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Dave McKenna (b. 1930) was one of the top jazz swing pianists of the last 25 years. He is known for his "three-handed swing", and he is the leading proponent of solo piano style.
Biography
McKenna was born on May 30, 1930 in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.
Mc Kenna started out as a band pianist in the 50's and 60's: Starting out at the age of 15, McKenna played with Boots Mussulli (1947), Charlie Ventura (1949) and Woody Herman's Orchestra (1950-51). He then spent two years in the military, and re-joined Ventura (1953-54). He worked with a variety of top swing and Dixieland musicians including Gene Krupa, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Eddie Condon, Bobby Hackett but became primarily a soloist after 1967, especially in the Northeast United States. He also played with Bob Wilber in the late '70s
McKenna had a long career, but one that was not as distinguished as it might have been. He started being recognised in the 1970s. He chose to play in his local area rather than travel extensively. He preferred playing in clubs and hotels to getting center stage in major venues. He could be found playing in hotel piano bars in Massachusetts until his retirement around the turn of the millennium.
Personality
As a person, Mr. McKenna is a tall, affable conversationalist with a passion for the Boston Red Sox baseball team. He greets the public easily, and would rather talk about subjects other than music, presumably letting his playing speak for itself. Meeting a musician can be an unpredictable situation, but McKenna is comfortable on and off stage with his audiences.
Musical Style
His musical presentation relies on two key elements relating to his choices of tunes and set selection, and the method of playing that has come to be known as "three-handed swing".
McKenna likes to make thematic medleys, usually based around a key word that appears in the titles, such as teach, love, women's names, dreams, night or day, street names, etc. There may be ballads and up-tempo songs blended together with standards, pop tunes, blues, and even TV themes or folk material.
McKenna's renditions usually begin with a spare, open statement of the melody, or, on ballads, a freely played, richly harmonized one. He often states the theme a second time, gradually bringing more harmony or a stronger pulse into play.
The improvisation then begins in earnest on three levels simultaneously. The main melodic improvisation is in the last three fingers of the right hand. The rhythm and the bass line is in the last three fingers of the left hand. The harmony and accompaniment is in the first two fingers of EACH hand. The result is the sound of a three piece band under one person's creative control.
McKenna can weave a spontaneous melodic line, usually with lots of chromaticism and blues licks, over the bass line. The bass can be anything from single notes to repeated chords like a rhythm guitar to a full-blown stride piano, the latter often reserved for the height of a song's development.
Lots of players can play left-hand chords and right hand improvisation, or walk a bass line and improvise with the other hand. It is McKenna's ability to add the third element of the harmony in the middle that defines his original approach. The main difficulty is not so much a pianistic as conceptual one. If you can HEAR the three parts, you can play them. If the effect of the music isn't clear mentally, it won't appear easily at the keyboard.
His recordings on the Concord record label attest to both the excitement and tenderness of his playing. His contribution to the development of jazz piano as a solo voice will not be forgotten by musicians or the history books. Art Tatum, the greatest soloist in jazz piano history, praised McKenna as someone he considered a complete musician.
Recorded works
McKenna has had an extensive recording career from 1958 to 2002, recorded for ABC-Paramount Records (1956), Epic (1958), Bethlehem (1960) and Realm (1963). McKenna debuted with Concord in 1979, where the majority of his catalogue rests, including one volume of Concord's 42-disc series recorded live inside Maybeck Recital Hall.
External links
Other sources
More information on McKenna can be found in the Grove Encyclopedia of Jazz, Leonard Feather's Jazz in the 60's and 70's, and various keyboard-oriented magazines.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify the biographical information on this page under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
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