RIP Junior Mance
Beloved jazz pianist who could play anything
It’s been a rough time for fans of jazz piano. Over the past year, Ellis Marsalis, McCoy Tyner, Stanley Cowell, and now Junior Mance have died. Although these giants played for decades and have left a rich legacy (Mance’s discography includes over 50 albums and compilations, with performances from the early 1960’s to 2015), their passing is still regrettable because they never received the acclaim their talent deserved.
But we can use these sad occasions as an opportunity to explore great music we have overlooked. I’m reading about and listening to Junior Mance this morning, and it’s surprising how diverse his style is. It’s not that he went through various phases as music styles evolved. It’s that Mance loves whatever is exemplary and finds a way to incorporate it into his own idiom.
Mance is perhaps best known for blending blues with bop, soul jazz, and other styles. On Happy Time, you can hear lots of bluesy phrases, but the result is never patchwork.
