Home » Jazz Musicians » Dave McKenna

Dave McKenna

Dave McKenna is simply one of the legends of the jazz piano. He, of course, would probably disagree. "I don't know if I qualify as a bona-fide jazz guy," he says. "I play saloon piano. I like to stay close to the melody." His humility and laid-back personal style seem a contrast to the vibrant vitality of his masterful piano style. His range is truly extraordinary. One minute he is caressing a lovely ballad, the next he is thundering and rumbling through a high-powered rendition of I Found a New Baby.

Dave was born in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, into a musical family. His father William McKenna, a postman, played the drums part-time, and two sisters are singers. His mother, Catherine Reilly McKenna, was Dave's first piano teacher. In additions to being a good piano player, she was a fine violinist as a young woman. He also took lessons from Preston "Sandy" Sandiford in Boston, a fine piano teacher Dave liked very much. He explains that he developed his trademark left-handed bass style because "I wanted to hear something like what I heard on the records."

Dave began his career with Boots Mussulli Band, then left home to play with the Charlie Ventura band, followed by a stint with Woody Herman. After two years in the army, he returned to Charlie Ventura's band, then worked with Gene Krupa, Stan Getz, and Zoot Sims and Al Cohn. He often worked with Bobby Hackett, including some gigs at Eddie Condon's in Manhattan, playing what Hackett called "Whiskeyland Jazz." Among Dave's biggest influences was Nat King Cole, who remains one of his favorites to this day.

While working with Bobby Hackett, Dave discovered the pleasures of Cape Cod. He and his wife Frankie moved to the Cape in 1966 with their sons Stephen and Douglas. The move changed his career as well as his address - he worked less frequently with bands and more often as a solo pianist, but he still spent a great deal of time on the road.

Dave's musical magic found a wider audience through recordings, from his first solo recording on ABC records in 1955 to his wonderful work in the 70s for Chiaroscuro Records and then for Concord Jazz. In the 1980s, Dave's many fans could enjoy his magnificent medleys 6 nights a week at the Plaza Bar at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, where he was pianist-in-residence.

Dave has traveled all over the world to play festivals, cruises and concerts, and Boston-area fans always considered it a rare treat when he did perform close to home, either solo or with noted jazz artists including Dick Johnson, Gray Sargent, Marshall Wood, and Donna Byrne.

Harry Allen: Love Songs Live!

Read "Love Songs Live!" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 1, 2001

Two words are about all that are needed to sum up the singular talents of swing–based tenor saxophonist Harry Allen — smooth and consistent, each of which aspect of his charismatic persona is abundantly present on this compilation of love songs recorded in concert between 1993 and ’96. I’m not fully conversant with Allen’s influences but Stan Getz had to be one of them (listen, for example, to Jobim’s “Once I Loved”). Others, he says, include Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins ...

213

Album Review

Harry Allen: Love Songs Live!

Read "Love Songs Live!" reviewed by Dave Nathan

by Dave Nathan
January 1, 2001

Nagel Heyer has put together an album of romantic love songs performed by the Coleman Hawkins influenced, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims like tenor horn of Harry Allen. All of the tracks were compiled from previously released recordings of live concerts, mostly in Hamburg where Allen was on the stage with a variety of first rate jazz musicians. Given that virtually every song is played in that slow, ballad tempo, this album could just as well have been titled Music for ...

182

Album Review

Dave McKenna: Dave "Fingers" McKenna

by Dave Nathan
November 1, 2000

Dave McKenna fills more than five pages in Tom Lord's Jazz Discography and those are just his albums as a leader excluding the scores of albums he has been on as a sideman. Although dubbed by many as one of jazz piano's legends, McKenna dismisses it all by saying that he is just a saloon player. That falls into the same category as Frank Sinatra's deprecating self characterization that he was nothing more than a saloon singer.

This album is ...

219

Album Review

Dave McKenna and Buddy DeFranco: Dave McKenna and Buddy DeFranco: You Must Believe in Swing

Read "Dave McKenna and Buddy DeFranco: You Must Believe in Swing" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
March 1, 1998

Sing, Sing, Sing. Dave McKenna and Buddy DeFranco have been active musicians over approximately that same period. Both are recognized as expert in their respective musical areas. Dave McKenna is an acknowledged master of the swing piano school, specializing in songs of the 1930s. Buddy DeFranco is reputed to be the evolutionary link between Benny Goodman and Eddie Daniels. These two performers make for a splendid and interesting duo. The clarinet, because of Benny Goodman, will forever be heard in ...

311

Album Review

Dave McKenna: Christmas Ivory

by Jim Santella
November 1, 1997

Widely respected for his clean, animated bass lines and fluid, swinging right hand melodies, Dave McKenna has put together an hour of solo piano work for the Christmas season. All alone, with the microphones adjusted to further define right and left hands, McKenna provides the listener with a pleasant respite from days of weary holiday shopping.

In the spirit of Christmas, some lyrics are provided with the liner notes, and McKenna's comfortable consonant methods could provide suitable sing-along music for ...

335

Album Review

Dave McKenna: Christmas Ivory

by Robert Spencer
November 1, 1997

Dave McKenna is 67 years old, virtually the same age as Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and Sonny Rollins. For pianists that lands his formative years in the days of Duke, Basie, even Earl Hines. His piano playing bears a trace of the stride, edging over into Monk territory now and again. Not that Monk is an influence; McKenna and Monk may have had the same influences, but took them in different (and not-so-different directions.)

McKenna is fluid, agile, and cheerful. ...

Crowdfunding Campaign

Gentle Giant: A Film About Dave McKenna needs your support

Source: Greg Mallozzi
January 29, 2020

Described by the New York Times as the “hardest swinging pianist of all time", Dave McKenna's rare genius on the piano went largely unnoticed by the music world, until now. At a young age, Dave played with jazz-giants like Gene Krupa and Stan Getz. He went on to have an extensive recording career and played with people like Louis Armstrong and Tony Bennett. However, Dave's quiet personal life and his rocky relationship with the music industry caused his career to ...
read more

125

Obituary

Dave McKenna Memorial Service

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
December 7, 2008

Rifftides readers in Rhode Island and nearby parts of New England who were friends or admirers of Dave McKenna may wish to attend a memorial service for him today, Sunday, December 7. The pianist, a mainstream jazz powerhouse for decades, died on October 18. He was seventy-eight.

The 2 p.m service will be at The St. Ann Arts and Cultural Center, 84 Cumberland Street in Woonsocket, RI, McKenna's home town. His sister, Jean O'Donnell, will sing at the service. Other ...
read more

164

Opinion

The Projo on Dave McKenna

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
November 7, 2008

On election day, the Providence Journal ran two editorials concerning matters important to Rhode Islanders. One was about the governor's suggestion that it's time to end the state income tax (a questionable idea, the paper said). The other was on the death of pianist Dave McKenna, one of the state's cultural heroes. To read the Mckenna editorial, go here. Thanks to Rifftides reader Steve Caminis for calling it to our attention.

For the October 18 announcement of McKenna's death, video of ...
read more

247

Obituary

Dave McKenna RIP

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
October 19, 2008

That grim parade that Bill Crow mentioned a couple of postings ago shows no sign of running out of marchers. The latest major jazz artist to go is Dave McKenna. The pianist died this morning at the age of 78. His family posted the announcement on his web site, which includes a good biography. YouTube has a slew of videos of McKenna playing. This medley of two of his favorite tunes, “Nobody Else But Me" and “I'm Old Fashioned," is a good ...
read more

174

Obituary

Dave McKenna: Master Jazz Pianist Dies

Source: All About Jazz
October 19, 2008

Dave McKenna was widely regarded as one of the all-time legends of the jazz piano, but often shunned the spotlight to live and work on the Cape. McKenna, who was 78 when he died yesterday in Pennsylvania from lung cancer, is widely regarded among jazz musicians as one of the best jazz pianists ever to play. Born in Woonsocket, R.I., McKenna moved to the Cape in 1966 to raise his sons Stephen and Douglas. Jack Bradley, a friend of McKenna's ...
read more

322

Obituary

Dave McKenna: May 30, 1930 - October 18, 2008

Source: All About Jazz
October 18, 2008

From Dave McKenna's website: It is with great sadness that we let all of Dave's many fans know that he passed away on the morning of October 18. Dave's health had been deteriorating for some time and his death was peaceful, which brings great comfort to all of us who knew and loved him. In time we will be adding a tribute page to this site. Anyone who would like to offer a tribute can send it to Dave McKenna ...
read more

"What other pianists choose to say in a roar, McKenna expresses at something just above a whisper. And while other virtuosos revel in the brilliance of their technique, McKenna very nearly takes pains to disguise his. He is Chopin in a world that reveres Liszt, Mozart in an age that worships Mahler." Howard Reich - Chicago Tribune Arts Critic

"McKenna excels in his art. What is it that makes Dave so unique? His uncanny sense of time? His ability to sound like the entire Basie band? His penchant for resurrecting obscure but lovely ballads that deserve to be heard again? Or maybe it's the famous McKenna medleys that can go on for entire set without repetition. The man, indeed, deserves his reputation as quite simply the best at what he does." Ron Della Cheisa - WGBH Radio, Boston

"Joy is the word that would come first to mind if Dave McKenna showed up on a free-association test. My own joy in listening to him but also that joyful authority with which he swings, shapes melodies, and changes colors inside those melodies." Nat Hentoff, The Nation

"The McKenna piano style - like the great and often neglected songs he makes it his business to play - is built to last: rugged, durable, handsome, with no fins or frills. He has the knack of bringing out the best in a tune, highlighting its virtues and beauties, setting it off like a master jeweler. He can do it with such conviction because he does it with love and understanding."Fred Bouchard - jazz writer

"The McKenna technique is awesome, comprised of lyrically romantic right-hand swing and left-hand drive so powerful, so perfectly and wholly conceived, that it roars directly into the listeners imagination, conjuring contrabass, drums, at times an entire orchestra." Charlie Drago, East Side - West Side, Providence RI

"I think Dave McKenna is the best pianist playing right now. His lines flow like mad, he doesn't suffer from playing solo, and he's the most complete." George Shearing, jazz pianist

"New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliett called Dave McKenna 'the hardest swinging jazz pianist of all time.' Newsweek said he's 'the world's best ballroom piano player.' Me, I can't begin to describe what he does with his awesome two-handed style, except to say that his left hand suggests a rumbling volcano (a very musical mountain, however) and his right hand does things that are impossible. McKenna and those huge paws ought to be enshrined in the Smithsonian." Les Line, Compuserve Music/Arts Forum

"...The two hands together produce hammered gold...The total impact is the stuff of legend." Don Asher, San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle

"Without pyrotechnics, McKenna does what he does best, clearing away the clutter, bringing out the beauty of the melody and its relationship to chord changes, and, if the mood suits him, improvising his own ideas into the structure." Larry Kelp, jazz writer

"(McKenna) now stretches out a song by playing it in a variety of ways - for the sheer pleasure of the melody, then rumbling into a dark, swaggering but emphatically swinging attack that may burst into joyful stride piano before settling back to a gentle melodic caress." John S. Wilson, New York Times

"He sounds like he has 49 fingers and they never run out of breath. Ballads, swingers, boppers, funkers - he plays 'em all, and his left hand darts like a snake at a mouse." Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronicle

"He needs no rhythm or a bass man. He needs no one! He is his own band...actually, it seems sometimes that McKenna is equipped with two heads...one for the left hand, one for the right hand. And then he suddenly uses two heads in his music." Goren Norstrom, Gefle Dagblad (Sweden)

"The rhythmic impetus he developed summoned up high-balling freights. He built his massive rhythms ingeniously...but the slow numbers were just as hypnotic, for they offered listeners the chance to see how he does it in slow motion." Whitney Balliett, The New Yorker

"...Dave McKenna...is something special even in New York's glittering piano scene. He puts it all together in such a seamless, beautifully articulated flow that the final result is like nothing that has been heard before." John Wilson, The New York Times

"McKenna is a complete pianist who uses the entire keyboard much like an orchestra. His left hand is such a pile-driving rhythm-keeper that in a small group setting like this, a bass player would be sent to the showers early." Ken Franckling, United Press International

"McKenna...got down to work, spinning out a melodic line, supporting it with his signature rumbling bass. In his combination of power and delicacy, he makes you imagine a linebacker who's also a microsurgeon...When you're in McKenna's superbly capable hands, the world goes away and you can dream, forget your troubles and just get happy." Cyra McFadden, jazz writer

"The best I can describe it, Dave McKenna plays like he has three hands. ...It sounds complicated. It is complicated. But like all great artists, McKenna makes what he does sound simple. When he blows through a song it sounds like that's the way the song is supposed to be played. He respects the material even while making it his own. And, not incidentally, he swings harder than any piano player I've ever heard." Robert L. Doerschuk, Senior Associate Editor, Keyboard Magazine

Show less