Marty Grosz

Marty Grosz ranks among jazz's foremost humorists, his off-the-cuff monologues frequently provoking hearty laughter, and he shines as an acoustic guitarist whose chordal solos evoke the 1930s manner of Carl Kress and Dick McDonough, while his singing follows the Fats Waller model. Visibility arrived only after an extended period. Raised in New York, he studied at Columbia University and in 1951 directed an unrecorded Dixieland unit alongside Dick Wellstood. During his Chicago years he appeared on sessions with Dave Remington, Art Hodes, and Albert Nicholas, directed his own dates for Riverside in 1957 and Audio Fidelity in 1959, and persistently urged Jabbo Smith to return to performing, though some of those rehearsals surfaced later on LP; widespread notice nonetheless remained elusive until he entered Soprano Summit in 1975. Once that ensemble disbanded in 1979, Grosz worked steadily as a freelance player on the traditional-jazz circuit, joining Dick Sudhalter, Joe Muryani, and Dick Wellstood in the Classic Jazz Quartet before assuming leadership of the Orphan Newsboys, an exceptional quartet completed by Peter Ecklund, Bobby Gordon, and bassist Greg Cohen. The singular Marty Grosz has since issued several engaging albums on Jazzology and Stomp Off.