Steve Allen

Though jazz formed only a modest slice of Steve Allen’s remarkably broad and industrious life, it remained a meaningful thread within it. Even amid an unrelenting schedule, he could deliver agile, assured piano steeped in bop-and-cocktail idioms when surrounded by swift jazz players—unremarkable for its originality yet consistently agreeable to the ear. Allen began studying the instrument in childhood, when his parents worked as traveling vaudeville performers, yet the demands of a broadcasting career that moved from radio into television soon pushed music aside. Widely recognized as a comedian and the inaugural host of the network staple The Tonight Show from September 1954 through January 1957, he regularly performed at the piano and sang on air while also inviting jazz musicians to appear. In 1955 he took the starring role in the motion picture The Benny Goodman Story; in 1962 he produced the television series Jazz Scene USA; and he supplied the narration for the recorded chronicle The Jazz Story on Coral. At the height of his television prominence Allen cut numerous sessions for Coral, Dot, Roulette, EmArcy, and Decca, later returning in 1992 to record the mainstream date Plays Jazz Tonight for Concord Jazz. Beyond authoring roughly 43 books, he stated in 1994 that he had composed more than 4,700 songs, although only a few—“This Could Be the Start of Something (Big),” “Gravy Waltz,” and “Impossible”—secured lasting places in the standard repertoire. His most enduring service to jazz ultimately lay in his role as an enthusiastic advocate within the popular media. Steve Allen passed away in Encino, California, in October 2000 at the age of 78.