Remembering Mike Longo

Age 83, New York City
Passed away on March 22, 2020

Mike Longo, who led a distinguished jazz career as a pianist, composer and educator, notably as longtime musical director for Dizzy Gillespie, died on Sunday at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.

“He was a consummate musician, a dedicated musician and instructor,” says bassist Paul West, whose close musical association with Longo started in 1968, when both were members of Gillespie’s working band.

Longo served as musical director of that band, which had a front line of Gillespie on trumpet and James Moody on saxophones and flute, from the late 1960s through the first half of the ‘70s, and intermittently for more than a decade after that. He appears on Gillespie’s live Impulse! album Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac, and several others, including Portrait of Jenny. Here is footage of the band from a concert in Copenhagen in ’68, playing a Longo original called “Ding-a-Ling.”

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