Ralph Sutton Trio

Ralph Earl Sutton was born on 4 November 1922 in Hamburg, Missouri, and died on 30 December 2001 in Evergreen, Colorado. After several years of local piano work he withdrew from NE Missouri State University in 1941 to become a member of Jack Teagarden’s band. Following military service he moved to St. Louis, where appearances on a sequence of radio broadcasts presented by jazz writer Rudi Blesh quickly brought him broader recognition. Between the late 1940s and the middle 1950s he held a steady engagement at Eddie Condon’s Greenwich Village club in New York and joined the guitarist on both radio and television programs. In 1956 Sutton settled in San Francisco, performing with Bob Scobey’s dixieland ensemble and cutting several albums there.

Throughout the 1960s he performed chiefly as a soloist while also sitting in with various traditional groups; late in the decade he helped form the World’s Greatest Jazz Band. From that point forward his career advanced steadily through a succession of recordings and international tours presented both alone and with changing ensembles. Among the musicians who joined him on these projects were Ruby Braff, Jay McShann, Kenny Davern and Peanuts Hucko. He maintained a high level of technical command and creative freshness on the bandstand well into the late 1990s.

Sutton stood among the foremost pianists working in the stride lineage established by James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. His touch could be powerful or buoyant according to the demands of any given piece. Although his language reached back through ragtime, blues and Harlem stride, he infused every performance with such fresh energy that the material always sounded newly created.