Craig Davis’ Tribute to Dodo Marmarosa

courtesy of Jazz Promo Services

Towards the end of last month, MCG Jazz, the label for the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild in Pittsburgh, released an album by pianist Craig Davis entitled Tone Paintings: The Music of Dodo Marmarosa. I have to confess that my knowledge of Marmarosa has been, for the most part, limited to his name. My primary source has been the Charlie Parker box set entitled The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings 1944-1948. Marmarosa appears on only eight tunes, four each from sessions in 1946 and 1947.

Those tracks could have established Marmarosa as one of the leading bebop pianists, putting him in the same league as Bud Powell. However, like Powell, Marmarosa led a troubled life. Unfortunately, while Powell maintained a working reputation that extended into the Sixties, Marmarosa had become a recluse by the early Fifties. Like Marmarosa, Davis is a native of Pittsburgh; and MCG provided him with a platform to cultivate a new awareness of Marmarosa’s work. Davis’ new recording is a trio album on which he performs with John Clayton on bass and Jeff Hamilton on drums.

The resulting album has eleven tracks, ten of which are Marmarosa compositions. The remaining track, “A Ditty for Dodo,” is a Davis original. All of the tracks were “first contact” experiences for me, since the Savoy tracks were compositions by Parker, Slim Gaillard, and Howard McGhee. Furthermore, all ten of the Marmarosa tracks were the products of Davis’ efforts to transcribe the music from the original recordings of those selections.

The album is thus a significant journey of discovery that could not have existed without Davis’ efforts at reconstruction. As a result, my awareness of Marmarosa’s works is just beginning to work its way into my “listening mind.” The good news is that there is both clarity and a refreshing rhetoric to the performances by Davis and his trio. My hope is to set aside enough time to cultivate as much familiarity with this album as I had previously cultivated with those Parker sessions from 1946 and 1947.