Ellis Larkins, black pianist -- Rest in Peace

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Subject: Ellis Larkins, black pianist

Author:
Maryland

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Date Posted: October 04, 2002 4:31:06 EDT

Ellis Larkins, a jazz pianist known for his understated elegance as an improviser and his sensitivity as an accompanist, died on Sunday at Maryland General Hospital in Baltimore. He was 79 and lived in Baltimore.

The cause was pneumonia said his wife Crystal.

Mr. Larkins established his reputation as an accompanist with two celebrated duo albums he recorded with Ella Fitzgerald for Decca Records, "Ella Sings Gershwin," in 1950, and "Songs in a Mellow Mood," in 1954. He went on to work with Joe Williams, Chris Connor, Eartha Kitt and many other vocalists.

Beginning in the 1970's, he had long engagements at Gregory's, a small club on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and at the Carnegie Tavern behind Carnegie Hall, where his short but eloquent sets were treated with silent respect by a devoted following.

Ellis Lane Larkins was born into a musical family in Baltimore on May 15, 1923. His mother was a pianist, and his father, who earned his living as a janitor, played violin with the Baltimore City Colored Orchestra. When Mr. Larkins was 6, his father began giving him piano lessons, and within a few years he, too, was playing with the orchestra.

At 15 he began studies at the Peabody Conservatory, and two years later he received a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music, where he studied for three years. In an interview with Whitney Balliett of The New Yorker, Mr. Ellis, a notoriously shy man, recalled the triumphant conclusion of his Juilliard years. "I had to give a little dissertation before I graduated," he said, "but I knew I couldn't get up there and talk. I was standing on a corner of Madison Avenue, on my way to the event, when what I'd do came to me: demonstrate the similarities between the melodic lines of Bach and boogie-woogie. The teacher told me afterward that he knew I'd made up the whole thing on the spot but that I'd done it very well."

The decision to link Bach with boogie-woogie came to characterize Mr. Larkins's jazz work. Although he sometimes said that he pursued a career in jazz because there were no opportunities for black musicians in the classical field, he never played like a man for whom jazz was a second choice. He deftly bridged the concert hall and the nightclub, keeping the tempos moderate and the volume low while combining rhythmic drive, harmonic intricacy and an almost Baroque approach to melodic embellishment.

Mr. Larkins started in jazz while still at Juilliard, working with the guitarist Billy Moore at Cafe Society Uptown. Late in 1942 he led his own trio at the same club. Over the next decade he worked frequently at a number of New York rooms, most notably the Blue Angel and Cafe Society Uptown and Downtown, as a leader or backing the clarinetist Edmond Hall and singers like Helen Humes and Mildred Bailey.

He also recorded several solo albums in the 50's, occasionally backed by a bassist. The titles of his albums � "Manhattan at Midnight," "Blue and Sentimental," "The Soft Touch" � captured their low-key ambience.

From the late 50's through the late 60's, Mr. Larkins concentrated on studio work, teaching and occasional performances with singers. But when New York City experienced a jazz renaissance in the early 1970's and restaurants and bars all over town turned themselves into piano rooms, his career blossomed. In addition to the Gregory's and Carnegie Tavern jobs, he performed frequently at the Cookery, a restaurant in Greenwich Village run by Barney Josephson, the former owner of Cafe Society.

After about a decade, he moved to Los Angeles, where he continued to perform and record, before returning to Baltimore in the early 1990's. Among his last recordings were a solo recital in 1992 and two albums of duets in 1994 with the cornetist Ruby Braff, with whom he had also recorded in 1955 and 1972.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Larkins is survived by a sister, Clara Larkins Bailey, also of Baltimore.

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