[Dixielandjazz] Ellis Larkins - Obit

[Stephen Barbone]

Perhaps not too well known by List Mates, but Ellis Larkins was a
wonderful OKOM pianist who ably backed folks like Edmond Hall, Mildred
Bailey, Ruby Braff, Joe Williams, Ella Fitzgerald, Chris Conner and
others.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

October 3, 2002 - New York Times

Ellis Larkins, Jazz Pianist of Sensitive and Elegant Style, Dies at 79

By PETER KEEPNEWS

      Ellis Larkins, a jazz pianist known for his understated elegance
as an improviser and his sensitivity as an accompanist, died on Sunday
at Maryland General Hospital in Baltimore. He was 79 and lived in
Baltimore.
The cause was pneumonia, his wife, Crystal, said.

Mr. Larkins established his reputation as an accompanist with two
celebrated duo albums he recorded with Ella Fitzgerald for Decca
Records, "Ella Sings Gershwin," in 1950, and "Songs in a Mellow Mood,"
in 1954. He went on to work with Joe Williams, Chris Connor, Eartha Kitt
and many other vocalists.

Beginning in the 1970's, he had long engagements at Gregory's, a small
club on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and at the Carnegie Tavern
behind Carnegie Hall, where his short but eloquent sets were treated
with silent respect by a devoted following.

Ellis Lane Larkins was born into a musical family in Baltimore on May
15, 1923. His mother was a pianist, and his father, who earned his
living as a janitor, played violin with the Baltimore City Colored
Orchestra. When Mr. Larkins was 6, his father began giving him piano
lessons, and within a few years he, too, was playing with the orchestra.

At 15 he began studies at the Peabody Conservatory, and two years later
he received a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music, where he
studied for three years. In an interview with Whitney Balliett of The
New Yorker, Mr. Ellis, a notoriously shy man, recalled the triumphant
conclusion of his Juilliard years. "I had to give a little dissertation
before I graduated," he said, "but I knew I couldn't get up there and
talk. I was standing on a corner of Madison Avenue, on my way to the
event, when what I'd do came to me: demonstrate the similarities between
the melodic lines of Bach and boogie-woogie. The teacher told me
afterward that he knew I'd made up the whole thing on the spot but that
I'd done it very well."

The decision to link Bach with boogie-woogie came to characterize Mr.
Larkins's jazz work. Although he sometimes said that he pursued a career
in jazz because there were no opportunities for black musicians in the
classical field, he never played like a man for whom jazz was a second
choice. He deftly bridged the concert hall and the nightclub, keeping
the tempos moderate and the volume low while combining rhythmic drive,
harmonic intricacy and an almost Baroque approach to melodic
embellishment.

Mr. Larkins started in jazz while still at Juilliard, working with the
guitarist Billy Moore at Cafe Society Uptown. Late in 1942 he led his
own trio at the same club. Over the next decade he worked frequently at
a number of New York rooms, most notably the Blue Angel and Cafe Society
Uptown and Downtown, as a leader or backing the clarinetist Edmond Hall
and singers like Helen Humes and Mildred Bailey.

He also recorded several solo albums in the 50's, occasionally backed by
a bassist. The titles of his albums — "Manhattan at Midnight," "Blue and
Sentimental," "The Soft Touch" — captured their low-key ambience.

>From the late 50's through the late 60's, Mr. Larkins concentrated on
studio work, teaching and occasional performances with singers. But when
New York City experienced a jazz renaissance in the early 1970's and
restaurants and bars all over town turned themselves into piano rooms,
his career blossomed. In addition to
the Gregory's and Carnegie Tavern jobs, he performed frequently at the
Cookery, a restaurant in Greenwich Village run by Barney Josephson, the
former owner of Cafe Society.

After about a decade, he moved to Los Angeles, where he continued to
perform and record, before returning to Baltimore in the early 1990's.
Among his last recordings were a solo recital in 1992 and two albums of
duets in 1994 with the cornetist Ruby Braff, with whom he had also
recorded in 1955 and 1972.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Larkins is survived by a sister, Clara
Larkins Bailey, also of Baltimore.