Dodo Marmarosa

Did You Know?

• He was the pianist for Charlie Parker's first Dial Records sessions in March 1946, recording "Ornithology" and "Yardbird Suite", both later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
• He once got so frustrated with an old upright piano that he chopped it up with an axe.

Early life

Michael "Dodo" Marmarosa came into the world on December 12, 1925, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Italian working-class parents Joseph and Carmella. The middle child between sisters Audrey and Doris, he grew up in the East Liberty neighborhood and attended Peabody High School. As a child, he earned the unflattering nickname "Dodo" due to his large head, short body, and nose that resembled a bird's. Though he wanted to play trumpet, his parents convinced him to take up piano at age nine. He took classical lessons, but fellow pianist Erroll Garner, four years older, introduced him to the jazz of Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson, which became his real influence. Marmarosa practiced relentlessly until both hands were equally strong.

Later life and career

Marmarosa began his professional career around 1941, joining the Johnnie "Scat" Davis orchestra at the age of 15 or 16. He was first mentioned in the national jazz press the following year, appearing in Down Beat magazine for his playing at a jam session. After the Davis orchestra disbanded, Marmarosa and others then joined Gene Krupa around the end of 1942. After one 1943 Krupa performance in Philadelphia, Marmarosa was beaten into a coma by sailors who accused him of draft dodging.

According to clarinetist Buddy DeFranco, who was also attacked by the men, "Dodo was always a little off but he seemed different after that beating. The head injury didn't affect his playing, but I think it created psychological problems for him." After Krupa's orchestra broke up in the middle of 1943, Marmarosa played in Ted Fio Rito's band for at least a month that summer. He then moved to Charlie Barnet's big band, where he stayed from October 1943 to March 1944.

Marmarosa's recording debut was with Barnet in 1943; they recorded "The Moose", a track described by Gunther Schuller as "a veritable masterpiece" on which the 17-year-old pianist played an original blend of nascent bebop and Count Basie-style minimalism. Marmarosa recorded some trio tracks with Krupa and DeFranco in 1944. From April to October of that year he was with Tommy Dorsey, including for the orchestra's appearance in the MGM film Thrill of a Romance.

A Dorsey biographer indicated that the pianist was dismissed because the bandleader did not care for the modernistic facets of his playing. Marmarosa soon joined clarinetist Artie Shaw, with whom he stayed until November 1945, as part of a big band and Shaw's small band, the Gramercy Five. In 1945 Marmarosa moved to Los Angeles. He was pianist in March of the following year for Parker's first recordings for Dial Records.

Two of the tracks recorded, "Ornithology" and "Yardbird Suite", have been included in the Grammy Hall of Fame. Marmarosa recorded extensively as a sideman in the period 1945–47, in both bebop and swing contexts. Leaders of these sessions included Wardell Gray, Lionel Hampton, Mel Tormé, Willie Smith, Lester Young, and, with Marmarosa as house pianist for Atomic Records, Slim Gaillard and Barney Kessel. Marmarosa made his first recordings as leader in 1946, with trio tracks that included Ray Brown on bass and Jackie Mills on drums, and in a quartet with saxophonist Lucky Thompson added.

In 1947 Marmarosa led a trio session for Dial with Harry Babasin on cello and Jackie Mills on drums; these were the first pizzicato jazz cello recordings. In the same year, he was given Esquire magazine's New Star (piano) award. In the spring of 1948 Marmarosa returned to Pittsburgh because of illness. He toured again with "Scat" Davis (April – July 1949) and Shaw (September – November 1949).

He left Shaw's band for the final time during one concert after they had twice played Shaw's hit, "Frenesí", Marmarosa had threatened to leave if Shaw called for it again, and the leader had done so after the audience requested a third playing. Shaw reported that Marmarosa "was gentle and fragile, [...and] never learned to deal with the world of a musician." The pianist returned to Pittsburgh in 1950, signed "a term contract" with Savoy Records, and recorded four trio sides for them in July, but the quality did not match his earlier playing.

For around a decade, Marmarosa was much less active as a musician. Shaw and DeFranco raised the idea of psychiatric treatment, but the former was rebuffed by Marmarosa himself, and the latter by the pianist's parents: "They were not reconciled to his needing professional help. They were from the old school, they saw it as a stigma. I got into a big argument about it with his father.

He really blew up." In 1952, two years after marrying, Marmarosa moved with his wife and their two daughters to California. The marriage was short lived, and he again returned to his parents' home in Pittsburgh in the fall of that year. His ex-wife remarried and asked him to allow her to change the children's names in exchange for not having to pay her any more money; following the advice of his parents, he signed the documents.

A friend of his later stated that never seeing his children again "was the great blight of his life. It tore him apart". A tour of a few months in Charlie Spivak's band in 1953 preceded Marmarosa being drafted into the army the following year. This exacerbated his problems: several months in a Veteran Administration hospital preceded his discharge, at which point he was in a poor psychological condition.

Back in Pittsburgh, where he played locally from March 1956, Marmarosa continued to be erratic, sometimes disappearing for weeks at a time, and giving his money away: "It was like he was on the road to self-destruction", commented trumpeter Danny Conn. Amateur recordings from the pianist's concerts in Pittsburgh in 1958 were released four decades later. He made comeback recordings in the early 1960s, but soon retreated to Pittsburgh, where he played occasionally into the early 1970s. From then until his death three decades later, he lived with family and in veterans' hospitals.

Playing style and influence

Pianist Dick Katz considered Marmarosa the most gifted of the bebop pianists, noting his legato touch, fluid technique, and original style blending advanced chordal and scalar elements with graceful rhythmic phrasing. By 1944 his playing was progressively bebop-directed, using melodies derived from harmony and varying rhythmic accents; later he added more space and shorter note sequences. Critic Marc Myers observed that Marmarosa was less aggressive than Bud Powell and more expressive than Al Haig, with a punctuating, full-keyboard approach.

Brian Priestley highlighted his harmonic sense and knowledge of bebop's additional notes, his alternating use of hands together and in opposition, and his unusual time feeling. By the 1960s his style became more relaxed and rhythmically pronounced. Pianist Cecil Taylor said in 1961 that Marmarosa was the first modern pianist to impress him, and Marmarosa encouraged Buddy DeFranco to take up bebop.