Junior Mance 10/10/1928 – 17/01/2021

Technically assured but with a bluesy style, keyboard legend Junior Mance’s lengthy career embraced boppish combos, mainstream outfits, trio gigs and solo performances. A frequent visitor to Britain, first appearing here with Dizzy Gillespie’s highly-regarded quintet in 1959, his concerts were invariably joyful, hard-swinging affairs. In a review I called it, ‘Music with a smile on its face’ and so it was.

Drawn to the piano by hearing his father play boogie-woogie, Julian Clifford Mance Jr, grew up in Chicago and turned professional in his teens. While studying locally, he worked with tenorist Gene Ammons in Chicago clubs, before Lester Young recruited him, Mance staying for a year ahead of his military call-up. Here, fortune favored him when the Fort Knox band sergeant Cannonball Adderley grabbed him for the band, thus diverting Mance from a deadly stint in Korea. Back in Chicago, he spent three productive years as house pianist at the Bee Hive Club, backing star visitors like Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins. Following 18 months as singer Dinah Washington’s accompanist, he then joined Cannonball Adderley early quintet in 1958, recording for Emarcy, these albums precipitating an avalanche of recordings on many different labels, his first as a leader for Verve in 1959. He described his later engagement with Gillespie as like attending a harmonic finishing school.

Thereafter Mance led his own groups, trios or duos often, taking time out to tour Japan with the 100 Golden Fingers’ package (ten pianists with rhythm) and appear with Lionel Hampton’s Golden Men of Jazz, alongside James Moody, Sweets Edison et al. Bassist Andy Cleyndert organized two well-received UK tours for him in 2000 and 2002 with himself on bass and Steve Brown on drums, their recordings on Trio. His last residency, at Café Loup in New York, attracted many admirers, me included, his fourth wife Gloria as his constant cheerleader and support, before dementia set in and he ceased playing.

He had taught at New York’s New School from 1996 to 2011, concentrating on helping his students, among them Brad Mehldau, to develop as performers. Fellow faculty member Bill Kirchner described Mance as ‘A wonderful player, an inspiring educator, and one of the world’s great people’. Amen to that.