Miami, Jazz Guitar South Florida Style
JGT contributor Joe Barth takes a look at jazz guitar in South Florida – including a past interview with Pat Metheny.
South Florida…. There’s the beach, also an Everglades excursion, a cruise around Biscayne Bay, appreciating the treasures at Art Basel Beach, wonderful outdoor bistros, and again there’s the beach! Miami Beach has it all, including great jazz guitar.
History
Did you know that in the 1940s and 50s Miami’s Overtown neighborhood was known as the “Harlem of the South.” Legendary performers like Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and others performed at some of Overtown’s most famous nightclubs. Over the years, Overtown’s scene has fallen on hard times like so many other jazz hubs. In 1971, the jazz festival in Nice, France, exported a sister festival to Miami called the Miami Nice Jazz Festival, which has hosted performers such as Herbie Hancock, Oscar Peterson, Miles Davis, and Cannonball Adderley, to name a few. With the influx of so many Cuban musicians to the area, the city has become a hothouse of rich Latin rhythms like the mambo and salsa.
Jazz Guitarists
One of the greatest guitarists to grace the Miami area, though just for a year, was Pat Metheny. As a teenager in the Kansas City area, Pat Metheny had developed musical skills well beyond the average teen musician. While playing in a club in Kansas City, Metheny was approached by Bill Lee, chair of the University of Miami, who offered him a scholarship, which Metheny accepted. When I interviewed Pat, he described this experience as:
This one night, I was playing a gig, and this guy came and sat in who was very good. He was Dr. Bill Lee from the University of Miami School of Music. He asked me to come to the University of Miami with a full scholarship. I should add that at that time I was also in the process of flunking out of high school. I hadn’t taken a book home since the 6th grade (laughter), because I was practicing all the time. I wouldn’t get home from the gig until 2-3 in the morning, and there in Lee’s Summit with all the farm kids, school would start about 6:45am.
JB: Your parents were tolerating this?
PM: Barely! There were a lot of conflicts between my parents and me then. Looking back on it now, and as a father myself now, I have to give my parents a lot of credit. I was struggling in school, playing with these older guys, often in the bad part of town, playing this weird music – JAZZ, very foreign to the culture of Lee’s Summit. There was only one other kid in school, a bass player, who even knew who Miles Davis was. I mean, we were so far to the left that we weren’t even on the radar in Lee’s Summit’s cultural world. My parents were worried. But they would come to gigs and see that I was hanging with these older guys. I think the thing that did it for my dad was that I was making some money. I think he thought, “I’m not going to argue with that, at least the kid has got an income!”
JB: And then when the universities came calling…
PM: Exactly. There was this guy, Dan Haerle, a piano player whom I had worked with, and he was going to teach at the University of Miami, and that settled my decision to go there.
It turned out that going to the University of Miami was a really great decision. The year I went was the first year that they had made jazz guitar played on an electric guitar an acceptable major, so it was a new and fledgling program. Which for that time was groundbreaking. There was Berklee and one other place in the country to study jazz guitar at the college level, and that was basically it.
You have to keep in mind that at that point, I hadn’t been really anywhere in my life. I had never seen another kid my age play jazz guitar. I would think to myself, I’m pretty good for my age in Kansas City, but there must be lots of other kids somewhere who listen to Wes (Montgomery) and play jazz. So, when I got to the University of Miami, and it was audition day, I walked into this hall, and there were all these kids with L-5s and Johnny Smiths, and I thought “Here they are.” Then I thought, “If they have a guitar like an L-5, then they must be really good, and I’ll never make it here…”
“…Along with the music there were the regular academic classes at the university. Remember, I had just barely made it through high school. I was lost in the English and history classes and didn’t really have any desire to learn that stuff. I still wanted to learn just music. After a couple of weeks, I realized that I didn’t want to stay in school. So, I went to Dr. Lee to tell him that, though I appreciate this scholarship, I was going to leave school and devote myself to just practicing. Dr. Lee said that he had wanted to call me in to ask me something. He said that they had over 80 guitar students and one teacher…
JB: Who was that teacher?
PM: Stan Samole, a really good player. Dr. Lee said that some of the faculty had met the previous night and decided that they needed another guitar instructor and had decided to ask me to join the faculty to teach guitar. I said, “Join the faculty” (laughter)! He said that I was qualified to teach because I was quite a bit more advanced than the other students. Which in some ways was true. Those years on the bandstand in Kansas City had made me more advanced at least in real-life, practical ways, than most of the other students there. I thought, “Well, at least I won’t have to tell my parents that I’m leaving the University” (laughter). So, I continued to live in the dorm and everything, but instead of studying there, I taught there for a year.
Of course, Pat went on to have an extraordinary career as one of the foremost guitarists in music.
In meeting Jaco Pastorius, Pat told me… “The first night I was there I went to this place, and there was Jaco Pastorius playing electric bass in this big band. I about had a heart attack (laughter).
JB: Was he playing like the Jaco we know from his albums?
PM: At least, or maybe even more so, I had played some bass gigs around Kansas City, and I thought, “There must be kids (like Jaco) at this level of musicianship in every city in the country. Jaco was just three years older than me and his playing that night was “off the scale.”
JB: In making Bright Size Life, you chose Jaco as bassist because of your time with him in Miami?
PM: The trio with Jaco, Bob Moses and myself was an ongoing trio. We played together the whole time I was with Gary. When Gary wasn’t doing gigs, we’d play together.
JB: This is pre-Weather Report for Jaco?
PM: Pre-Weather Report, but he was this sort of underground figure among bassists. All the bassists around wanted to hear Jaco. It was a great little trio. Every place we played was packed. It was a lot of fun, and we played really well together. In fact, the record producer for ECM wanted me to use more of a name bassist. I said no; I got this guy named Jaco Pastorius. He wanted me to use Dave Holland, whom I love as a musician, and I even got together and played with Dave. But at that time, Jaco and I had this special rapport together, so I convinced the producer to use Jaco. Everybody was happy in the end that I did use Jaco.
After his year at the University of Miami, Pat moved to Boston to be closer to Gary Burton.
John Hart, though born in Virginia, grew up in Florida, eventually graduating from the University of Miami in 1983. He moved to New York soon after, making a name for himself in various groups. His big break came when he joined organist Jack McDuff. Signing first with Blue Note Records, he later recorded a number of excellent recordings on the Concord label. After years in the greater New York area, he returned to Chair the Jazz Guitar Department at the University of Miami.
Born in 1954 in West Palm Beach, Florida, Scott Henderson played in a number of rock and R&B bands, listening closely to the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, as well as blues guitarists. He majored in music at Florida Atlantic University, later moving to Los Angeles to study with Joe Diorio at the Guitar Institute of Technology, where he became an instructor. His musical prowlness was utilized by Chick Corea’s Elektric Band (1985) and Joe Zawinul’s Syndicate (1987-89). In 1984 he formed his band Tribal Tech and remains committed to exploring musical possibilities of fusion guitar.
Though specializing in Flamenco Guitar, May Barreto is also a capable jazz guitarist in the Miami area. Randy Bernsen was born in Massachusetts but grew up in Florida. He worked with Jaco Pastorius in the 1970s, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and later with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, and recorded with Joe Zawinul. Born in New York City, Greg Diamond earned his Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Miami and teaches at Florida International University and Florida Atlantic University. Greg has performed at many of the major jazz clubs of the world. In addition to jazz, Diamond remains active as a classical guitarist. Bob Folse was born in New Orleans, studied at Loyola College of Music and Berklee College of Music, and then settled in South Florida by way of New Orleans. Bob is capable of playing Flamenco, gypsy-jazz, as well as modern jazz guitar.
Born in Connecticut, living for a while in Chicago, Joe Diorio moved to Miami in 1972, where he worked with trumpeter Ira Sullivan. In Florida, he worked with an “up-and-coming” Jaco Pastorius, as well as Pat Metheny and Stan Getz. During this time, he took classes at the University of Miami. Since 1977, Diorio has based his work in Los Angeles, becoming one of the founders of the Guitar Institute of Technology. Diorio had to stop playing in 2005 because of a stroke. He died on February 2, 2022.
Because his father was in the military, Hiram Bullock was born in Japan but grew up in Baltimore. Picking up the guitar at age sixteen, he moved to Florida to study at the University of Miami, where he met Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Steve Morse, and Will Lee. As a UofM student, he played in singer Phyllis Hyman’s group, and when Hyman brought her music to New York, Bullock followed her. Bullock quickly found work in New York and later joined the house band for Late Night with David Letterman with bassist Will Lee. After struggling with drugs, he died in July 2008. Letterman band leader Paul Shaffer called Bullock “…the greatest guitar player ever, with the exception perhaps of Jimi Hendrix. Nobody was ever better.”
Though born in Ohio and growing up elsewhere, Steve Morse attended the University of Miami School of Music and was there during the era of Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius. Occasionally performing jazz fusion, Morse is known for his work with the Dixie Dregs, Kansas, and Deep Purple. Brian Russell remains active as a performer and teaches at the University of Miami.
Matthew Joy is based in West Palm Beach, Florida, teaching at a local school, serving as an adjunct at Florida Atlantic University, and performing in various places. Tom Lippincott studied at the University of Miami as a graduate teaching assistant. He keeps busy performing around South Florida. LaRue Nickelson lives up in Tampa Bay but teaches at the University of South Florida and keeps an active performance schedule. Easton Summas keeps an active performance schedule in the lower Florida area. Russ Spiegel was born in California, attended Berklee College, lived in Germany for a while, and eventually earned his doctorate in jazz composition from the University of Miami. In addition to performing, Russ teaches at Florida International University and Miami Dade College.
Performance Venues
Music is alive and well in South Florida. The Ball and Chain in Little Havana has great food and a lot of live music. As does Heidi’s Jazz Club on Orlando Avenue in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Lagniappe’s on 2ndAvenue has music and excellent food every night. The Funky Biscuit in Boca Raton has good food and music most nights of the week, including the occasional major artist. Sadly, Tobacco Road, Miami’s oldest music establishment going back to 1915, recently closed its doors.
University Jazz Programs
John Hart chairs the jazz guitar department of the University of Miami. Brian Russell chairs the contemporary guitar department there. Tom Lippincott teaches jazz guitar at Florida International University, as does Russ Spiegel, who teaches commercial guitar. Russ also teaches at Miami Dade College. Larue Nickelson heads the jazz guitar program at the University of South Florida. Jonathan Godfrey teaches classical guitar there. Matthew Joy is based in West Palm Beach, Florida, teaching at a local school, also serving as an adjunct faculty member for guitar at Florida Atlantic University. Greg Diamond earned his Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Miami and teaches at Florida International University and Florida Atlantic University.
