The Philosophy of Urso
No other jazz player in Denver has Phil Urso's pedigree.
Phil Urso holds a letter that trumpeter Chet Baker wrote to
him in 1971.
“I have always felt you were and are the most underrated of
America's jazz players and composers,” Baker begins. His
letter continues for a few pages, telling Urso about his
experiences abroad, and then concludes, “Well, Phil, we'll
say goodbye for now with one more reminder that we love
you and wish you all good things, and when anyone asks me
about my favorite tenor player, the answer is always Phil
Urso.”
Urso puts the letter away with a smile and says, “He's layin'
it on kind of thick.”
But Urso never heard from Baker again. In 1988, the once-
handsome trumpeter was a wreck of a man who capped off
his difficult life by falling (or being tossed), trumpet still in
hand, out of the second-story window of the Prins Hendrick
Hotel in Amsterdam. (For those who speculate that Baker
was helped to his death, the usual explanation is a drug deal
gone bad, but no one seems to know for sure.) Urso's face
clouds over when talk turns toward Baker's years of drug
abuse. Three decades ago his friend's ongoing self-
destruction was one of the reasons he fled from New York
City, the center of the jazz world, back home to Denver and
the jazz bush leagues.
At 74, Urso is not a rich man, but he and his wife, Bruna,
are comfortable. They've lived in the same pleasant
Lakewood home for almost thirty years. Their daughter,
Stephanie, lives just down the street and recently had a
baby of her own.
But still, he ails.
If there's a general though unspoken rule of playing the
saxophone, it is this: You cannot play with no teeth.
Urso used to have teeth. For the half-century he has been
playing the saxophone, he has had teeth, and in those
years, he's not only made a living as a jazz musician, which
is no small feat, he has also witnessed the birth of modern
jazz. He's played with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles
Davis, Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver, Nat Cole, Woody
Herman, Bill Evans, Gerry Mulligan. With the exception of
Rollins, who at 68 still performs with ferocity, the rest are
dead. “I'm surprised I beat 'em out and I'm still alive,” Urso
says.
Though he recorded albums under his own name, chances
are you've never heard of Phil Urso. But surely you've heard
of the pianist on Urso's debut album: the great Horace
Silver, pioneer of funky, hard-bop piano playing -- a cat with
a dozen albums at any well-stocked music store.
In some encyclopedias of the genre, Urso earns a
paragraph, a footnote. In others, nothing. Which is not to
say he wasn't a good musician. You don't play in the major
leagues if you don't have plenty of game.
“He's never been a real high-profile kind of guy,” says
musician Dave Rucker, a friend of Urso's. “He dedicated
himself to having a home life. But everyone knew him.”
However, Rucker adds, even in Denver, “I can't really say
he was the top dog.”
It's a common refrain. No one in Denver in the last forty
years has had anything approaching Urso's pedigree, yet
he's regarded by local musicians with a mix of indifference
and outright resentment. Musicians who were in the
audience at El Chapultepec would talk more loudly on nights
when Urso was on the bandstand, says owner Jerry Krantz.
“Even today, I see a lot of animosity toward Phil,” says
drummer John Arcotta. “I think people take Phil for granted.
The guy was a monster -- he'd come out on the bandstand
and kick everybody's ass, even his own. Knowing musically
what he knows, I think people get a little intimidated.”
Urso knows he is -- or was -- better than his critics, so he
doesn't really care what they say. What he cares about are
his teeth.
Earlier this year, they began to weaken. In late spring, he
had his bottom teeth removed; a month later, the tops
followed. Blowing through a saxophone mouthpiece creates
a lot of air pressure, and Fixodent is not strong enough to
keep his dentures stuck firmly to his gums. He has hopes
for another adhesive called SeaBond, which uses strips
made from some kind of seaweed/kelp extract to make it
super-sticky. But he continues to have other problems. A
protruding bone in his lower gums hurt like a son of a bitch
when he tried to play, so a few weeks ago he had the bone
filed down. Tenderness and stitches remain.
One day in August, Urso pulls out his horn, a Selmer Mark
VII, and tries to blow through the mouthpiece and neck of
the horn. He gets out a little squeaky sound, which is
normal, but he can only blow for a few seconds before he
stops. “I can't do it,” he says, “but I will.”
He does this every day, and every day he can hold the
sound longer. He has a Dixieland gig that pays $500 this
New Year's Eve, and he wants to be ready for it. He thinks
he will be on the tenor sax, not on the clarinet, whose tighter
embouchure puts even more pressure on his dentures.
So far, he refuses to change his equipment to speed his
return. He plays a La Voz medium reed, a middle-of-the-
road reed that helps create his softly driving, rolling-hills
style. Thicker reeds generate a stronger sound but require
more air pressure. Softer reeds are easier to play but
produce a weaker tone.
Sure, Urso could buy a weaker reed or take a razor and
shave his mediums down a bit, but then his tone is gone and
he can't play the high stuff -- and you need to play the high
stuff if you want to get up there with 'Trane, and he likes to
do that sometimes.
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