Bob Dorough

Bob Dorough remained largely overlooked for much of his career, yet he earned recognition as a daring explorer of vocalese—the craft of adding lyrics to jazz instrumental solos—and scat techniques, shaping the paths of Mark Murphy, Michael Franks, Mose Allison, and Kurt Elling through direct or indirect influence. An Arkansas native, he first played piano in the 1940s before turning to singing in the early 1950s, when he accompanied the entertainer and former boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. He spent 1954–1955 in Paris, where sessions with singer Blossom Dearie took place. His own recording path opened in 1955 after signing with Bethlehem and completing Devil May Care, an album that presented the defiant title track along with lyrics added to Charlie Parker’s “Yardbird Suite.” Releases grew infrequent afterward. In 1962 he joined Ben Tucker to write “Comin’ Home Baby,” a hit single for Mel Tormé, then cut his second album, Just About Everything, for Focus in 1966. Early in the 1970s he began composing and directing Schoolhouse Rock!, the series of educational children’s television programs. Although such instructional work supplied steady income, he continued issuing lesser-known jazz sessions on small imprints such as 52 Rue East, Orange Blue, Pinnacle, Bloomdido, Laissez-Faire, and similar labels through the 1970s and 1980s. At age 73 in 1997 he finally received major-label attention when the Capitol-distributed Blue Note issued Right on My Way Home. Too Much Coffee Man appeared in spring 2000. Regular Sunday brunch appearances at New York’s Iridium club produced the live set Sunday at Iridium in 2004. At a sprightly 82 years of age he headed to England for a string of concerts whose recordings yielded the charming Small Day Tomorrow album in 2006. Dorough remained active in performance and recording into his nineties, highlighted by the Enja label’s release of the Bob Dorough Trio album But for Now in 2015. He died at his home in Mount Bethel, Pennsylvania, in April 2018 at the age of 94.