Stuff Smith

Stuff Smith (Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith) was an American jazz violinist, singer, bandleader, and composer born (in Portsmouth, Ohio) on August 14, 1909.  Smith was the first jazz violinist to use an amplified (electric) violin.  However, as were jazz violinists Eddie South and Johnny Frigo, he was somewhat overshadowed by Joe Venuti and Stephane Grappelli.  As far as I know, he only studied violin with his father, beginning at age 6 or 7.  Another interesting thing about Smith is that he is buried in Denmark.  He took part - along with Duke Ellington and Count Basie - in the very first outdoor jazz festival – that was in May, 1938, in New York.  The festival was a huge success even though it ran for less than six hours.  It has been said that his sound was not smooth and pretty but his rhythmic drive, intensity, and inventiveness more than made up for that.  The same thing was said of classical violinist Bronislaw Huberman.  Smith began playing publicly with his family’s band when he was 12 years old.  He attended Johnson Smith University in North Carolina but left at age 15 - he played professionally from that age forward.  From 1926 to 1928 (one source says 1927 to 1930), Smith was a member of Alphonse Trent’s group.  Trent was a well-known bandleader whose band played in the finest hotels in the Southern U.S.  Smith was 19 years old.  Afterward, he free-lanced, touring with pianist Jelly Roll Morton, as well as other jazz musicians.  Although he did a lot of traveling, his home bases were Buffalo, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.  He formed (with trumpet player Jonah Jones) the Onyx Club Boys, a sextet (one source says it was a quintet) which played at the Onyx Club, beginning in 1935, in New York City.  Often, he would perform with a monkey on his shoulder.  It was a stuffed monkey, of course.  Smith knew Fritz Kreisler and it has been said Kreisler admired his playing.  Smith recorded with a group called the Stuff Smith Trio, although the other two members of the trio alternated, depending on the instrumentation.  One source states that in 1943, he briefly took over Fats Waller’s band after Waller died.  Smith played in a group with jazz pianist Billy Taylor too.  On June 9, 1945, he, Billy Taylor, and Ted Sturgis (on bass) played a concert in New York’s famous Town Hall - Benny Goodman had already played his historic jazz concert in Carnegie Hall in 1938.  In 1947, Smith joined Jazz at the Philharmonic, a very large group of touring jazz musicians managed from Los Angeles and put together by Norman Granz, a jazz impresario.  It operated between 1944 and 1957.  Smith’s playing has been described as virtuosic, technically adventurous, and full of good humor.  Joel Smirnoff (violinist with the Juilliard String Quartet for many years) was quoted as saying that Stuff Smith’s point “was not to be sophisticated, but to swing as hard as possible.”  You can hear for yourself here.  Smith recorded enough material (for the Vocalion, Verve, Capitol, Decca, ASCH, and Varsity labels) to fill 6 or 7 of today’s CDs.  He recorded with Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Jean-Luc Ponty, and Stephane Grappelli, among other artists.  He also played alongside many other jazz artists; Sun Ra and Charlie Parker are among them.  Here is a Smith video on YouTube.  His violin hold and posture were similar to that of French concert violinist Jacques Thibaud.  For reasons unknown (to me), between 1946 and 1955, Smith did very little commercial recording or none at all.  In 1958, Art Kane (Arthur Kanofsky) took a photo (for ESQUIRE Magazine) of 57 jazz musicians in front of an apartment building in Harlem (New York) titled A Great Day in Harlem.  Smith is the only jazz violinist in that photo.  Mary Lou Williams, Marian McPartland, Count Basie, Sonny Rollins, Thelonius Monk, Bud Freeman, Gene Krupa, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Mingus, and Sahib Shihab are among the jazz greats in that iconic portrait.  In 1965, Smith went to live in Copenhagen, Denmark.  For the rest of his life, he worked in Europe, sharing the stage with many European jazz players, some of whom had come from the U.S.  Stuff Smith died on September 25, 1967 (in Munich, Germany) at age 58.  A book by William F. Lee titled American Big Bands says Stuff Smith died (on the same date given above) in Chicago.  Even a great jazz violinist cannot die in two different places at the same time so I’m guessing, since Smith is buried in Denmark, that Munich is the far likelier place of death.  

Camilla Wicks

Camilla Wicks is a Norwegian (some would say American) violinist born on August 8, 1928 (Heifetz was 27 years old.) She is well-known for her exceptionally thoughtful and insightful interpretations, her inspired phrasing, and the extremely wide range of her repertoire. Most of her recordings are now collectors' items - her recordings of many rare Twentieth Century works (many of them Scandinavian) are significant, illuminating, and incandescent (some would say stunning.) She began her violin studies with her father at age 3. At age 7, she made her debut with orchestra in Long Beach, California, playing Mozart's D major concerto. She learned Bruch's g minor concerto at age 8 and the Paganini D major concerto at age 9. A year later, her family moved to New York where she began studying with Louis Persinger at Juilliard. With Persinger as her piano accompanist, she made her debut at New York's Town Hall in February of 1942. Two years later, she made her debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic with the third concerto of Saint Saens. Her Carnegie Hall debut came in April of 1946 with the New York Philharmonic - she played the Sibelius concerto on that occasion - Artur Rodzinski, the notorious conductor, was on the podium. Wicks continued to concertize extensively in the U.S. and in Europe until about 1958. She then stopped playing altogether and even sold her "Duke of Cambridge" Stradivarius. After devoting much time to her five children, she returned to her career in 1966, though she only played sporadically. Among other schools, Wicks has taught at the University of Michigan, Rice University, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She retired from teaching in 2005.

Zvi Zeitlin

Zvi Zeitlin is a Russian violinist and teacher born (in Dubrovna, Belarus) on February 21, 1923. Zeitlin is known for his robust and clean sound. He first studied with his father but from age 11, he studied at the Juilliard School (New York) with Sascha Jacobsen, Ivan Galamian, and Louis Persinger - at the time, he was the youngest scholarship recipient ever admitted to Juilliard.  Sarah Chang now holds that distinct honor.  He later studied in Jerusalem (Hebrew University) where he made his debut in 1940. He was 17 years old.  Louis Persinger and Ivan Galamian are famous for having taught some of the world's leading violinists - Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin, Ruggiero Ricci, Michael Rabin, Eugene Fodor, Pinchas Zukerman, and Itzhak Perlman are among them.  Zeitlin's U.S. debut was made in New York's Town Hall in 1951. He first played with the New York Philharmonic, with which he appeared numerous times, on February 2, 1961.  He chose the Stravinsky concerto on that occasion.  Also in 1961, Zeitlin made his London debut. Since the early 1950s, Zeitlin has concertized extensively throughout the world. He played world premieres of concertos by Gunther Schuller, Paul Ben-Haim, and Carlos Surinach.  As far as I know, he is still on the faculty of the Eastman School where he first began teaching in 1967. From 1976 to 1982 he played with the Eastman (Piano) Trio, of which he was a founding member. He plays a 1734 Guarnerius del Gesu violin, although he owns and plays other violins.  Zeitlin has recorded extensively for various labels and his CDs are quite easy to find on the internet. His recording of the Schoenberg violin concerto can be found here.  Although he did not record this concerto with the New York Philharmonic, he played it with that orchestra on January 5, 1967.  There are a few videos of his playing on YouTube as well.  You can listen to one here. 

P.S. Zvi Zeitlin died on May 2, 2012, at age 89. He gave a farewell recital in February of 2012, intending to retire in the summer of 2012.  Only Roman Totenberg, Ivry Gitlis, and Joseph Zigeti have played recitals at that age.