If John Frigo’s only contribution to good music had been his co-authorship of “Detour Ahead” and “I Told You I Loved You, Now Get Out,” he would have deserved admiration and gratitude. He wrote those songs in the late 1940s with Herb Ellis and Lou Carter, his partners in the elegant Soft Winds trio. Frigo played bass in the trio. The other members were guitarst Herb Ellis and pianist Lou Carter, buddies from his stint in the Jimmy Dorsey band. However, when he died last week in Chicago at the age of ninety, Frigo left a larger legacy than his compositions and the moderate success of The Soft Winds. In his last three decades, he established himself as a virtuoso jazz violinist.
Violin was Frigo’s first instrument when he was a child in Chicago. He turned to bass because it brought him more work. Late in his career he began concentrating again on violin, with harmonic resourcefulness, passion, swing and warmth of tone to rival Stuff Smith and Joe Venuti. Don Heckman of The Los Angeles Times reflected the opinion of other serious critics and listeners when he wrote that Frigo “made a convincing case for himself as the premier violinist in contemporary jazz.” A couple of Frigo’s latterday recordings support that case. Released on Hank O’Neal’s Chiaroscuro label, they have him in old and new settings.
In The Soft Winds Then and Now, one CD is devoted to reissues of the trio’s original recordings from 1947 and ’48, with Frigo playing bass. A second disc reunites Frigo, Carter and Ellis, with Frigo on violin and a guest, Keter Betts, on bass. The happiness of the occasion is reflected in the performances and in a long bonus track of Frigo, Carter and Ellis reminiscing. If anything, The Johnny Frigo Quartet Live at the 1997 Floating Jazz Festival represents with even greater clarity Frigo’s ability to generate excitement without sacrificing tone and lyricism. He demonstrates his power in a series of standards, ending in an incandescent “Lester Leaps In.”
Frigo was a poet and raconteur as well as a musician. There is little of his playing on internet videos, but several YouTube clips of decidedly unprofessional picture and sound quality capture something of his personality. They were made on the occasion of his 88th birthday celebration at the equally venerable Green Mill club in Chicago.
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
I remember John Frigo from the mid 1950s when I was a student in Chicago. He played bass and occasionally violin in a duo with the Chicago pianist Dick Marx. For some time they played Mondays and Tuesdays at the Cloister Inn on Rush Street, then in its heyday. They were a pleasure to listen to and also made some LPs at the time for Brunswick and Coral, two of which I have. The late Dick Marx went into commercial production and was lost to jazz but was a terrific player. John Frigo appeared at the Toronto jazz festival a couple of years ago and was amused when I asked him to sign one of these 1950s LPs.