Tony Fruscella - Tony Fruscella - [Vinyl]

Jazz history is full of enfants terribles, mythical characters, maudits, legendary figures who seem to have been born in order to embody hardboiled stories of the darkest nature. Outsiders destined to a mala vita, which can only be avoided thanks to an inborn talent that transforms them into all time romantic symbols of the artist and his struggle. Tony Fruscella was one of these characters. The first thing to notice about Tony Fruscella lies in his short life and professional career. His life was prematurely put to an end due to what at the time was usually being described as �personal problems.� Tony (born on February 4, 1927 in Orangeburg, New York) and his sister Maria grew up in Greenwich Village, part of Manhattan. He played in an Army band early in his career, and served as a sideman for numerous jazz musicians in the 1950s, including Charlie Barnet, Lester Young, Gerry Mulligan (1954) and Stan Getz (1955). He played with Don Joseph later in the 1950s, but by the early 1960s his problems with drug abuse and alcoholism sidelined him from active performance. He was married to singer Morgana King, a marriage that ended in divorce after nine years. Tony Fruscella released only one record as a leader during his lifetime, the present 1955 LP on Atlantic Records. Several reissues of live material and studio outtakes followed his death. His career became diluted into oblivion upon recording that album, and he died of cirrhosis of the liver on August 14, 1969 at the age of 42. As a musician, Tony Fruscella followed an intermediate path between Bop (Dizzy Gillespie) and Cool (Miles Davis), a style later made popular by Chet Baker. His dense, muted, velvety sound expressed a sense of poetry full of �literary� references, in the low and medium registers, of a rich variety of tonalities that made his solos sensual, deep and somewhat melancholy. That sound is vividly portrayed in the present LP.

Tony Fruscella - Tony Fruscella - [Vinyl]

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