The French Jazz Academy has awarded pianist Roger Kellaway its Le Prix Du Jazz Classique for his 2007 CD Heroes.
The album is by Kellaway’s trio with guitarist Bruce Forman and bassist Dan Lutz. Nat Cole had such a drummerless trio and inspired Art Tatum to use the same instrumentation. Oscar Peterson, who adored Cole and Tatum, had a similar group from 1950 to 1958, with Ray Brown on bass, and guitarist Irving Ashby followed by Barney Kessel and then Herb Ellis. Although he is one of the great individualists among modern jazz pianists, Kellaway keeps the Cole-Tatum-Peterson tradition alive through the repertoire on Heroes. Peterson was one of Kellaway’s major influences before Kellaway became a success on the New York scene at the age of twenty-two. They remained close musically and as friends. When I talked with Kellaway a couple of hours ago, he said, “Losing Oscar and getting this award in such close proximity makes me wonder if there’s something going on–something mysterious.”
He said that he will go to Paris to receive the award January 7 in a ceremony at the Châtelet Theater. The French Jazz Academy Awards is the oldest and most serious music awards ceremony in France. Created in 1955, it is like the Grammy Awards with class. The voters are 60 independent journalists, photographers, writers and radio and TV producers. Kellaway was not nominated for a 2008 Grammy. Roger told me that while he’s in Paris, he hopes to meet with Madame Eglal Farhi, the celebrated proprietor of the New Morning club in the Tenth Arrondissement. In France, New Morning is to modern mainstream jazz what the Blue Note was in the 1960s. It would seem a perfect fit for Kellaway.
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
My first encounter with Roger Kellaway was at the old Half Note in New York. I was a big fan of the Clark Terry-Bob Brookmeyer Quintet. Their first (I believe) album featured Hank Jones on piano and I went to the club expecting to hear Jones. When the band went up to play, there was this skinny, bespectacled white guy at the keyboard. I thought “(expletive), where’s Jones?” But my disappointment melted away when Roger Kellaway took his first solo. I should have known CT and Brookmeyer wouldn’t be hiring any stiffs.
The highlight of that evening was a running musical joke. One of the guys quoted the first couple of bars of Randy Weston’s “Hi Fly” in a solo and, for the rest of the night, each soloist would somehow insert that quote, cracking up the other musicians and the audience. And Kellaway seemed the cleverest of them all. It was a great introduction to a tremendous talent.