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Description
TitleMonk Montgomery oral history interview
Date Created1980-10
Note(b Indianapolis, 10 Oct 1921; d Las Vegas, NV, 20 May 1982). Bass player. He began to play double bass at the age of 30, but he changed to electric bass guitar in order to make an international tour with Lionel Hampton's big band (1951 - 3) and became the first jazz musician to specialize and record on the instrument (1953). Thereafter he played in the Montgomery - Johnson Quintet with his brothers (2) Wes and (3) Buddy Montgomery, the tenor saxophonist Alonzo Johnson, and the drummer Robert Johnson (1955 - 6). He moved to Seattle, where he was soon joined by Buddy, and the two musicians then moved to San Francisco, where they continued to play together (occasionally with Wes) in the Mastersounds (1957 - 60) and the Montgomery Brothers (1960 - spring 1962); the latter was a quartet involving a number of different drummers. During the early 1960s Montgomery again played double bass, but he returned to the electric instrument while with Cal Tjader (1966). In 1970 he settled in Las Vegas, where he worked with Red Norvo's trio (1970 - 72), founded the Las Vegas Jazz Society (1975), and promoted jazz as a disc jockey. In 1974 he visited South Africa as the leader of an African-American jazz group. He published The Monk Montgomery Electric Bass Method.
NotePortions of the publicly available digital files for this transcript have been altered to restore them to their original state.
Genreoral histories, interviews
Languageeng
CollectionJazz Oral History Project
Organization NameRutgers University. Institute of Jazz Studies
Organization NameRutgers University. Institute of Jazz Studies
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