All pianists have their secrets. Little tricks they’ve learned over the years, stylistic quirks that make the way they play, the way they sound, different from anyone else. Sometimes it is physical, the shape of their hands, the length of their fingers, how many keys can fit in between their thumb and little finger. In some cases it’s something they’ve learned on their own, or perhaps something passed along by a teacher or even something they heard someone else do, and then adapted to their own purpose.

I’ve long suspected that Junior Mance’s secret is something more purposely developed. He doesn’t have giant hands; he doesn’t play striding twelfths. But he is a Black Belt in karate, and not just an ordinary Black Belt. Junior’s a fourth or fifth degree Black Belt, one of those guys with hands that can snap a board or break a brick. He is also a very focused player, one not only blessed with improvisational skills, but strength and endurance as well.

Junior seemed to jump into the jazz scene full blown, in the mid-1950s. I hate to think how many LPs he made during that era, and he didn’t slow down when CDs became dominant. I had copies of some of the LPs, on Atlantic, Verve and Capitol, usually tasty trios, but it was his work with Dizzy Gillespie that had first caught my attention. His was a name I knew, but I’d never heard him in person.

For some reason, he never turned up at Downtown Sound and he certainly didn’t need to record for Chiaroscuro in the 1970s. I never even met Junior until the late 1980s, when he became part of the adjunct faculty at The New School in New York City. I’d helped with the founding of the Jazz and Contemporary Music Department in 1986, and have been associated with it ever since. Junior arrived in 1988 and I got to know him, as an exceptional pianist and teacher, and he’s still at the school. In 1990 and 1991 he appeared during The Floating Jazz Festival as a soloist and began a long association with both the Festival and later, Chiaroscuro.

I invited Junior to appear in 1994, but he suggested he’d prefer to have a trio, he had some things he wanted to try and felt a trio setting might be more suitable. We had both the budget and the cabins so we assembled a group of three outstanding musicians, who were to become an integral part of the Festival for the next eight years. This is how I described their first appearance in 1994:

In April 1994 the first Ultimate Caribbean Jazz Spectacular (this is what we called The Floating Jazz Festival when it was on a ship other than the S/S Norway or Queen Elizabeth 2) was presented aboard Royal Caribbean Cruise Ltd.’s Song of America. There is a small, intimate room on that ship, the Schooner Bar, and six or seven months before the ship sailed we decided to use the best pianists we could find in that room for the duration of the music festival. Dave McKenna played solo many nights; the other nights a special trio held forth, one which had never performed as a group.

Junior Mance, Keter Betts and Jackie Williams were the Schooner Bar trio. We knew they’d never performed together as a group but to us the combination made sense. After about three notes of their first performance it was clear it was a good choice and as the days passed during ten days at sea this exceptional combination of musicians developed such a following on the ship it was often impossible to get into the room when they were performing. The word got out to the other musicians as well and on many nights the trio would be augmented by any number of other players not otherwise engaged.

It was obvious this was no ordinary trio. It clicked the first night and some of the music they made was magical. Other producers were on board and hired Junior and his trio to play their festivals and I wasn’t far behind. We made plans to make a recording as soon as it was practical, about three weeks after we reached dry land. The resulting CD, Blue Mance, was well received and I suggested to Junior that I wanted to rename the group The Floating Jazz Festival Trio and present them on the S/S Norway in 1995. With this CD and during his subsequent appearances at The Floating Jazz Festival, Junior produced a series of six CDs for Chiaroscuro, the most of any leader in the second incarnation of the label. Earl Hines had eight in the first incarnation, which puts Junior in pretty good company.

Junior Mance and The Floating Jazz Festival Trio was an integral part of the Festival for the next four years. Chiaroscuro recorded the group each of those years, usually adding a guest soloist for one or two selections, artists such as Benny Golsen, Red Holloway, Lou Donaldson, Etta, Jones, Arturo Sandoval or Henry Johnson. One year, 1996, the trio was permanently augmented with saxophonist Joe Temperley. Junior and Joe had been doing a number of engagements together in New York City, had worked out some wonderful arrangements, and it made perfect sense to record them.

The first CD with Junior and Joe featured the music of Duke Ellington. The four musicians assimilated Ellington’s music and played it flawlessly. The highlight may have been a twenty minute version of a medley that combined The Single Petal Of A Rose with Sunset and the Mocking Bird, two beautiful compositions from one of his lesser know extended works, The Queen’s Suite. 

There was a break in the recording action, but in 2000, Junior and a new trio, along with Joe Temperley, returned to the Festival and recorded a CD featuring the music of Thelonious Monk. It was as successful as the adventure with Ellington, though harder to accomplish because it was more difficult to record on Queen Elizabeth 2 than the S/S Norway. The Steinway had to be tuned between sets and the action was far from perfect, but Junior made it work just fine.

Junior ran past the 80 year old mark and never missed a beat and he’s holding up better than those old records that went at about that speed. His only concession to the passing years is he’s no longer endangering his hands at the dojo; his fighting days are behind him. He saves them for performance and instruction, both of which he continues with skill, consistency and his typical optimism.

Junior Mance, New York City, February 17, 2000