Ellis Larkins born 15 May 1923

Ellis Larkins (May 15, 1923 – September 29, 2002) was an American jazz pianist born in Baltimore, Maryland, known for his two recordings with Ella Fitzgerald: the albums Ella Sings Gershwin (1950) and Songs in a Mellow Mood (1954). He was also the pianist on the first solo sides by singer Chris Connor on her album Chris (1954). 

The oldest of six siblings - all of whom played or sang - Larkins was the son of a pianist mother and a violinist father from the Baltimore City Colored Orchestra. He was introduced to the violin at the age of two, and the piano two years later; by 11, he was performing with the City Colored Orchestra, giving a recital for Eleanor Roosevelt in 1935, and hearing her conviction that he would become a great musician. 

Larkins was the first African American to attend the Peabody Conservatory of Music, an institute in Baltimore. But though he continued with classical studies through high school, and at New York's Juilliard School of Music in 1940, the jazz piano sounds of Count Basie and Fats Waller increasingly filtered into his sensibilities. A shy individual, who hated public speaking, he told the New Yorker that the two strands came to the rescue when he had to give a dissertation in his final examinations. 

"I knew I couldn't get up there and talk," said Larkins. "I was standing on a corner of Madison Avenue, on my way to the event, when what I'd do came to me: demonstrate the similarities between the melodic lines of Bach and boogie-woogie. The teacher told me afterward that he knew I'd made up the whole thing on the spot, but that I'd done it very well." 

Initially as a fallback to help fund his studies (and perhaps reflecting a suspicion that there was no work for black concert pianists in America at that time), Larkins joined a jazz trio, led by guitarist Billy Moore at the Café Society Uptown. But his adaptability, and the artistic modesty that made him happier to advance the creativity of others than draw attention to his own, brought him a constant flow of offers. 

                                  

Though he occasionally led trios of his own, including, among others, the trumpeter Bill Coleman, and recorded a little under his own name - quiet, elegant, low-lights music typical of his fastidious approach - Larkins mostly worked as an accompanist to clarinetist Edmond Hall and singers Helen Humes and Mildred Bailey. He was constantly busy in New York clubs, cabarets and recording sessions at the end of the 1940s, and into the early 1950s, and also found work as a vocal coach. 

But it was his prowess as a session player that brought him into contact with Ella Fitzgerald. His collaboration with Ella on some of the best songs of the era, was the one that raised his profile. It came in the early 1950s, as she was changing from a gifted and charming purveyor of swing and novelty pop songs to a class act who could illuminate sophisticated materials - such as on her first great album, Ella Sings Gershwin (1950), on which Larkins featured. But he also worked with Mildred Bailey and blues singer Joe Williams, among others, and he made their talents shine all the brighter. 

Stylistically, his playing was closely related to that of the Billie Holiday collaborator and trio-leader Teddy Wilson - an even, but subtly pushing, pulse, clipped melody lines almost offhandedly embellished, quiet dynamics, smooth legato phrasing. Though he was best known as an accompanist, Larkins recorded several solo albums in the 1950s and  recorded with Ruby Braff, and Beverly Kenney. 

His 1960s work included recordings or performances with Eartha Kitt, Georgia Gibbs and Harry Belafonte. Larkins moved to southern California in the late 1960s to accompany Joe Williams, a job that lasted into the 1980s. He also became a favourite at Gregory's, a club on Manhattan's Upper East Side, and at the Carnegie Tavern, and appeared in a short Swiss film, simply called Ellis Larkins, in 1973. After a spell in Los Angeles, he was back in Baltimore in the early 1990s. His last recordings included a solo performance in 1992, and duets of Irving Berlin songs with cornetist Ruby Braff, a performer as subtle, surefooted and lyrically graceful as Larkins himself. 

Ellis Larkins died from pneumonia at the Maryland General Hospital in his hometown of Baltimore on Sept. 30, 2002, at the age of 79. 

(Edited from John Fordham obit @ The Guardian & Wikipedia)