Presenting The Buddy DeFranco - Tommy Gumina Quartet

 

On Green Dolphin Street

Presenting The Buddy DeFranco - Tommy Gumina Quartet
Recorded October 17 and 18, 1961, in Chicago
Mercury Records STEREO SR 60685

Personnel:

Buddy DeFranco: Clarinet
Tommy Gumina: Accordion
Bill Plummer: Bass
John Guerin: Drums

From the back cover: The partnership started in a curious manner. Buddy was looking for a pianist to play a date with him. Frank DeVito, his drummer, suggested that an accordion might make an interesting substitute. DeFranco reacted much the way Chief Justice Warren might if he were asked to join the John Birch Society. But he was finally convinced, first verbally by DeVito and later musically buy Gumina, that this was not an ordinary accordion player. Unlike most exponents of the instrument, generally held in low esteem by jazzmen, Gumina has the harmonic sense and rhythmic feeling of a genuine modern swinging musician.

The result was not just an isolated gig but a partnership that has persisted and progressed, reaching a new plateau of togetherness with the taping of the quartet's first Mercury album.

To recapitulate in the backgrounds of these two strikingly sympathetic artists: DeFranco was born in 1923 in Camden, New Jersey; Gumina in 1931 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Camden being virtually a suburb of Philadelphia, it was in sessions around Philly that Buddy first began to attract attention. While still in his teens, he won a Tommy Dorsey amateur contest and worked in the bands of Scat Davis, Gene Kruppa and Ted Fio Rito. At 20 he joined Charlie Barnet; in 1944 he began his first stint with the Dorsey band, remaining until 1946, then worked for a while with the fine Boyd Raeburn orchestra of '46 - '47, after which he rejoined Dorsey for a year. Aside from a year with Count Basie in 1950 - '51, he has led various groups of his own since then. Since 1955 he has been a Southern California. In recent years he has been very active as a participant in college jazz clinics and concerts.

Gumina, like DeFranco, was in his twelfth year when he began studying seriously. He credits much of his success to Andy Rizzo, an accordion teacher whom he describes as the greatest who ever lived, and with whom he spent five years studying in Chicago. After beginning as a solo recitalist at the age of 14 and clubbing around Milwaukee, he was heard by Harry James, with whose band he was seen in television and on tour from 1952 - '55. He then went on the road as a single act, and in 1956 started a combo of his own, which worked successfully in Las Vegas lounges.

Completing the quartet for the present session were Bill Plummer, 23, from Boulder, Col., a promising bassist who has been heard with Paul Horn and other combos around Los Angeles; and drummer Johnny Guerin, 21, from San Diego, discovered by Buddy at a college clinic.

From Billboard - March 17, 1962: The combination of Buddy DeFranco with the Tommy Gumina Quartet adds up to a very pleasant pairing. The clarinetist and accordionist perform a flock of standards and a few originals in showmanly fashion here. DeFranco swings heartily and Gumina handles the accordion in swinging jazz fashion too. Tunes include "When Lights Are Low," "Street Of Dreams" and "Gone With The Wind."

When Lights Are Low
Street Of Dreams
Runaway
Never On Friday
Gone With The Wind
'S Wonderful
On Green Dolphin Street
Scrapple From The Apple
Playin' It Cool
You Are Too Beautiful