One of the finest jazz guitarists in Philadelphia,
Jimmy Bruno is a passionate hard bopper who loves to swing aggressively
but can be a very sensitive ballad player when he puts his mind
to it. The Italian-American was raised in South Philly, where
he fell in love with jazz as a kid and took up the guitar at the
age of seven. Growing up, he was influenced by such bop guitar
greats as Joe Pass, Kenny Burrell, Barney Kessel and Jimmy Raney
but also admired the pre-bop work of Eddie Lang, Charlie Christian
and Django Reinhart. At 19, Bruno hit the road as a sideman for
The Buddy Rich Big Band before ended up spending much of his youth
living in the West--where he did a lot of non-jazz gigs in Los
Angeles and Las Vegas.
Although those live and studio pursuits paid the bills for Bruno,
he never gave up hard bop and hoped to eventually be a full-time
jazz musician. Returning to Philly in 1988, a 35-year-old Bruno
was determined to do exactly that even it meant being poor for
awhile. An article in the Philadelphia Weekly quoted Bruno as
saying that he went from earning several thousand dollars a week
in the West to working for minimum wage at "a real dive"
in Philly's Fairmount section--but that he was happy and fulfilled
because he was playing live jazz five nights a week.
Eventually, Bruno was able to give up part-time bartending and
concentrate on nothing but playing and teaching jazz. In the early
1990s, he came to the attention of the late Concord Jazz founder/president
Carl Jefferson, who was impressed with his playing and signed
him to the label. Bruno's first album as a leader, Sleight of
Hand, was recorded in 1991, followed by other bop-oriented Concord
dates like Burnin' in 1994 and Like That (which featured organist
Joey DeFrancesco) in 1995. The late 1990s found Bruno continuing
to record for Concord while playing and teaching extensively around
Philly. His first Live at Birdland recording appeared in 1997;
its sequel, a collaboration with tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton,
followed two years later. Bruno next resurfaced in the spring
of 2000 with Polarity.
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