RALPH SUTTON

Ralph Earl Sutton (4 November 1922–30 December 2001) was an American jazz pianist born in Hamburg, Missouri. He was known as a stride pianist in the tradition of James P. Johnson and Fats Waller.

Background

Sutton had a stint as a session musician with Jack Teagarden's band before joining the US Army during World War II. After the war, he played at various venues in Missouri, eventually ending up at Eddie Condon's club in Greenwich Village. In 1956, he relocated to San Francisco, California, where he recorded several albums with Bob Scobey's dixieland band. From the 1960s onward, he worked mostly on his own.

He died in 2001 and was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame the following year. Sutton died in Evergreen, Colorado.

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Ralph Earl Sutton was an outstanding pianist in the great tradition of Harlem stride giants James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. 

Ralph Sutton was born in Hamburg, Missouri on November 4th, 1922. His career got under way when he joined Jack Teagarden in 1941 while he was still in college. During the '40s he attracted widespread attention, thanks to his participation in a series of radio shows hosted by jazz writer Rudi Blesh, This is Jazz. He had a trio with Albert Nicholas, and beginning in 1948 he worked eight years as intermission pianist at Eddie Condon's club in New York. Later he worked for Bob Scobey and, in 1963, was featured at the first Dick Gibson Jazz Party in Denver. This led to the formation of the World's Greatest Jazz Band in 1968, of which Sutton was a founding member.

Thereafter, Sutton's star rose. He recorded a series of albums and toured the world, solo and in a variety of settings. His musical partners in these ventures included Ruby Braff, Jay McShann, Kenny Davern, and Peanuts Hucko.

On TV, Ralph appeared on the Dick Cavett Show, the Ed Sullivan Show, the Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, the Steve Allen Show, and the Today Show. He appeared at Town Hall and the 92nd Street Y in New York, the Boston Symphony Hall, and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. He recorded for Arbors, RCA Victor, Columbia, Verve, Decca, and Commodore, among others. In 1993, Ralph was inducted into the New Jersey Jazz Hall of Fame.

Ralph Sutton died in Evergreen, CO on December 30, 2001, at the age of 79.

Ralph Gleason wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Ralph Earl Sutton is without a doubt the greatest exponent today of the two hands and ten fingers style of jazz piano playing...undoubtedly one of the best pianists in jazz today...he swings...tremendous personal beat and drive...Andre Previn once referred to Sutton as one of the few jazz pianists who had complete mastery of his instrument. Sutton plays with both hands and ten fingers, a full harmonic sense and a delightful wit in his solos. He can swing a band, too.

Stephen Singular wrote in the Denver Post:

...Sutton, a stubborn, dedicated perfectionist, committed to playing his own kind of piano, which is not just stride or ragtime, not just modern or traditional, not just solo or accompanist, but all those things and more.

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Ralph Sutton, 79, the Pianist Known as the Master of Stride 

By Douglas Martin 
Published: January 1, 2002

Correction Appended 

Ralph Sutton, a jazz pianist whose hard-driving but sometimes gently lyrical style was suggested by the title of one of his albums, ''Last of the Whorehouse Piano Players,'' died on Sunday in Denver. He was 79. 

Thomas Burns, a friend, said that Mr. Sutton, who lived in Bailey, Colo., collapsed while at a restaurant in nearby Evergreen on Saturday night after suffering a stroke. 

Mr. Sutton was known as the master of stride, a demanding form of piano jazz, which grew out of ragtime in the 1920's. Its essence is a left hand that strides rhythmically across the bottom half of the keyboard while the right hand handles the melody. 

He fell in love with stride piano at 9 when he first heard Fats Waller, a master of the style, on the radio. He went on to play with some of the greatest jazz musicians and pursued a solo career that took him to concert halls and clubs around the world. He made more than 40 recordings on many labels. 

André Previn, the conductor, once referred to Mr. Sutton as one of the few jazz pianists who had complete mastery of his instrument. The New Yorker called him ''a piano specialist of astonishing skill.'' Milt Hinton, the great jazz bassist, who died in 2000, once said, ''I'm glad to have passed through this life just to have met Ralph Sutton.'' 

In part Mr. Sutton represented a link to an important jazz tradition. Writing in The New York Times in 1991, Peter Watrous said, ''In his pieces, motion and movement signaled a type of freedom, and the spiky, abrupt right-hand interjections, working as melodies, exemplified the new musical vocabulary that developed in the early decades of this century.'' 

Dick Hyman, musical director of some of Woody Allen's movies and a stride pianist himself, insisted that Mr. Sutton was more than an archivist. ''Jazz had to be your own invention or it isn't jazz,'' he said. ''What Ralph did was do his own improvisations on the older music. It wasn't just note-for-note re-creations.'' 

Mr. Sutton played with no sense of irony but directly and proudly to audiences eager to hear his forceful take on Waller and other stride greats, like James P. Johnson and Willie Smith, known as the Lion. 

''When he would get going on something like 'Honky-Tonk Train,' he would have people leaping out of their seats,'' said the clarinetist Kenny Davern. 

Though known as a soloist, he played with big bands early in his career and in many combos later. ''He'd get that style going on any tune that was romping along, but he had the sensitivity to be a good backup,'' said Ed Polcer, the cornet player and bandleader. 

Ralph Earl Sutton was born in Hamburg, Mo., on Nov. 4, 1922, and was raised in the nearby town of Howell. (Both towns were taken over in 1940 by the federal government, which bought them out to build a dynamite factory.) 

As a boy, he played the organ in the Presbyterian church. His father, who had learned to play the fiddle at night after working on construction jobs, let him play the piano in his country band. 

When the legendary trombonist Jack Teagarden came through town in 1941, Mr. Sutton, then 19 and attending what is now Northeast Missouri State University, reluctantly agreed to play for him. Mr. Teagarden immediately invited him to join his band in New York. 

Two months after joining the band, he was drafted into the Army, where his assignments included playing the glockenspiel in the 104th Infantry Band in the Mojave Desert. 

After being discharged, he played at a club in the red-light district of East St. Louis, Ill., before being asked to rejoin Mr. Teagarden's band at the Famous Door on 52nd Street in New York. In 1948, he began an eight-year run as intermission pianist at Eddie Condon's jazz club on West Third Street. 

One of his major large-group jobs was as a member of the World's Greatest Jazz Band, a all-star mainstream band with Bob Haggart and Yank Lawson as headliners, from 1968 until 1974. He went on to perform around the world at jazz parties and concerts. Since this October, he has performed in Switzerland, Alabama and Tex

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Ralph Sutton Biography

Ralph Sutton was the greatest stride pianist to emerge since World War II, with his only close competitors being the late Dick Wellstood and the very versatile Dick Hyman. Nearly alone in his generation, Sutton kept alive the piano styles of Fats Waller and James P. Johnson, not as mere museum pieces but as devices for exciting improvisations. Although sticking within the boundaries of his predecessors, Sutton infused the music with his own personality; few could match his powerful left hand. Ralph Sutton played with Jack Teagarden's big band briefly in 1942 before serving in the Army. After World War II he appeared regularly on Rudi Blesh's This Is Jazz radio show and spent eight years as the intermission pianist at Eddie Condon's club, recording frequently. He spent time playing in San Francisco, worked for Bob Scobey, moved to Aspen in the mid-'60s, and became an original member of the World's Greatest Jazz Band with Yank Lawson, Bob Haggart, and Bud Freeman. In the 1970s, he recorded many exciting albums for the Chaz label and then cut albums for quite a few labels. Despite suffering a stroke in the early '90s, Sutton kept a busy schedule through the mid-'90s, playing at jazz parties and festivals. He died suddenly on December 29, 2001, in his car outside a restaurant in Evergreen, CO. Although he would have received much greater fame if he had been born 20 years earlier and come to maturity during the 1930s rather than the 1950s, at the time of his death it was obvious that Ralph Sutton had earned his place among the top classic jazz pianists of all time.

Source: Scott Yanow, All Music Guide

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“….Fats Waller was an early idol, though Ralph says regretfully "I never saw him in person, but of course I was aware of his career on records." (Waller died when Ralph was 11.) Honeysuckle Rose includes the verse and eventually moves into stride. Although Ralph has a reputation built largely on his proficiency in ragtime and stride, he is in fact an allaround pianist whose expertise extends to the classics.

His range becomes evident as he moves from Fats Waller to Bix Beiderbecke, whose In A Mist he has interpreted for years with flawless fidelity. "I was working with Teagarden when Jack sent me over to Robbins Music to pick up a Bix folio. That was the first I knew of his compositions. I still have that folio."

Ralph returns to Waller with Clothes Line Ballet, a delightful work which Fats recorded in 1934. "1 first heard Fats when I was nine. I bought a folio of his tunes too."

In The Dark is one of the piano pieces written but never recorded by Beiderbecke. It has the same haunting quality and harmonic subtlety that marked all of Rix's works, which were decades ahead of their time.

Fats Waller's Ain't Misbehavin' is a melodic Waller marvel that made its debut in the revue "Connie's Hot Chocolates" in 1929. Again Ralph includes the verse, with its unpredictable harmonic line.

Echo of Spring is the most attractive of the many works left us by Willie "The Lion" Smith. Both Ralph and I recall sitting beside the Lion as he played this elegant work and following its beautiful melodic contours. That rolling left hand is an essential part of its charm, which of course Ralph retains.

Dinah, a pop hit of the 1920s, has touches of the Lion in Ralph's performance. Love Lies is probably the most obscure song in this set; Ralph learned about it during his Teagarden days. It was written by one W. Dean Rogers in 1923.

Russian Lullaby is simply a song Ralph heard around. "I never saw the music on this one. Who wrote it? Irving Berlin? No kidding - I didn't know that."

St. Louis Blues was the most famous of the W.C. Handy blues series.. Written in 1914, it starts as a regular 12 bar blues before moving into a 16 bar minor strain. Sutton starts with a series of dramatic tremolos, then takes it at an easy lope.

Viper's Drag finds Ralph again retaining the spirit of Fats Waller in a 1934 tune, the title of which was an early term for a pot smoker. It's one of Fats's relatively few numbers in a minor key.

Finally there is After You've Gone, which goes all the way back to 1918 and was originally played, as I recall, in the slow tempo with which Ralph introduces it, as a 20 bar chorus. Later he shifts gears into the now more generally accepted long-meter, 40 bar treatment.”

Source: Leonard Feather

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Select discography

As bandleader

Ralph Sutton at St. George Church, England, 1992 (Arbors Records)

Wondrous Piano, The Private Family Recordings, 1961 (Arbors Records)

With Johnny Varro
A Pair of Kings (Arbors Records)

With Ruby Braff
Remembered (Arbors Records)

With Dick Cary
Rendezvous at Sunnie's 1969 (Arbors Records)