Mort Weiss born 20 April 1945

Mort Weiss (April 20, 1935 – October 13, 2021) was a bebop-oriented clarinet player with ten albums as leader to date. Mort’s playing style has been compared to such diverse entities as Jackson Pollack and Paul Desmond. His natural musical talent combine with his facility on the clarinet to produce his very own unique style.

Mort was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, and when he was nine, he was given an uncle’s metal clarinet and started taking lessons. After moving with his family to Los Angeles, he continued playing classical music, and during his teens studied with the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra's esteemed clarinettist, Antonio Remondi. After graduation and a year at the Westlake School of Music, the precocious teenaged Weiss soloed on several T.V. programs with the Freddie Martin Orchestra, a.k.a. "The Band of Tomorrow." Weiss' exposure to jazz began with Dixieland. But, when he first heard a Charlie Parker record, that was when he was hooked.

It was while he was in high school that Mort was introduced to jazz, and it quickly became his major interest. He stood in back alleys by open kitchen doors listening to Miles, Dexter, Buddy, Getz and all the others. He learned the blues from “Senator” Gene Wright, well-known bassist, visited jazz clubs and played in after-hours jam sessions whenever chance presented itself. Practicing 8 to 10 hours a day and playing with other aspiring jazz musicians kept him busy. At age 19, Mort was drafted into the Army and played in the Army Band. It was during his tour of duty that he learned the tenor saxophone and started gigging in R&B bands in and around Kansas City, Kansas, forming his own group after his discharge. In 1959 he recorded saxophone for the first and only time—on Eden Ahbez's composition “Wild Boy” (Sierra Records). It has since become a cult item having been compiled on half-a-dozen albums of early rock 'n' roll and novelty tunes. He toured the mid-west, Las Vegas and Los Angeles with his band, playing mostly R&B and Rock & Roll on the tenor sax. In 1965, he stopped playing, tired of his life-style and the music he had to play in order to make a living.

                       Here's "Bernies Tune" from above album

                                     

 Mort began working at a music store. He eventually became District Manager for the company's chain, and in 14 years opened his own store, The Sheet Music Shoppe, in Santa Ana. Under Weiss' direction, The Sheet Music Shoppe grew into the largest purveyor of printed music in Southern California. But Mort has a major natural talent for jazz and a great love for the clarinet. An acquaintance remembers that he never saw Mort without his clarinet case in his hand. He practiced continuously, even practicing clarinet on breaks during gigs when he was playing tenor sax. His talent and the results of his hard work have remained with him.

Although getting back into playing jazz had been a long-time dream for Mort, a flyer from a nearby college “Do you want to Play Jazz??”, recruiting players for a jazz combo, enticed him to get his clarinet out of the case and begin practicing. That was in July 2001. By October Mort had met Ron Eschete’ and the two had started playing together on a regular basis. In December, his first Jazz CD was out on his own SMS label. A double CD album “No Place To Hide” consisting of 19 songs was released in April 2002 with Ron Eschete’ playing a 7 string guitar and Mort Weiss on clarinet, a rare combination.

Between 2003 and 2015, SMS Jazz produced ten more recordings featuring Weiss and talented musicians such as Joey DeFrancisco, Ramon Banda, Dave Carpenter, Roy McCurdy, Luther Hughes, and Sam Most. Weiss' release of I'll Be Seeing You (SMS Jazz, 2012), is a quartet affair, featuring drummer Roy McCurdy, bassist Chris Conner and percussionist Ramon Banda. It is a modified clarinet trio related in spirit to Sonny Rollins' famous trios of the late 1950s. Lacking a harmony instrument, pressure is placed on Weiss and Conner to infer the harmonic structures usually provided by the piano or guitar. Weiss considered I'll Be Seeing You to contain his most fully-realized playing.

His last album  from 2015, Mort Weiss Is a Jazz Reality Show was deemed by critics to have been his best recording to date, which shows a man truly at one with himself, the world and the music.

Weiss died October 13, 2021, in Woodbridge, Virginia, from a heart failure, at the age of 86.

(Edited from Wikipedia & SMS Jazz)