JR Monterose

JR Monterose possessed a very strong and personal emotional tone on the tenor sax, and he is one of the underrated masters of the modern jazz era.

Frank Monterose, Jr. was born in 1927 and raised in Utica, NY.  The moniker JR comes not from initials but from being a Jr. but he usually spelled it without punctuation. Monterose started his professional career briefly in the big bands of Buddy Rich and Claude Thornhill.  As a young man, he also performed widely in upstate New York in various settings under his own name.

Monterose moved to New York City in 1954 where he quickly established himself in the modern jazz scene.  He performed with various notable groups and appeared on some seminal recordings of the period.  Among his credits are classic albums from stays with Teddy Charles and Charles Mingus, participation in Kenny Dorham’s regular working band “The Jazz Prophets”, and collaborations with Hod O’Brien and Wilbur Ware, among others.

 In the 1960's, the vagabond Monterose moved on, with stops as a local legend in places like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the West Coast, and then many years in European outposts.  Monterose returned to the United States in the late 1970's and became a fixture in Albany and elsewhere in upstate New York in venues like the Lark Tavern.   He died of cancer in 1993 at the age of 66.

This program features major recordings, such as Mingus’s “Pithecanthropus Erectus” Charles’s “Relaxo Abstracto”, and Dorham’s Café Bohemia dates, as well as Monterose’s sides as a leader, ranging from Blue Note in the 1950's, to rarer later discs.

 

originally broadcast March 17, 2024

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