Johnny Guarnieri
b. 23 March 1917, New York City, New York, USA, d. 7 January 1985. Although he studied piano formally, Guarnieri's musical future was determined through meeting Fats Waller, Willie The Lion Smith, James P. Johnson and Art Tatum. Johnson told him, ‘After me and Fats, you're number three.’ Although adept at playing stride piano, despite having remarkably small hands, Guarnieri's breakthrough into the bigtime came when he played with the swing era big bands of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Tommy Dorsey. With Shaw, he played harpsichord in the band-within-the-band, the Gramercy Five. During the early '40s Guarnieri also worked extensively in the studios, making countless broadcasts, many with the Raymond Scott orchestra at CBS, and appearing on numerous record dates including sessions with Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Don Byas and Louis Armstrong. Resident on the west coast from the early '60s, he occasionally toured and recorded but spent many years as the house pianist, first at the Hollywood Plaza Hotel and then at The Tail Of The Cock, a restaurant on Ventura Boulevard, Los Angeles. Night after night he played at a Hollywood-style piano-bar, tailoring his playing to suit the needs of the clientele who, too often, were there to be seen and heard rather than to listen. (Guarnieri needed the job to help pay extensive family hospital bills.) Guarnieri's solo recordings display his prodigious technique, his love of old songs, his stride beginnings and a predilection for tunes in 5/4 time.