Ellis Larkins

Ellis Larkins built his reputation on delicate chord voicings and a rare gift for supporting vocalists, remaining in steady demand across decades of work. Born to musical parents—his mother at the piano and his father on violin—he drew early notice as a prodigy and performed with an orchestra at age eleven. After earning diplomas from the Peabody Conservatory and Juilliard, he spent the mid-1940s in Edmond Hall’s band, cut sessions with Mildred Bailey, Coleman Hawkins, and Dicky Wells, and held regular jobs at New York’s Village Vanguard and Blue Angel for twenty years.

The duet albums he made with Ella Fitzgerald and Ruby Braff in the 1950s remain benchmarks of restrained interplay, and he stayed active as a studio musician throughout the same period. During the 1960s he accompanied Joe Williams, Jane Harvey, Georgia Gibbs, Eartha Kitt, and Harry Belafonte, then continued appearing in New York clubs with an array of singers in later years. As a leader he recorded for Storyville and Decca in the 1950s and for Halcyon and Black & Blue in the 1970s, added further duets with Braff on Chiaroscuro, and appeared on several Concord dates, among them a 1992 recital at Maybeck Recital Hall.