of gave up singing and the guitar. FP: Did she? TA: Yeah. FP: She played the guitar too, right? TA: She played the guitar. Yeah. I’ll tell you one little story that was interesting. When we did the show at the Oxford Theater, they played Nola. Now Nola was a piece that Les Paul played with that speeding up the tempo time, whatever. And Harry use to practice by the hour and he could play Nola like it’s no problem. FP: So she’s playing rhythm guitar and he’s playing melody. TA: She for the most part played rhythm guitar, but they figured we’d do a back and forth, kind of a tongue and cheek version of it where he would play the first part and she would come in on the first two bars and then each come in on the second two bars. But she couldn’t keep up with Harry and she was heartbroken, and the father gave her hell and all this kind of stuff. And that might have been the beginning of the end for poor Sunshine. FP: So Harry – but he could bring it up to speed.

- 82 TA: Harry – dada dada dada dada dada dada. Then she’d go… She couldn’t quite keep up with him. FP: She didn’t practice as much as he did. TA: She didn’t practice as much, no. No, not at all. So then the trio was dissolved. The Les Paul sound went away. Anyway, we left that to Les Paul and Mary Ford. So then we started to get into the quartet with Romolo Ferri and Richie also played the cocktail drum and the bongos quite well. So that was another feature. Then we started playing in the Oranges, I said Dudley’s. There’s another place called the Cabana Club, remember that. It was on Eagle Rock Avenue. Well, we played way back in the early 50s there. FP: You were playing Dixieland or… TA: Dixieland. We played the Dixieland there. FP: Cause Dixieland was pretty popular around that time. TA: Yeah. They had the guys from Princeton, what they call the Dukes of Dixieland or something like… FP: They were from Princeton originally? TA: No, I’ll make sure I get the right name now. There was Stan Rubin, Stan Rubin, and maybe it wasn’t the Dukes. Anyway, so they were quite famous in Princeton. They played at the Nassau Inn, a place like that. FP: Right. TA: It wasn’t Tigertown Five, was it? I don’t know. I can’t remember. They were quite known anyway. So that’s how he got the job on the Grote Beer, but they were playing the ships. There were three student ships that left Hoboken.

- 83 (Inaudible) was in Hoboken in those days, and so there would be relatively small ships. It would hold about 1,000 students, 800-1,000. FP: Right. TA: So there was the Watermen, the Zouder Cruise (sp) I remember, and the Grote Beer, which means Great Bear. So anyway the Princeton group, Stan Rubin and whatever the Dukes, whoever they would call, had to back out for one reason or another. So they had to get a replacement in a hurry. So then we kind of slapped together this Dixieland band, and we had already played in the Oranges, Dudley’s and places like that. So we had to get the people who could leave the country and go on the boat. I think most of the guys from the Dudley’s group did go, but he got a trombone player and George Egbert and people like that. So we went in 1955 and 1956, two years, leaving in June, go to Rotterdam, get off the ship and you were there for the summer. For better, for worse, hope you can get some work. And the first year it was such a fast transaction that we didn’t have any bookings, so we went, had the nerve to go to Rotterdam with just our passage on the ship. We didn’t get paid on the ship. We played for our passage. So then when we got to Rotterdam… FP: Did you get gigs in the first year? TA: Oh, we did quite well, but it was like a flip a coin, where do you want to go? Do you want to go to Paris? Do you want to go to Copenhagen? Some wanted to go to Scandinavia, Copenhagen. Others wanted to go to Paris. Paris won, and we ended up playing Bastille Night, which is July 14th on the streets of Paris, and got a job at Le Riverside, right near Notre Dame. Then we met an American Black

- 84 clarinetist, Albert Nicholas, and played with him and he’d sit in. So we had a pretty nice group. FP: Yeah. TA: And Harry at that time started to listen, just prior to going on the Grote Beer, really got into Barney Kessel. He would buy records. And I think Bill Peiffer was another educator of ours. He had some Barney Kessel recordings, and then Harry started to listen to Barney Kessel. He just loved Barney Kessel and he started to sound like Barney Kessel. FP: Was he still studying with Johnny Smith? Obviously not when he went… TA: No, I think that was not that long. I can’t remember exactly, but it might have been maybe less than a year that he studied with Johnny Smith. FP: Oh, really. TA: By that time Johnny Smith said “I taught you everything I know”, all his arpeggios and some of his repertoire. He said now it’s up to you. I remember that happening. He said you have to do it on your own now. You have to go and… Johnny Smith dismissed him. He said that’s all I could teach you, something like that. FP: Right. Well, okay. I thought Harry might have studied with him for longer than that. TA: I would say less than a year because… Maybe Johnny Smith said I can’t keep flying over the Hadley Airport. I think Harry did take some buses and trains to get there. It took him all day to get there. FP: Right, but it would be worth it. TA: But it was worth it, yeah.

- 85 FP: So if I can get now the dates and chronology straight here. Cause you say you guys are about 18 now, 18, 19… TA: Yeah. I know when we went to our first trip on the Grote Beer, and this would have been post Johnny Smith. We were 19. FP: 19. So that must be about ’54. TA: It was September. So maybe Harry was just 19 and I was still 18. FP: Oh, okay. TA: Cause I wouldn’t be 19 until January. FP: So that’s ’54. TA: ’55 we went. FP: Oh, in ’55? TA: Figure we got… FP: Oh, that’s right. Harry’s born in ’35. TA: I was born in ’36. FP: And he was born in ’35. TA: ’35. So maybe he was 20. We have to add that up. FP: So he’s already graduated high school. TA: Yeah, we’re both out of high school. FP: He hasn’t gone in the army yet, right? TA: He hasn’t gone in the army yet, right. And now I think Manhattan was later – after ’56 I believe. FP: Okay. So you guys go over to Rotterdam. TA: First of all it was 1955.

- 86 FP: Then you do the gigs. So you had one gig in Paris? TA: No, we had… Yeah, we had a gig that… FP: It’s a steady gig? TA: A steady gig for the month of July, the time we were there, and then Romolo Ferri… FP: Right. TA: …was a cast with us that year. FP: Right. TA: And that’s how Manhattan gets him because Romolo at that time had gone to Manhattan, and whether he was still there and still going at that time or not I don’t remember. But he was a student at Manhattan School of Music and that’s how he got Harry into it. FP: All right. TA: So it was through Romolo, so it all fits together. FP: Yeah. Now it’s starting to come together. TA: Yeah. Then Romolo had friends in the army in Frankfurt, Germany, so we played the month of July in Paris and had a wonderful time as I said with Albert Nicholas sitting in with us and all that. I should have put it in an album. I have pictures of some of this. FP: Oh, now was he just sitting in or was he part of the band? TA: Albert just sat in. But he liked us and he would say we were swinging when we were going out. I remember him saying that. And he was a wonderful man.

- 87 He was one of those guys who went to Paris as a black player and was treated so much nicer than here and just stayed there. FP: Yeah. So you guys were still playing in Dixieland. TA: Dixieland band. We were the Somerset Seven because we were mostly from Somerset County, except some of the people were from the Oranges and other places. FP: So the Somerset Seven was kind of like the Richie Moore Four augmented with some horns. TA: Augmented, exactly, exactly. Through Richie we found Buddy Wood who lives in Elizabeth, and they weren’t people all from Plainfield or around Plainfield. So anyway that was through Rom who had friends in… Tony Camillo as a matter as fact – I hope you know that name. FP: Yeah. TA: Tony Camillo was in the army then. And through Tony we went to Frankfurt, and we had to like crawl through a hole in the fence and act like we were in the army. We were in a transient part of the army, stationed there in Frankfurt. So at night we’d have to sneak in and some of the transients were a football’s team and musicians, and all these people that are not supposed to be there. Well, the football was, but we weren’t supposed to be there. So through Tony they said now don’t say too much and make sure you make your bed and you had to be able to bounce a quarter and all that, hospital corners and all that, yeah, which that was a joke. Anyway, none of us could don that. So anyway, we played at the officer’s club that was called The Topper Club, so remember that,

- 88 with a real big tough sergeant named Sergeant Hendricks, and Sergeant Hendricks through Romolo asked if we could play there. We played the remainder of the time at the Topper Club. So we actually had two – we did some side jobs in Kaiserslautern I remember, and we’d do other army affiliated places. Paris was not though. Paris was just a… We got that job from the Bastille Night, but from now on we’re working through the army and pretending to be in the army. We had some fights with the MPs. They thought we were in the army. We’d shout back at them “go to hell, we’re not in the army”. We’re lucky we didn’t get our heads beaten, but we were certainly army age, 19. So anyway, then the first year we did well for not having anything lined up. FP: During the year before the next summer, you continued to work in clubs? TA: Yeah. We worked places on Route 22 here. In those days, I think Harry started to work with – now here’s where it gets fuzzy. He worked with Johnny Spizo and Danny Spizo and people like that. Yeah, just gigs. FP: You were doing these commercial clubs. TA: Commercial kind of gigs, yeah. There are a lot right on Route 22. FP: Was the Richie Moore Four still working at all? TA: Richie Moore Four stayed together for years, on and off. So we were together through the sixties for quite a long time. Yeah. So yeah, we had our gigs. Then I think Rom started to talk to Harry about going to school, about going to Manhattan School of Music, and I don’t know whether he… He probably started after the next year in 1956. I’m fuzzy about that. He could have maybe done it then. I don’t know.

- 89 FP: Actually, I got a hold of books that he used, from Edie Eustice. And the one book has a copyright date on it of 1960. So that sort of dates that. TA: Yeah. Yeah. FP: Well, the first year you went over was ’55. TA: ’55, and we went back in ’56. FP: So you guys must have played together – well, we said through the 60s even. TA: Yeah right. So we continued to play from then on. The Dixieland band dissolved probably not long after. FP: No more Somerset Seven. TA: No more Somerset Seven after our second trip to Europe. FP: Did you record? TA: Yeah, we recorded this Dixieland band in Germany. FP: Was it recorded to be released? TA: Yeah, it was a radio program. So this was we went to the radio station, I believe it was Kaiserslautern, some place close to Frankfurt, and yeah. It was a pretty nice recording. Now this recording I believe was the second year. It was ’56 I believe. That’s right because Rom couldn’t go the next year and we had a replacement pianist, who wasn’t as good as Rom. You could hear little things happening there, but we had a good trumpeter. The first year was Mike Arnodo who was from this area. He went to Scotch Plains High School. So we changed two people I think the second year. Instead of Rom, we had another pianist. So he’s on the recording. And we had Don Batiste, a trumpeter, who was just a very talented guy who played in Massachusetts in a polka band. So he had all this fast

- 90 playing and stuff like that. But he was just a very talented guy and he picked up on the Dixieland very well. So the next thing he was playing Bobby Hackett kind of things. So we did a mix of Dixieland plus some jazz. With that ensemble we just did some jazz things. FP: And that’s the one that you recorded with? TA: Yeah, so you’ll hear a mix of not only Dixieland. You’ll hear – I forget the song, but some jazz song. FP: So do you get to really hear Harry on it? TA: Oh, yeah. And then Harry did Alice in Wonderland. Yeah, he did that, and he did a little medley I think. So yeah, you could hear the Barney Kessel influence very much so. FP: And Johnny Smith? TA: Yeah, you could always hear Johnny Smith, but he’s leaning more heavily towards Barney Kessel. As much as he admired Johnny Smith, he loved Barney Kessel and he really went that way more towards Barney Kessel. FP: So you can hear that on the recording? TA: Yeah, you can very much. FP: I’d love to hear that. TA: Yeah, I think you can really hear that. Yeah. I must say it was a pretty good recording and you could hear us doing some of that and the trumpet player kind of doing Bobby Hackett kind of things. FP: Did you Richie sing with the band?

- 91 TA: Richie’s singing S’Wonderful, George Gershwin things in Frank Sinatra style. Yeah, that’s what it’s pretty much all. So now any questions? FP: Yeah. TA: I can go on. FP: Ah, this is great. Keep going. TA: Oh, yeah. There are so many things I’ll probably forget. The Richie Moore Trio and Quartet - that lasted quite a while. We played a lot of gigs and we met other people in the area. Herb Fener (sp) always played the vibes and trumpet. Other people – Bill Robinson was a singer. So we played with pickup kind of bands too. FP: So now we’re up to late 50s or we were almost… TA: Then we’re getting into the 60s. FP: So at that point from what I got from Roy and Glen, that’s around when they first met Harry. The closest they could place it is somewhere around ’60, ’63, something like that, and they put Barry Miles in the picture. TA: Oh, Barry Miles, another… That’s during that early period when we were in high school, we had met Barry, and Terry was just a real little kid then. But Barry was playing drums more in those days, like almost all drums. So yeah, so Bob Miller or we called him Mousey, we all played with Barry. That’s another part of that period. FP: Yeah.

- 92 TA: Yeah, and there were other people. Bobby Johnson was a guy that we use to play with now and then, and there were a lot of area people that we played during those late teenage years. FP: Right. So now we’re up to the early 60s? Harry hasn’t gone in the army yet, has he? TA: Oh, when did Harry go into the army? Oh, I’ll tell you a segue into it. FP: And Harry hasn’t gotten married to Karen yet, has he? TA: Right, so I’m trying to think of that time period. This is before we would… And we started to meet. Before Roy we met Glen Davis, and Glen started to play some gigs with us too early on with Harry and me and… FP: You and Harry? TA: Yeah. We played at some bowling alley called the Boom-Boom Room. Ralph Stricker (sp) was a accordionist that we played with sometimes with Glen. In fact, I think sometimes the four of us, Harry, Ralph Stricker, and… But then I guess Harry met Karen. I guess do I note that period when we were between Les Paul style and Harry and I use to practice together sometimes in my chicken coop up in Warren Township. He’d come up maybe once a week or so and we’d practice. I’d play the bass and he’d play the guitar. We’d practice in the chicken coop. There were no chickens, but we had a coop, a nice quiet place to practice. Then I noticed he starting coming up more than once a week, like two or three times a week. He started to notice my little sister. FP: How old was she?

- 93 TA: She was younger. Karen was younger, so at that time she was like maybe 14, I’m guessing, an early teenager. We were much older. We were 17 or 18. So that’s how he met Karen. But Harry went into – you were talking about the army – several years later when he was drafted into the army. FP: Oh, he was drafted? TA: Yeah. He was drafted, yeah. FP: So what year do you… TA: Now I’m trying to think when that would be. FP: Now that’s later then… TA: It’s after the… FP: It’s later than Korea and it’s earlier than Vietnam, right? TA: It’s after Korea and it’s before Vietnam, right. FP: So he got lucky in that… TA: Not much after Korea, but it was after Korea, yeah. Yeah. So he was – I guess now this would have been after our Dixieland experience in Paris and Germany. FP: After the two years… TA: Yeah, right. So probably not long after that that he was drafted. I got out of the army because I had a bout with rheumatism. And so Harry was very jealous of me because I was able to get out of the army. I was 4F and he tried everything. He got drunk and red eyes and all. That didn’t help. He still had to go in the army. FP: Somehow I can’t picture Harry as a soldier.

- 94 TA: Well, we use to joke about that because Harry in high school use to wear these baggy pants and the shoes were never polished. The soles would flap up sometimes. He was not into being in Brooks Brothers suits. So they said well, the army is gonna straighten him out. Now remember when he went to Fort Knox, he went to basic training in Fort Knox, and he was stationed there for quite a while. So we thought when he comes home his shoes are gonna be polished and he was gonna have soles. He comes home and he started giving lessons to his officer, and the guy liked him so he didn’t care whether he polished his shoes or not. So Harry comes home with soles flapping. It didn’t change him at all, not even the army. FP: You reminded me of something when you said he started giving lessons to the officer. Was he already teaching when he was in high school? TA: No, not really. He didn’t start teaching to later really, but I don’t think he so much taught the guy, but he would show him and that kind of thing. He met Jack Six I think around that time. I think through the army. I think that’s where they met, and another fiddle player, a real nice guy. I can’t remember his name now. He met some other musicians that he kept friends with after the army, but that’s when he all of a sudden found himself married too because my sister eloped and went to Fort Knox with a Billy Holiday record under her arm and said “here I am, Harry.” She was maybe 17 or something like that. So they got married down there. FP: Oh. Well, I guess he must have been pretty willing. TA: Oh, yeah. They just hit it off very well.

- 95 FP: Wow. So she was 17. Oh, he must have been almost… Well, he must have been about 20 or 21. TA: Yeah, army age. So yeah, they had been after him. So we were 19 and 20 thereabouts on the Holland American Line Ship. So he would have been… Yeah, that’s right. So he would have been about 21. And it would have been right after his Manhattan School of Music. That would have been – maybe he went to Manhattan as soon as we got back from the second trip to Rotterdam. But it was a matter of months. He didn’t even spend a whole year at Manhattan. He enrolled and then probably with the help of Rom got into Manhattan. Maybe that’s why he left because of the army. That’s a little fuzzy. But it would have been close. FP: Well, he could have probably gotten a deferment, couldn’t he? TA: For what reason? FP: A college to – cause if you were enrolled in school you could… TA: I don’t think you could. FP: What, they didn’t have it? TA: I don’t think they had that, no. If you were drafted, you were drafted. No, cause he tried everything. I mean if he could of he would have done it, yeah. Yeah, I know that. So it would have been probably why he left Manhattan would be to go into the army I think. FP: Oh, what a shame. TA: You have to confirm that with Debbie. She would remember. So then after that… FP: 1935 – he was born in 1935.

- 96 TA: Yeah. FP: Now the book has a copyright of 1960. TA: Okay. FP: So that’s 25 years. TA: What book was that? FP: One of the theory books from… TA: Oh, from Manhattan? FP: From Manhattan School of Music. TA: Oh, okay. Oh, okay. FP: It’s Harry Hanson. TA: Okay, well that fits in. FP: So then he would have to be at Manhattan later. TA: So maybe it was after the army. FP: He would have to be already married after the army. TA: You should talk to Rom about that because I don’t remember it that way. FP: So Rom actually helped him get in, so he would be the guy. TA: Yeah, he would know. But I’m pretty sure that he went to Manhattan he wasn’t married yet, but I may be wrong. I may be wrong about that. FP: That’s going back a little ways. TA: Yeah, right. Yeah. But then at that time I started getting interested in… I guess the second year I started to listen to Andre Segovia. Then I got interested in the classical guitar. That’s when Harry and I kind of drifted apart for years. I mean we played gigs always, now and then weddings and that kind of thing.

- 97 FP: Oh, but you were still friends then obviously. TA: Oh, yeah, of course. FP: You were family. TA: Yeah, family, we were family. We still played gigs, but he had the Harry Leahey Trio with Roy and Glen, and I started playing more classical guitar. Then we kind of drifted apart. Then he began the Harry Leahey Trio with Roy and Glen. They were very tight and they practiced a lot. FP: Yeah. From what they were telling me, it sounds like they didn’t really get together until later than this though. TA: Yeah, it would have been later. FP: It was the 70s. TA: Yeah. Yeah. FP: It was a little bit before he started playing with Phil, which he started first… They started playing with Mike Melillo (sp). TA: Yeah. FP: It would be around ’74 or so. TA: Okay, yeah. Yeah, but I think Roy and Glen played together quite a bit before he met Phil Woods and Mike Melillo. So they would have been before then. FP: Right. TA: But when did they say it would have been? FP: I think it’s about ’74.

- 98 TA: Yeah, I can’t remember exactly. But yeah, after I started getting into the classical guitar. We still played gigs together, so that period of the mid 60s to 70s… FP: You were playing bass? TA: I was playing bass. Yeah, I always kept playing the bass, even though I played the classical guitar. FP: A way to get more gigs. TA: Oh, yeah, I got more gigs with the bass always. But then I would start playing little recitals in New York, the New York College of Music, that kind of thing. I got involved with Alex and Abello and then other people. Then I started teaching and that’s when Harry and I both probably started getting into teaching more. FP: Yeah. When I started studying with Harry, he was 68, and that’s when he was on Myrtle. TA: Yeah, right. FP: Myrtle Avenue. (THIS SECTION SOUNDED LIKE HIS SON WAS SPEAKING IN SOME AREAS). TA: Yeah. DA: No. FP: No, I think in ’68. DA: I was alive when he was here or like I was like 6 or 7 when they moved to Myrtle or something like that, yeah. I was so scared of the house, I sh-- my pants.

- 99 TA: He lives on… DA: (Inaudible) in that bathroom anyway. TA: He was on Gerard. DA: Right. TA: Remember Gerard? FP: Gerard. Gerard. TA: Gerard Avenue, a couple of blocks in from Route 22. FP: Come to think of it, I remember the first time I went to his house, it was in Greenbrook. DA: Right, it was Greenbrook house. TA: There’s one on Washington Avenue. That’s where had the ducks. FP: Right, I remember the ducks. TA: You got Quacky and Wacky. FP: I don’t even remember where the first place was. It was Greenbrook because I got totally lost coming from New Brunswick. TA: Yeah, he lived on Washington Avenue, but prior to that it would have been Gerard Avenue. So he was teaching. There he had a pretty full schedule. FP: At that point he had tons of students. TA: At that point tons of students. FP: And that would only be a few years after you guys kind of parted company as far as the band. TA: Yeah.

- 100 FP: So that wouldn’t be long after that at all. So he built up his reputation and his schedule really first. TA: Yeah, right. So that’s a little fuzzy period for me from the mid 60s to when he started playing full-time with Roy and Glen as you said in the early 70s. So from about the mid 60s on, I think we kept playing with Richie, gigs, weddings and that kind of thing. Harry then started meeting other people as I did and we played more freelance probably. FP: So he probably… Cause one of the things I really have to find out… Actually, I have to find out some of the exact biographical data, but like when his kids were born. TA: Yeah, right. So of course Debbie could help you there. DA: (Inaudible), let’s see. TA: Yeah. DA: How old am I? I’m gonna be 39 in January. Debbie’s six years older than I am. FP: You’ll be 39 in January? DA: Yeah. FP: I’ve been 39 for a long time. It’s a good age. TA: It’s a good age. DA: So she’s gonna be… Yeah, she’s gonna be six years. So she’s maybe 44 or if she’s 43, gonna be 45 in… DA: No, wait. Yeah, 45 in January. FP: Yep.

- 101 DA: She’s January 26th. FP: Yeah. TA: That’s Debbie, right? DA: Yeah. TA: Another person I left out of which I shouldn’t certainly is Bill Kermode (sp), who became my stepfather. We played a lot together… FP: Oh. TA: …with Harry and Bill and not only gigs, but in our homes and at parties and birthdays and that kind of stuff. So Bill was a tenor sax player and very much. We played the Blue Hills Manor. FP: Oh. TA: And Harry I think played some of those gigs. Not so much there cause that was like a society type band. Harry wasn’t definitely into that. FP: No? TA: But then we started meeting and he played some gigs with Anne Finch and Bill Holiday, not Billie Holiday the singer, but Bill Holiday the bass player; they called Billy Holiday too. So we had a whole lot of freelance stuff going on around that time. FP: There was a whole scene out of those – a lot of clubs. TA: A lot of clubs and the place is Charlie’s Brown now. What was the name of that club? You remember the name of that one? FP: I can’t think of the… Hey may.

- 102 TA: And Harry also spent time with Benny Dadino (sp). They had a quartet with Richie and Benny, a sax player. Eddie Elchin (sp) was another guy, Karidis (sp). So yeah, I would say from the mid 60s on a bunch of different short-lived groups. FP: So at this point Harry’s already got a couple of kids. He’s married. TA: Yeah. FP: And so he’s… TA: He’s taking gigs wherever he can. FP: He’s taking them wherever he can… TA: Yeah. FP: …and he’s teaching a lot. I remember. TA: Yeah, he did a lot of teaching. Then there was Danny Spizo. They had an organized group for awhile, but they had pictures and Danny Spizo played the organ and piano and his father was a guitarist, John Spizo, Johnny Spizo. So yeah, there was another group with Richie involved again with Danny Spizo, I think Benny Dadino, and Harry. Did I say Richie? Anyway, I think they had a four piece group. FP: Are these commercial things? TA: Yeah, they were commercial things. FP: Not really (inaudible). TA: Yeah, and sometimes weddings and that kind of thing, but often some pub on Route 22 here somewhere. FP: Right. TA: Or even up in your area, we have sure played some gigs of that way.

- 103 FP: I remember hearing Harry… It was probably the very early 70s with a guy called Nicky Don (sp). TA: Nicky Don, yeah. What did he play? Was he a singer? FP: I think he was a singer. TA: Singer, bass player or something like that. FP: Something like that. TA: Then another period during the 60s, right, I believe it would be, maybe that’s in the 70s, would have been at the Alibi. FP: Right. TA: And we played there for a long time with Matty Dice, a trumpeter. FP: Oh, with Matty Dice, yeah. TA: And Sonny Stevens was a singer. And geez, then Harry… I mean he had a lot of freelance. Another person was Yvonne Green, was that her name? We’d played some gigs Down Neck Newark and all the Reservation. FP: Oh. TA: So we were… That was a lot of, I guess, freelance is the right word I guess. FP: Yeah. TA: However, he did have those, and maybe Debbie could help you there more, the organized groups of pictures with Danny Spizo, Cortez. It was Matty Dice. That was just the six night a week gig that we all hated. FP: Oh, you hated it?

- 104 TA: Oh… Yeah, we used to call Friday night animal night cause, well the girls would come in and the guys would come in like this. The place was full of smoke. In those days everybody smoked. FP: Right. Including you guys, right? TA: I never smoked. FP: You never smoked? TA: Never smoked. I had very sensitive eyes from an early age. I just couldn’t stand smoke. I’d leave intermission. I’d run out of the Alibi and then go to the bowling alley next door and have a beer next door. But anyway, where are we now. So any questions? FP: No, this is great. TA: Then he got at the time period – it’s fuzzy to me now – when he started playing with Phil Woods and they want on the road. They went to Japan and they went to Scandinavia and quite a few places. FP: Right. Well, now we’re up to the 70s. TA: Yeah. FP: So maybe there is… There is one thing I could ask you about cause when you’re doing what, the six night week a thing at the Alibi,… TA: The Alibi. FP: …that was with Matty Dice? TA: We did that with Matty Dice and that was for quite a long period. I mean we did that at – it could have been over a year. FP: Oh, Matty Dice was a really good player…

- 105 TA: Yeah. FP: …and a large repertoire. I notice he had tons of tunes. TA: Yeah, a large repertoire and chops and… FP: Yeah, he was a really good player. TA: Yeah. FP: So I mean back in those days, a commercial band was playing more of a swing style than nowadays, right? I mean you were playing… TA: A lot of ballads… I mean, yeah, we didn’t do a lot of Clifford Brown or jazz things as such. We did some. FP: Oh, you did? TA: Yeah. But for the most part, Matty just kind of stuck to the standards. So a lot of it was just… FP: And he sang too, right? TA: And he sang. FP: Yeah. TA: Yeah. And of course his son is using all – well, the pop music that time. (Inaudible) Sonny. FP: Right. TA: Remember? FP: Yeah. Yeah. TA: Of course she sang that… FP: Of course.

- 106 TA: …and things like that. So was the pop music of that period, but leading for more choice ballads and the Rogers and Hart thing, that kind of thing. FP: So that must have been part of like Harry developed a huge repertoire too. TA: A tremendous repertoire. He was very much an accompanist. He accompanied more singers; Yvonne Green, and then later Rosemary Conte, and you name it. I mean he was a great accompanist. Singers loved to have him as an accompanist. FP: Yeah, I bet. TA: Yeah, so he did a lot of that. I think he got a little tired of it after awhile cause he had to do a lot of it. FP: Yeah. TA: These singers – I can’t really remember. I’ve forgotten, but many, many singers. Then he didn’t really get into doing the originals of jazz tones and his own music, his own compositions, until Roy and Glen I think. FP: Was he playing it… I mean I know that Ronnie Naspo mentioned… TA: Ronnie Naspo. FP: …hearing him, but some sessions and things. TA: Well, there’s another group that he played with quite a bit was with Dave Braham, the organist, with Ronnie Glick. FP: That was back at that time? TA: Well, that would have been… No, that would be have been, gee. (Inaudible). The main one he played was Ronnie Glick and there was Dave Braham, and there was a place right on Watchung Avenue they use to play at.

- 107 DA: Oh, yeah. That was called – oh, God I call remember. It’s got a Chinese Restaurant. On the bridge there. TA: Right by the bridge there’s a place. It was a jazz club. FP: Oh. DA: That was great. TA: Yeah. FP: Yeah. DA: That was later though. TA: You gotta talk to Ronnie. FP: Yeah. TA: Cause he’ll give you that period. FP: Ronnie Glick. TA: Ronnie Glick, okay. FP: Yeah. DA: I think that was in the 80s though… TA: Yeah, that might have been in the… FP: Oh, okay. TA: That would be… DA: That was later. TA: Sometimes Jimmy Ponder – sometimes Ponder… FP: Right. TA: …and Harry played, the two of them,… FP: Yeah.

- 108 TA: …right there in that place on… FP: Oh. Oh, in that place. TA: And other places too. FP: I know they played at Wallace’s. TA: Yeah. DA: Oh, yeah. TA: They were great together, Jimmy Ponder and Harry. Yeah, they loved the musical admiration. Then of course another whole period is when Harry played down the shore at that jazz brunch. FP: For Tal Farlow. TA: Then Les Paul would play there sometimes too with Gary Mazaroppi. Then Harry did a period of time where he played a lot with Gary… FP: Right, that was later. TA: Yeah, that was all later. FP: Almost at the end. TA: Yeah, right. Yeah. DA: (Inaudible) I think was towards the end, right? I think he was already sick, right, (inaudible). TA: Yeah. Yeah, that may have been around that time. I’m sure I’ll think of a bunch of the things. FP: Anything that you think of you can always… TA: I can call you on the… FP: Yeah.

- 109 TA: And I will send the pictures. FP: Oh, that’ll be fantastic. TA: That was quite impressionable. I think for 19 year old guys, we sounded pretty good. FP: Yeah. TA: And you can definitely hear Harry with Barney Kessel influence there. FP: That’s funny because later on you don’t really hear that influence. TA: No, well… Harry, when he evolved and changed his style, he’d go totally… FP: In a different direction. TA: …different direction. FP: Yeah. TA: And then almost you could say this is the Barney Kessel period, this is the Johnny Smith period. FP: Right. TA: This is Wes Montgomery time. So you very much get into the Wes Montgomery – (inaudible). FP: Yeah. Oh, yeah, I heard him do that tune. I never dug that too much, the thumb bass, cause with the pick he got a beautiful sound. TA: Oh, I yeah. FP: I mean he just got an amazing sound. TA: It’s an amazing sound… So he didn’t do a lot of thumb. Even with the octaves, he played with the pick mostly. FP: Right.

- 110 TA: Yeah. FP: He could do things with the pick. TA: See he was always interested in the classical guitar. FP: Right. TA: He could play any – like his son, Jimmy, he could play any style. So we played some things together. In fact, we had a gig once with Rosemary Conte, Harry, and me, just two guitarists and then I’d play the Fender bass and we’d switch off that way. But Harry…I’d do something arpeggio like Harry did with the pick. He also would do like the Villa Lobos and things like that where he would play these tunes with a pick, and I would be struggling to do with all my fingers and he’d come up and do it with a pick. Of course he did play with his fingers too. FP: He did that sometimes? TA: Sometimes like a lot of electric guitar players – he’d play with the pick and these three fingers. He would do that quite often. It’s all up here, right? FP: Yeah, definitely. He was a big fan of Django’s too. TA: We’d always sit for hours and listen to Django. We loved Django. FP: But he never tried to sound like him? TA: He never tried to sound like Frank Vignola. He’ll play more with the Django style. FP: Yeah. Yeah. TA: But Harry never… He did his own thing, but he played like Nuages and he played Django’s Castle and things like that. Then I wish he had written more.

- 111 The songs that he wrote – Silver Threads and Rain Danse, and his own compositions. FP: Yeah, he didn’t write too many of them? TA: Oh, maybe comparatively. He wrote quite a few and others that he never really organized. So he did that mostly with Roy and Glen. FP: Yeah. TA: And then later he had been recording with, as you know, with Steve Gilmore where he did his own music. FP: Yeah. When he was playing with Roy and Glen I mean at that point, and when he was playing with Phil as well, he really had developed his own unique style, and he didn’t… TA: He became Harry Leahey. FP: Yeah. He didn’t sound like him. TA: So earlier on, he always had his own way of course like everybody has their own personal style. You can tell that’s Harry Leahey playing, even though he sounded like Barney Kessel, and you can tell it’s Harry Leahey. FP: It would be really interesting to hear that Barney Kessel sound. TA: It’s very much on that Dixieland recording, yeah. And when we played places like these local pubs, he was playing a lot like Barney Kessel then. Then later on you never know. He just totally switched off and didn’t have any part of Kessel; any, anything like him anymore after that. And Barney Kessel probably played with the slide, the pick, and he probably played more that way, and he went to these little triplets where he’d slide the pick and that kind of thing.

- 112 Howard Roberts. Harry loved all those guys. He had recordings by Howard Roberts and he did some others. He loved Tal Farlow. There was a period where he listened to a lot of the tunes by Tal Farlow and they became good friends. FP: Right. TA: Yeah. What are some others? Joe Pass – he loved Joe Pass. He and I use to go see Joe Pass for a while, up in West Paterson. FP: He was a great player too. TA: Yeah. FP: But I don’t think he had anything on Harry personally. TA: Well, the quote from Phi was, I don’t know if it’s written or not, but he said “that Harry is the greatest unknown guitarist.” He put it another way that Harry’s the best guitar player that nobody knows or should know. In other words, he should have been known more. FP: Well, he didn’t care to be famous, right? TA: No. No. FP: He never cared about that. TA: He wasn’t crazy about road work. He’d rather be at home, and for a guy who was such a (inaudible) also, he gave it all to the students as you know. FP: Yeah. TA: He spent hours. I mean there were some students, his last student who would never go home. They would be there to midnight. He was very giving as a teacher, very, very. So he had kind of his close knit followers. You know some of them – Larry Barbie.

- 113 FP: Oh, right. Yeah. TA: Barbie became almost family, and there’s one that Debbie’s husband was originally Harry’s student. He wasn’t too happy about that. Debbie will tell you that. FP: Things will happen. TA: Yeah, right. That’s tough. But other guitarists that there were – who are some of the others guys? Of course Walt and his parents use to love to go to their house and my sister was like the – took care of all the neighborhood kids, right? John Maimone’s son. What’s his name? DA: Mark Maimone. TA: Mark Maimone practically lives there. She practically brought him up. FP: Wow. TA: And you know John was recording – he did a lot of recording. FP: Oh, was he the guy from the Jersey Jazz? TA: Yeah, he did a lot of Jersey Jazz. Then his wife was a great organist. I’ll tell you a little funny story of my relationship with John Maimone. He always wanted to record me, so he said – and I never wanted us to record – I’m not gonna sound like Harry. He said I’d like to record you and I said well, why? He said well, you’re very well-known as a classical guitarist and you have a very good reputation. I said, then why should I spoil it? FP: That’s great. Did he record you though? TA: No, he never did. FP: You didn’t give in.

- 114 TA: He said well, I guess what could I say after that? FP: Did you and Harry ever record like your duo things or… TA: Never duo things. We have family as I mentioned that we do with Bill Kramod on the saxophone. We use to go to a club – a place called Mazur’s and Richie would sing. It was very funny stuff. I mean Richie had Robert’s tape recorder that he never knew how it worked and it was a disaster always, and we use to go to this place Mazur’s. Remember Mazur’s out in High Bridge, and we’d go on St. Patrick’s Day. So we have home recordings of all of us playing. Mazur is St. Patrick’s Day disaster #1, disaster #2, that’s how we titled it. At one time I’m playing the bass in the bathroom. They said, where’s Tom? I had to go to the bathroom and I took the bass in the bathroom with me. He said Tom’s in the bathroom with his bass. FP: Well, you gotta do what you gotta do. TA: And so Harry would tear out the guitar. Sometimes those are some of the most – no reserve. He just would tear out the guitar and some of those were quite interesting. But the tape recorder Harry that Rich was (inaudible). Then he would cut it out for a while. He just didn’t know how to work it. So everything is in kind of bits and that kind of thing. FP: That’s too bad. TA: Too bad, yeah. Then he did “in the olden days a glimpse of stocking” … FP: Anything Goes.

- 115 TA: Richie’s singing that one; “in the olden days a glimpse”… Then the backup part goes (speaker is making weird noises). Then he goes (speaker is making weird noises). “The world has gone wild today.” He takes off on that. FP: Yeah, I heard a couple of stories about Richie being pretty wild too. TA: Yeah, he was a wild guy. FP: Walking with a big cymbal – walking around the bar. TA: Yeah. And Dudley’s, we use to walk around the bar with the Dixieland band, that was part of it, and sometimes we’d walk through the place and go into the ladies room and stuff like that with the Dixieland band. Yeah, Richie was a wild man. He really was. FP: And he died, right? TA: He died tragically. He went to California and fell off – he had too many martinis and fell off two steps or something like that. He was in a coma for about a week and died. Yeah, Richie… They always dreamed of having a studio piano. He always had these wonderful fantasies, dreams that never realized. He was always broke. He was always… Creditors were always after him. I had to get him out of there. When he went to California, we literally had to sneak out of his garden apartment because he was so far in debt, and yet we had to get going at night to get past the superintendent and that kind of thing. That’s how Richie was. FP: Do you remember when Harry started going to Dennis Sandole?

- 116 TA: Yeah, he’d go over to Philly to study with Sandole. Geez, when the heck would that be? He also studied – another name that comes to my mind – he studied with a pianist in New York. FP: Not Tristano? TA: I think so. FP: Lennie. TA: It was Tristano. FP: He studied with Lennie Tristano? TA: He said he was Lennie Tristano. FP: I never knew that. TA: Yeah. Yeah. FP: That’s interesting. TA: He was Lennie Tristano. Cause Lennie was like – at that time was considered kind of an avant guard almost. Yeah. FP: When would that be? Would that be… TA: Geez, I remember him going to New York and studying with Lennie Tristano and going to Philly with Sandole. There again, maybe Debbie may not remember that. It wasn’t long. I’d said it was a matter of a few months he studied with Lennie Tristano, and Rom – I can remember that. TA: Harry never played much with Anne Finch. I did. I played more with Anne Finch. Do you know Anne Finch? FP: No.

- 117 TA: She went with Bill Evans at one time. And I got to see Bill Evans a lot through Anne Finch because we’d go to Vanguard or whatever and… So I just saw her name here, that’s what made me think of her, but he really didn’t play that much with her. FP: Did you guys play at the Red Bull Inn? TA: Yeah, we played there. The place, Charlie Brown’s, now I’m trying to remember… That was a…Harry played a lot there. He played with Danny… I think Johnny Spizo too. He played with Danny Spizo, the son. There’s another organist. Of course, Johnny was a guitar at first. It didn’t (inaudible) with them. He was the father, but Danny played the organ. But there was another guy who played the organ that Harry played a lot with. He wasn’t too happy. What the hell is his name? FP: Harry wasn’t too happy? TA: He wasn’t happy playing with this organist, but it got hid. He played quite awhile with them. There was another guitar player at that time. The name escapes me. I’ll have to call you when I remember some of these people FP: Okay. DA: I wanna say Putter or something, Putter. What was that called? FP: The Golden Putter. DA: Exactly. TA: But had a name even before that. FP: Was that on 22? Was Golden Putter on 22? TA: Yeah. Well, the Golden Putter I think was… It used to be Kirwans.

- 118 DA: Oh, is that right? See I didn’t know that. TA: Yeah, (inaudible) Kirwans. But the other place – Charlie Brown’s was still something else… That’s where… Bracco. Bracco. FP: Bracco? TA: I’m trying to think of his first name – Bracco. Yeah, the guy’s name was Bracco. I’ll think of his first name. Anyway, Bracco was an organist and he played… He goes back in the whole history. He played when they had all the bowling alleys and all that kind of stuff. He played all that stuff. He was a fixture around here in this area; A, B, C, I wanna do that. Who else would remember his name? Maybe Debbie would remember Bracco. His name was Leroy then. That was a real commercial thing. I mean that was… Harry wasn’t happy with that job, but he got a lot of work on days when he needed to work. FP: So it’s amazing that he kept his jazz jobs through all that commercial stuff. TA: He played a lot of commercial stuff, a lot of commercial stuff, and that Bracco would be the… FP: And probably with players that really weren’t up to snuff. TA: No way, yeah. DA: Joe Bracco? TA: No, I think it’s Mike Bracco, yeah. I think it’s Mike. FP: These people – people like this are only of interest because Harry played with them. TA: Oh, yeah. Yeah, and people would go, despite a Mike Bracco. FP: Oh, they would go see Harry.

- 119 TA: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He played with him for a quite awhile actually. I forgot about that. Eddie Elchin. You know Eddie was nowhere near his caliber, and few people were. FP: Yeah, right. Well, I mean the typical like local guys. TA: Yeah, these are local guys and then Harry… I can tell you at another time, but I played with, I guess it was a sax player or it was a guitarist, not a leading guitarist, whatever he played, he was a nervous wreck. We were playing in Princeton and Jack Winter – remember Jack Winter - … FP: Yeah. TA: …he was a maniac when it came to time. FP: Right. TA: If you weren’t playing on time, he’d start screaming. So this kid, I can’t remember exactly who it was; this kid was nervous and so Jack started screaming and Harry gave him hell, gave Jack Winter hell. He said “look, lay off him.” He said “he’s scared as it is, and you’re making him nervous, you’re making it worse. He’s trying. He’s doing his best.” So I was so proud of Harry there. He said he’s doing his best and knock it off. It took a lot for Harry to say that to somebody. He would avoid it. He’d just walk away. Usually he’d never confront anybody.

TA: He played right up until the end. FP: He played at Trumpets. TA: He did that one solo album.

- 120 FP: I have the review from Guitar Player. It says it’s a limited edition. Well, Harry never pursued a big time career. TA: No, he didn’t. He was a family man. He adored his kids.

- 121 -

Harry Leahey Discography

Date: ca. April 1973 Location: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ Label: CTI Don Sebesky (ldr), Hubert Laws (f), Phil Bodner, Jerry Dodgion, Walt Levinsky, George Marge, Romeo Penque (ww), Randy Brecker, Alan Rubin, Joe Shepley (t, fh), Freddie Hubbard (t), Jim Buffington, Earl Chapin (frh), Wayne Andre, Warren Covington (tb, eu), Garnett Brown (tb), Paul Faulise, Alan Raph (btb, eu), Tony Price (tu), Harry Leahey (g), Don Sebesky (ep, arr, con), Ron Carter (b), Billy Cobham (d), Dave Friedman, Phil Kraus, Airto Moreira (per), Al Brown, Harry Cykman, Max Ellen, Paul Gershman, Harry Glickman, Emanuel Green, Harold Kohon, Charles Libove, Harry Lookofsky, Joe Malin, David Nadien, Gene Orloff, Elliot Rosoff, Irving Spice (vn), Seymour Barab, Charles McCracken, George Ricci, Alan Shulman (vc), Homer Mensch (cb), Margaret Ross (hrp), Carl Caldwell, Lani

- 122 Groves, Tasha Thomas (v) a.01Firebird (Igor Stravinsky) b.01Birds Of Fire - 13:55 (John McLaughlin) Both titles on:-

CTI LP 12": 6031/6032 - Giant Box (1973)

a, b performed as medley. "Firebird/Birds Of Fire" is a blending of the Stravinsky and McLaughlin compositions.

Date: ca. November 1976 Location: The Showboat Lounge, Silver Spring, MD Label: RCA Phil Woods (ldr), Phil Woods (ss, as, arr), Harry Leahey (g, arr), Mike Melillo (p, arr), Steve Gilmore (b), Bill Goodwin (d), Alyrio Lima (per) a.a-01A Sleepin' Bee - 07:25 (Truman Capote, Harold Arlen) Novus CD: 3104-2-N - Live b.a-02Rain Dance - 07:59 (Harry Leahey)

- 123 Novus CD: 3104-2-N - Live c.a-03Bye Bye Baby - 07:43 (Jule Styne, Leo Robin) Novus CD: 3104-2-N - Live d.a-04Django's Castle [aka Manoir De Mes Reves] - 05:40 (Django Reinhardt) Novus CD: 3104-2-N - Live e.b-01Cheek To Cheek - 11:34 (Irving Berlin) Novus CD: 3104-2-N - Live f.b-02Lady J - 05:03 (Phil Woods) g.b-03Little Niles - 12:50 (Randy Weston) h.c-01A Little Peace - 06:54 (Mike Melillo) i.c-02Prelude (Preludio) - 05:50 (Phil Woods) j.c-03Love Song (Cancao De Amor) - 04:00 (Phil Woods) k.c-04Wedding Dance (Dance De Bodas) - 06:00 (Phil Woods) l.c-05Joy (Alegria) - 05:50 (Phil Woods) m.d-01I'm Late - 06:54 (Bob Hilliard, Sammy Fain) Novus CD: 3104-2-N - Live

- 124 n.d-02Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You) - 05:54 (Stevie Wonder) Novus CD: 3104-2-N - Live o.d-03High Clouds - 05:48 (Ettore Stratta) Novus CD: 3104-2-N - Live p.d-04How's Your Mama - 05:11 (Phil Woods) Novus CD: 3104-2-N - Live All titles on:-

RCA LP 12": BGL2-2202 - "Live" From The Showboat

(1977)

i, j, k, l performed as medley. Harry Leahey (arr) on b, d only. Mike Melillo (arr) on c, e, h only. Omit Phil Woods (arr) on b, c, d, e, h. c-02 through c-05 are listed as the suite "Brazilian Affair (Intriga Amorosa)"

Date: April 27, 1977 Location: Cambridge, MA

- 125 Label: Philology Phil Woods (ldr), Lee Konitz, Phil Woods (as), Harry Leahey (g), Steve Gilmore (b), Bill Goodwin (d) a.Donna Lee (Miles Davis) Philology CD: W74-2 - A Jazz Life

Date: August 15, 1977 Location: Pori, Finland Label: Mosaic Phil Woods (ldr), Phil Woods (as), Harry Leahey (g), Mike Melillo (p), Steve Gilmore (b), Bill Goodwin (d) a.Song For Sisyphus - 16:42 (Phil Woods) b.Cheek To Cheek - 13:44 (Irving Berlin) c.High Clouds - 07:04 (Ettore Stratta) All titles on:Anniversary Set

Mosaic CD: MD5-159 - Phil Woods Quartet/Quintet 20th

- 126 -

Date: November 9, 1977 Location: RCA Studios, New York City Label: Gryphon Phil Woods (ldr), Phil Woods (as, arr), Harry Leahey (g, arr), Mike Melillo (p, arr), Steve Gilmore (b), Bill Goodwin (d) a.a-01Song For Sisyphus - 05:26 (Phil Woods) b.a-02Last Night When We Were Young - 03:56 (Harold Arlen, E. Y. Harburg)

c.a-03Nuages - 03:16 (Django Reinhardt) d.a-04Change Partners - 04:47 (Irving Berlin) e.b-01Monking Business - 05:30 (Mike Melillo) f.b-02Summer Afternoon - 04:40 (Mike Melillo) g.b-03When My Dreams Come True - 03:03 (Irving Berlin) h.b-04Shaw 'Nuff - 03:33 (Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie) All titles on:-

Gryphon LP 12": G-782 - Song For Sisyphus (1978)

- 127 -

Hindsight CD: 620 - Summer Afternoon Jazz (1999)

Omit Phil Woods (as) on c, g. Omit Harry Leahey (g) on g. Omit Mike Melillo (p) on c. Omit Steve Gilmore (b) on c, g. Omit Bill Goodwin (d) on c, g. Harry Leahey (arr) on c only. Mike Melillo (arr) on e, f, g only. Omit Phil Woods (arr) on c, e, f, g.

Date: ca. 1978 Location: C.I. Recording Studio, New York City Label: Classic Jazz Ron Odrich (ldr), Ron Odrich (cl, bcl), Harry Leahey (g), George Duvivier (b), Grady Tate (d), Leopoldo Fleming (per) a.Afro-Disco - 03:58 (Jim Odrich) b.Espresso - 04:22 (Gerry Mulligan) c.Summer Day - 03:37 (Jim Odrich) d.Line For Lyons - 04:15 (Gerry Mulligan) All titles on:-

Classic Jazz LP 12": 35 - Blackstick (1978)

- 128 -

No date given.

Date: March 1978

Label: Gryphon Michel Legrand (ldr), Phil Woods (as), Gerry Mulligan (bar), Burt Collins, Jon Faddis, John Gatchell, Joe Shepley (t), John Clark, Albert Richmond, Brooks Tillotson (tb), Tony Price (tu), Don Elliott (vib), Harry Leahey (g), Michel Legrand (p, arr, con), Bernie Leighton, Tom Pierson (key), Ron Carter (b), Jimmy Madison, Grady Tate (d), Erroll 'Crusher' Bennett, Portinho (per), Gloria Agostini (hrp) a.01Southern Routes (Les Routes de la Sud): North (Michel Legrand) b.01Southern Routes (Les Routes de la Sud): West (Michel Legrand) c.01Southern Routes (Les Routes de la Sud): East (Michel Legrand) d.01Southern Routes (Les Routes de la Sud): South - 23:19 (Michel Legrand)

- 129 e.02La Pasionaria - 03:34 (Michel Legrand) f.03Malagan Stew - 05:15 (Michel Legrand) g.04Iberia Nova - 05:05 (Michel Legrand) h.05Basquette - 08:50 (Michel Legrand) All titles on:-

Gryphon LP 12": G-905 - Le Jazz Grand (1978)

DCC CD: 609 - Le Jazz Grand

a, b, c, d performed as medley.

Date: December 11, 13, 14, 1979 Location: New York City Label: Philips Harumi Kaneko (ldr), George Young (ts), Dave Samuels (vib), Harry Leahey (g), Hank Jones (p), Ron Carter, Steve Gilmore (b), Bill Goodwin, Grady Tate (d), Armen Halburian (per), Bob Dorough, Harumi Kaneko (v) a.01Brown Skin Gal (Duke Ellington, Paul Francis Webster) b.02Comin' Home Baby (Ben Tucker, Bob Dorough) c.03Too Shy To Say (Stevie Wonder)

- 130 d.04I've Got Just About Everything (Bob Dorough) e.05But For Now (Bob Dorough) f.06You Took Advantage Of Me (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart) g.07These Foolish Things (Jack Strachey, Harry Link, Holt Marvell) h.08A Good Man Is Hard To Find (Eddie Green) i.09How About You? (Burton Lane, Ralph Freed) All titles on:-

Philips LP 12": FS 7032 - I Love New York

Philips CD: 32JD-127 - I Love New York

Ron Carter (b) on a, b only. Omit Steve Gilmore (b) on a, b. Omit Bill Goodwin (d) on a, b. Grady Tate (d) on a, b only. Bob Dorough (v) on b, i only. No specifics available.

Date: May 5, 1980 Location: Venture Sound Studio, Somerville, NJ Label: OmniSound

- 131 Harry Leahey (ldr), Harry Leahey (g), Roy Cumming (b), Glenn Davis (d) a.a-01Split Rock - 03:13 (Roy Cumming) b.a-03Send In The Clowns - 05:49 (Stephen Sondheim) c.b-02All Or Nothing At All - 06:35 (Arthur Altman, Jack Lawrence) All titles on:-

OmniSound LP 12": N-1031 - Still Waters (1980)

Roy Cumming (b) on a only. Glenn Davis (d) on a only.

Date: May 8, 1980 Location: Venture Sound Studio, Somerville, NJ Label: OmniSound Harry Leahey (ldr), Harry Leahey (g), Roy Cumming (b), Glenn Davis (d) a.a-02Rain Dance - 06:38 (Harry Leahey) b.a-04Delilah - 08:01 (Victor Young) c.b-01Still Waters - 07:45 (Harry Leahey) d.b-03His Majesty - 10:05 (Harry Leahey) All titles on:-

OmniSound LP 12": N-1031 - Still Waters (1980)

- 132 -

Date: December 15, 1980 Location: Deer Head Inn, Delaware Water Gap, PA Label: OmniSound John Coates, Jr. (ldr), Phil Woods (cl, as), Harry Leahey (g), John Coates, Jr. (p), Steve Gilmore (b) a.a-02Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West - 06:52 (John Lewis) OmniSound LP 12": N 1038 - Pocono Friends (1981) b.a-03Singing With You - 08:02 (John Coates, Jr.) OmniSound LP 12": N 1038 - Pocono Friends (1981) c.b-03More Than You Know - 07:55 (Billy Rose, Edward Eliscu, Vincent Youmans) OmniSound LP 12": N 1038 - Pocono Friends (1981) d.c-03Some Changes - 04:43 (John Coates, Jr.) OmniSound LP 12": N 1038 - Pocono Friends (1981) e.c-04How Can We Be Wrong - 08:27 (Arthur Schwartz) OmniSound LP 12": N 1038 - Pocono Friends (1981)

- 133 f.d-03How Can We Be Wrong - 09:36 (Arthur Schwartz) OmniSound LP 12": N 1038 - Pocono Friends (1981) g.e-02Why Shouldn't I? - 06:21 (Cole Porter) OmniSound LP 12": N 1045 - Pocono Friends Encore (1982)

Phil Woods (cl) on d only. Omit Phil Woods (as) on a, c, e. Harry Leahey (g) on a, e only. Omit Steve Gilmore (b) on a, d, g.

Date: December 18, 1980 Location: Deer Head Inn, Delaware Water Gap, PA Label: OmniSound John Coates, Jr. (ldr), Harry Leahey (g), John Coates, Jr. (p), Steve Gilmore (b) a.e-04Brazilian Stew (No. 13) - 07:50 (John Coates, Jr.) b.f-02Like Someone In Love - 05:17 (Jimmy Van Heusen, Johnny Burke)

- 134 c.f-03Hymn To Her - 06:08 (John Coates, Jr.) All titles on:-

OmniSound LP 12": N 1045 - Pocono Friends Encore

(1982) Omit Harry Leahey (g) on c. Omit Steve Gilmore (b) on b.

Date: May 25, 1981 Location: Venture Sound Studio, Somerville, NJ Label: OmniSound Steve Gilmore, Harry Leahey (ldr), Harry Leahey (g), Steve Gilmore (b) a.Daahoud - 05:13 (Clifford Brown) b.Epistrophy - 05:51 (Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke) c.Twisted Blues - 04:23 (Wes Montgomery) d.Silver Threads - 05:01 (Harry Leahey) e.I Concentrate On You - 06:54 (Cole Porter) f.Strings And Things - 03:55 (Harry Leahey) All titles on:-

OmniSound LP 12": N-1042 - Silver Threads

- 135 Date: June 1, 1981 Location: Venture Sound Studio, Somerville, NJ Label: OmniSound Steve Gilmore, Harry Leahey (ldr), Harry Leahey (g), Steve Gilmore (b) a.Never Let Me Go - 07:42 (Jay Livingston, Ray Evans) b.A Little Peace - 06:34 (Mike Melillo) Both titles on:-

OmniSound LP 12": N-1042 - Silver Threads

Date: ca. December 20, 1984 Location: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ Label: Muse Mark Murphy (ldr), Gerry Niewood (f, ts), Ted Curson (t, fh), Harry Leahey (g), David Braham (org), Jimmy Lewis (b), Ed Caccavale (d), Grady Tate (d, v), Lawrence Killian (per), Mark Murphy (v) a.a-01Living Room - 05:30 (Abbey Lincoln, Max Roach) b.a-02Our Love Rolls On - 04:07 (Dave Frishberg)

- 136 c.a-03L. A. (Med Flory) d.a-03L. A. Breakdown (Larry B. Marks) e.a-03The Way It Was In L. A. - 05:55 (Ray Linn) f.a-04There'll Be Some Changes Made - 03:35 (Benton Overstreet, William Blackstone, Bill Higgins) g.b-01Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens - 05:22 (Alex Kramer, Joan Whitney) h.b-02Misty (Erroll Garner, Johnny Burke) i.b-02Midnight Sun - 05:56 (Johnny Mercer, Johnny Burke, Lionel Hampton) j.b-03Charleston Alley - 02:39 (Jon Hendricks, Leroy Kirkland, Horace Henderson) k.b-04Full Moon - 02:42 (Mark Murphy) l.b-05Maxine - 02:35 (Donald Fagan) All titles on:-

Muse LP 12": MR 5345 - Living Room (1986)

c, d, e performed as medley.

- 137 h, i performed as medley. Jimmy Lewis (b) on h, i only. Ed Caccavale (d) on a, f, j, k only. Omit Grady Tate (d) on a, f, j, k. Grady Tate (v) on h, i only. c. d. e. form a suite titled L. A. Song Cycle.

Date: April 17, 1986 Location: Cecilia S. Cohen Recital Hall, Fine and Performing Arts Center, East Stroudsburg University, PA Label: IAJRC Al Cohn (ldr), Al Cohn (ts), Harry Leahey (g), Steve Gilmore (b), Bill Goodwin (d) a.01The Hymn (Wichita Blues) - 08:11 (Jay McShann) b.02Sweet And Lovely - 09:43 (Gus Arnheim, Harry Tobias, Jules Lemare) c.03One Note Samba [aka Samba De Uma Nota So] - 08:07 (Antonio Carlos Jobim, Newton Mendonça) d.04What's New - 09:34 (Bob Haggart, Johnny Burke)

- 138 e.05My Shining Hour - 08:14 (Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen) f.06Broadway - 10:03 (Bill Bird, Henri Woode, Teddy McRae) g.07When Your Lover Has Gone - 10:44 (Einar A. Swan) h.08Easy Living - 08:50 (Leo Robin, Ralph Rainger) All titles on:-

IAJRC CD: 1016 - In Concert At East Stroudsburg

University (2001)

Date: ca. March 1989 Location: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ Label: C. Macey Productions Harry Leahey (ldr), Harry Leahey (g) a.01Alice In Wonderland - 04:46 (Bob Hilliard, Sammy Fain) b.02Some Other Time - 06:13 (Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, Adolph Green) c.03Never Let Me Go - 06:32 (Jay Livingston, Ray Evans) d.04Embraceable You - 03:22 (George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin) e.05Star Dust - 02:44 (Hoagy Carmichael, Mitchell Parish)

- 139 f.06You Stepped Out Of A Dream - 03:53 (Gus Kahn, Nacio Herb Brown) g.07Come Rain Or Come Shine - 06:19 (Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen) h.08Silver Threads - 04:40 (Harry Leahey) i.09Spring Is Here - 05:12 (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart) j.10There's No You - 05:52 (Hal Hopper, Tom Adair, George Durgom) k.11Django's Castle [aka Manoir De Mes Reves] - 04:32 (Django Reinhardt) All titles on:-

C. Macey Productions CD: - Unaccompanied Guitar

Date: ca. 1990 Location: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ Label: Cexton James L. Dean (ldr), James L. Dean (f, cl, ts, arr), Nelson Hill (f, ss), Claudio Roditi (t, fh), Hart Smith (tb), Harry Leahey (g), Noreen Sauls (p), Charles Sastre, Earl Sauls (b), Glenn Davis, Rich De Rosa (d), Glenn Weber (per), Marlene Ver Planck (v) a.01Ceora - 09:13 (Lee Morgan) b.02Another Day Without Your Love - 04:38 (Pat Mahoney, Ross N.

- 140 Schneider) c.03Samba De Ludlow - 04:14 (Ross N. Schneider, Pat Mahoney) d.04Don't Go - 04:08 (Sammy Lee Joffe, Ross N. Schneider) e.05Antibes - 04:05 (Don Rader) f.06Joao - 07:07 (Clare Fischer) g.07Pensativa - 08:45 (Clare Fischer) h.08Now We Know - 04:53 (Willard Robison) i.09Melancholico - 06:14 (Gary McFarland) j.10Where Is April - 04:27 (Loonis McGlohon, Billy Ver Planck) k.11Superslick - 07:53 (Mike Barone) All titles on:-

Cexton CD: CR-8158 - Ceora (1992)

In addition there exist many informally recorded, unreleased recordings.

- 141 -

Harry Leahey Bibliography

Kernfield, Barry, ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. New York: Grove. 2001. Ronald Michael Radano. New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton's Cultural Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1994. Robert Yelin. “Two unique nightclub experiments that worked. Guitar Player Magazine.” April 1973. John S. Wilson. “Jazz: Phil Woods 5.” New York Times May 26, 1977. John S. Wilson. “Newport Jazz: Vibrant Virtuosos.” New York Times Jun 30, 1977. Russell Shaw. “Record Reviews.” Down Beat Magazine p. 28. October 20, 1977. Kenneth Best. “Guitar teacher Harry Leahey looks at his performing as just a hobby.” The Courier-News May 19, 1978. George Kanzler. “A family man by day and top artist by night.” The Newark StarLedger March 8, 1981. Joseph F Sullivan. “Twenties Classics Recreated in Jersey In a Festive Part of Jazz Festival.” The New York Times June 30, 1981. Richard Skelly. “He keeps on pluckin’.” The Home News. December 2, 1988.

- 142 George Kanzler. “Guitarist takes listeners 'to the next level'.” The Newark StarLedger March 11, 1990. George Kanzler. “Jazz guitarist Leahey dies of cancer at 54.” The Newark StarLedger August 14, 1990. “Harry Leahey, Jazz Guitarist, 54.” New York Times August 16, 1990, B14. “Final Bar. Harry Leahey.” Down Beat, 58/1 January 1991, 12. All Music, Summer 1991. Entire issue devoted to Harry Leahey. “Harry Leahey, Jazz Guitarist, 1935-1990.” Guitar Player December 1990, 20.