Digital Interviews: When were you born, and when did you first start playing the violin?

JF: That’s a long while, I’m telling you that. I was born December 27, 1916. [laughs] We were living on the south side of Chicago. We were very poor, even before the Depression. We scrounged around to make money any way we could. After school, a lot of the kids used to go through the alleys looking for junk. Anything we found, we’d save. On Saturday, a little ragman would come around with a horse and wagon, and say, “Rags and old iron. Rags and old iron.” I’d save my accumulation of junk and sell it to the ragman. At the end of the week, I’d get 25 cents, 30 cents -- that was a big week. My mother would save newspapers and sell them. We kept doing that. I was selling junk, whatever it was. If I saw a copper pipe, it would be like gold. When I saw something that looked like pewter, and I’d scratch it, and I’d see that beautiful copper… [gasps] "Seven cents a pound for copper!" It’s crazy, but it’s true. So, he talked my mother into taking lessons with his son, who was a violin pupil himself but wanted to start teaching. He had a small-sized violin, so I started taking lessons with the ragman’s son when I was seven and a half, and studied with him -- a quarter a lesson. Walked about a mile for a lesson, a little more than a mile, and back. Then he moved, and that was bad, because I had to take three streetcars to get to where he was, and I would get sick on the streetcar. So, those were not happy days.

DI: Were you a music fan at the time?

JF: No. I knew nothing about music. He just talked my mother into getting a violin. She was born in Venice, Italy, and she knew nothing about it. None of my brothers or sisters were musical. Luckily, this ragman tried to get a pupil for his son -- it was that simple. Then she had trouble with 25 cents a lesson. It sort of phased away, the combination of not being able to afford it, and thinking that I’d gotten, maybe, good enough that I might be interested on my own. So it just phased out, and I continued playing. I still sold junk to the ragman, and when I got into junior high school, I was hoping that I could join a little orchestra, but they had no orchestra. They only had a very mediocre little band, and the only instrument that was left that nobody wanted to play was the tuba. So, it was sort of prophetic, because I started playing tuba. You have to go to high school, and by then I was thinking dance bands and girls. Well, you can’t play a tuba in a dance band. You have to play string bass. So I met some old Italian guy who had a beat-up string bass. I remember distinctly it had only three strings on it, and the G-string, which was a gut string, was tied in a knot. I didn’t know anything about bass, so I just started slapping around. But, for the next half century, I was a bass player. I made 90 or 95 percent of my living playing bass. I would play the violin very sporadically through those years. All of a sudden, you get to play club dates, they cut the cake and you play [sings] “I Love You Truly” on the violin, and then you put it back and you play bass again.

DI: Who did you play with?

JF: I was playing at the Drake Hotel, playing bass and singing with a group called the Four Californians. None of us was from California, but that didn’t matter. We were alternating with Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians, like a 28-piece orchestra, all wearing white Eton jackets, at the Gold Coast Room at the Drake Hotel. In the summer, they changed it into the Silver Forest Room. Imagine a band that big, the singers, six days a week, filling the room with people in suits. That’s what I did. And then I worked [at] Club Citro in Chicago, and I was singing on radio, but I never told people how old I was. I was too young. I told them I was 18, and I was not quite 17 yet. I was singing on radio, so I was a big hit at Fenger High School. I sang on some song, [sings] “One minute to one, one minute more to say I love you.” When I got to the high note, my voice cracked, and the bouncer says, “Don’t sing no more.” I thought he had meant, "Don’t sing that song anymore." So the next night, I kept singing, some very innocuous song, something like, [sings] “Come to the church in the wildwood...” You’re in the back playing bass, and you you have to sing the next chorus, so in the middle of the song you stop, you set your bass down, you walk in front to the microphone and you sing. When I started singing, the bouncer -- I got whacked on the back of my head so hard, he grabbed me by my collar while I was on radio, and pulled me off the bandstand, across the dance floor on my heels. The kids in school the next day [said], “What happened? All of a sudden, you stopped singing.” Well I would tell them what happened, but I was embarrassed, so I said, “Well, the song was restricted.” [laughs] “The Little Brown Church In The Vale,” restricted. [laughs]

DI: You continued on the bass?

JF: Getting better on it, getting better on it. Then somebody heard that I played bass but also violin now and then. Chico Marx had an orchestra, and the music they had was from Ben Pollack’s band -- they were a precursor of Benny Goodman. All of a sudden, I was on a tour with Chico Marx, playing theaters between movies. He said, “Bring your violin on the stage.” It was at the Tower Theater in Kansas City, I remember. I had no idea what he was going to do with it. [Italian accent] “Aye, Johnny, bringa da violin down.” He started asking me little questions, and the little thing worked into a routine. He said, “Do you know Gypsy Love Song?” I said, “I don’t know the verse, I know the chorus. If you play the verse, I’ll noodle on the violin.” I can remember him saying, “Okay, you noodle on the violin, and I’ll spaghetti on the piano.” You know, ridiculous. But, little by little, it became a good routine. Every theater we played, it would extend itself. I would play a beautiful crescendo and slide down, and he’d say, “You’d better pull up to a gas stand. You’ve got a slow leak.”

DI: So you’d come out as a featured person?

JF: Right. Also, there was a new kid on the block, probably his first professional job, formed a quartet, and I sang with him -- Mel Torme. Sang in the quartet with Mel Torme. The war broke out, so I joined the Coast Guard. I’m thinking to myself I’m on some shore looking for German subs, or something like that. Instead, I ended up in Ellis Island, and somebody had heard I played, so I started playing in the band immediately. All of a sudden, my bunkmate is Al Haig, a great bebop piano player, and across the bunk was Kai Winding, a great trombone player. Those are the people I played with. After the service, the minute I went back to Chicago, somebody in that band joined Jimmy Dorsey’s band, and they needed a bass player, and they called me. That was the first band after the war.

DI: You must have had some great adventures.

JF: Oh, yeah. You know, the bus. It’s that same old thing. I never “took” anything, you know. I’ve yet to smoke a normal cigarette in my entire life. It was very strange. All kids that are young want to emulate their peers, and, luckily, I never got into that bag. I’m not bragging. I’m just lucky.

DI: How did the Soft Winds Trio come about?

JF: We were playing with Jimmy Dorsey, and he broke the news that he was going to take about a two-month vacation. Well, I didn’t want to be out of work for two months. Long before the war, the Four Californians had played at a place in Buffalo called the Stuyvesant Hotel. It had a little glass dance floor with lights underneath, with a picture of Peter Stuyvesant with his peg-leg. I said, “We’re going to be out of work. Let’s form a trio.” The guitar player was Herb Ellis, and the piano player was Lou Carter. I called Darwin Martin, the owner of the hotel, and I said, “We have a great trio. We’re just leaving Jimmy Dorsey’s band, and it’s a super trio.” We never had a trio, you know. [laughs] So, he booked us. We started playing. It was a beautiful little room. Because none of us was married, we had a lot of time to rehearse, and we got all these beautiful, intricate arrangements. Herb Ellis would play the melody an octave lower than the piano.

DI: You guys were composing pieces as well, like “Detour Ahead,” which has been covered by many artists. Whose version have you liked the best?

JF: There’s so many now. First you have just a piano, like Bill Evans. There’s Billie Holiday. Dianne Reeves did a beautiful job; they embellished a couple chords, made it really beautiful. There are so many now that I haven’t heard them all.

DI: Then you went back to Chicago?

JF: Considering when I was away during the war, and with the Soft Winds, I ended up being away for like 14 years. There came a time when I said, “I’ve been away from Chicago all these years. I want to go back.” I came back to Chicago, on the phone, saying, “My name is Johnny Frigo and I play bass, and I play some violin. I’m a bass player, and I know a lot of songs,” like a kid asking for work. And I sat in with different people.

DI: You sat in with a litany of great artists, like Mahalia Jackson.

JF: I did her albums on bass, with a woman piano player, Mildred [Falls]. Did one in a Baptist church, and one in the CBS building. I played bass on the first Dinah Washington “What A Difference A Day Makes,” then they recorded it again in New York. And I got into commercials. I’m talking 1950. Nobody knew what a commercial was before that. Real dumb little things, you know. I was one of the first to ever play commercials in Chicago, and that was my home for the next 35 years. I ended up being first-call bass player on upright. Then when the Beatles came in with electric bass, I said, “Oh, I’m too old to be able…,” and my wife, very smart, she says, “You better get on that electric bass, because that’s where it’s going to be for a while.” So, at home, without the amplifier, I would just sit and watch TV, and I’d try to play. I’d get all those buzzes when my fingers were not right. I made that transition. I stayed first-call electric bass player. It ended up that I played, probably, on more commercials than any bass player ever did for those 30 years, because that’s all I did.

DI: Did you also perform stray gigs around town?

JF: I hired a piano player by the name of Dick Marks. [laughs] I happened to hear him play at the Pump Room, because I used to play there years ago, and we formed a duo, Marks and Frigo. There were never any little jazz duos and trios then, it was very early in that stage, even before Nat King Cole Trio. Dick was a very imposing guy, and I booked him on his first commercial. The light went on in his head. “Hey. What is this?” In no time, he was the biggest jingle producer in the United States. I spent 35 years as first call bass player on commercials. I started so late with what I’m doing [now], because I was isolated in the studios, playing on all the commercials.

DI: In 1957, you also released an album for Mercury where you were the headliner.

JF: That was so isolated. One guy knew I played fiddle, and he said, “Let’s do a fiddle album.” I practiced a lot for that album, because I wasn’t playing violin much. My chops were slightly together because I got a job on the National Barn Dance, the Chicago equivalent of the Grand Ole Opry. Because I played on all the country stuff, my facility came back on violin. Because of that, I did this isolated album, called I Love Johnny Frigo…He Swings. I found myself playing very well “violinistically,” but I wasn’t really playing out to be able to be comfortable with just blowing and playing with everybody.

DI: How did you finally achieve that comfort level?

JF: The thing that really turned me around was, one night I finished a job at the Conrad Hilton Hotel, and I had to hire seven other violins, so there were eight violins playing on the steps of the hotel. We were playing Strauss waltzes and things. Across the street was a jazz showcase, and it says, “Herb Ellis, Ray Brown and Monty Alexander.” I knew Herbie, with the Soft Winds and with Jimmy Dorsey’s band. I happened to know Ray Brown. So, I came in with my fiddle, and they asked me to play. I never played in a jazz club before. It was the last set. I played a couple of numbers. About a month later, Monty Alexander called from Europe. He said, “We’re doing a live album in New York. Would you like to do a tune or two on it?” I said, “Sure.” Ray Brown owned, or was part owner of, a club called Club Loa in Santa Monica. So, [critic] Leonard Feather heard that I was coming there, playing fiddle. I was still in Chicago, and he called me up and he says, “There’s some mistake here. You’re playing with Ray Brown and Herb Ellis on fiddle? You’re a bass player.” I said, “Yeah, but I’ve been playing fiddle. I started on violin.”

The day before we opened, there’s a big spread in the Los Angeles Times that Leonard Feather wrote about this bass player he knew from the Soft Winds, from “Detour Ahead,” playing fiddle. The night of the opening, he brought an LA jazz critic. Here I am with Ray Brown, Herb Ellis and Monty Alexander, playing a half-hour set and calling me up, and they’re my rhythm section for my initial thing playing jazz. How can you beat that? There’s no one like Herbie who plays great time. We were playing “Lester Leaps In,” and all of a sudden my string broke, and that puts all your other strings out of tune. I had to keep playing. Anyway, the next day in the paper, I got a very, very good review. The last night we were there -- we were only there three nights -- the bartender says, “You have a phone call here from the Tonight Show.” I said, ”The Tonight Show? Wow.” So, it was two o’clock in the morning, and I had to go back to Chicago. So, I called, and it was the Talent Coordinator of the Tonight Show. He said, “We read the two reviews back-to-back, and it looks like an interesting story. You’re in your early seventies.” I got on the show, and on the show was Bruce Willis and [Steven Wright] the guy that has all these short jokes: “I went into the general store. They had nothing specific.”

DI: Wasn’t it about this time you released the Live From Studio A CD?

JF: We were doing the Dick Gibson concerts. Dick Gibson decided to do all these jazz parties and these jazz concerts around the country. I would never have been involved with that, except that Monty Alexander mentioned it to Dick, and he had me come up to Denver and do these parties. I have to give Monty Alexander a big piece of the pie for what’s happening to me, because he was the featured artist on this particular jazz festival at the Paramount Theater in Denver. It was the same trio -- Monty Alexander, Herb Ellis and Ray Brown. Monty Alexander, being so magnanimous, instead of just letting me lay in the weeds with somebody else, invited me up to play two songs with his set. In the next day’s paper -- I hate to say this, it sticks in my craw, and I was not deserving of it -- it said “Violinist Becoming All-time Great.” I said, “Monty Alexander invited me up. He shouldn’t have even done it.” I apologized profusely to the guys. Bucky Pizzarelli was about to do the first jazz record on Chesky Label. Before that, they only remastered classics. It was supposed to be Bucky with Stephane, because they’d been together for many years. But we were doing these Dick Gibson jazz concerts. Naturally, I’m there with Bucky in the back room, and he’d say, “You know this song?” I’d say, “Yeah.” And I’d say, “You know this song?” He’d say, “Oh, yeah, that’s a great song.” So he called Dave Chesky and said, “Let’s try one with this fiddle player I’m playing with. I think it would be real good.” Bucky was the one that really got me on the thing. Because I had the lead instrument, it ended up being Johnny Frigo with Bucky Pizzarelli and John Pizzarelli, Butch Miles and Ron Carter.

DI: How do you manage to maintain such a clear sound?

JF: Don’t confuse me. [laughs]

Darol Anger: [laughs] We were just talking about that this morning, about the centipede.

JF: Oh, yeah. That’s funny. Tell them that. [laughs]

Darol Anger: Somebody asked the centipede, “How do you walk? How do you get all those legs going?” The centipede started thinking about it [pauses, thinking]…”Oh, my god, no. Oh, no! I can’t! [stumbling, laughing] Oh, no! OH, NO!”

DI: [laughs] I guess you try not to think about it.

JF: I know I’m a little more mainstream than most of the guys. Maybe the romanticism in me is that I don’t get too technically “outside,” like a lot of fiddle players like to do, which is magnificent. Darol, Matt and the other great fiddle that play far out, it’s beautiful. But I do what I do, the way I do it, and I don’t know if I want to change what I do now, because I think I have my own stamp.

DI: How did you team up with Darol?

JF: I don’t know where Darol might have heard me. I’m telling you, I mean this, [laughs] I would even say that if he was here now. [Editors note: Darol is in room.] He was a big influence. In fact, they called me from Strings magazine. They said that they wanted to do a feature story on me. I found out that Darol had told them about me and praised me. I’m forever thankful for that, because he was very instrumental, in part, of my late resurgence, in what I’m doing now.

DI: And you’ve also played recently at the Floating Jazz Fest?

JF: I was one of the guys that sat in with different people. Dick Hyman was one of them, and he would say, “Old Man River.” I’d say, “I never played that song.” You know, it was still new to me. [laughs] I happened to sit in with the vibe player Terry Gibbs. He played some things I knew, and then I did a ballad. [Producer] Hank O’Neal liked what he heard, so he booked me again. By the time the [festival] album came out, it was the 50th anniversary of the Soft Winds. We were apart all those years, so he booked us again for a double CD called Softwinds: Then & Now, 50 years apart. We met again on the ship, and we had never played together, the three of us, since 1947. They all played wonderfully. It was a nice album. Because of the history of it, part of the album was interviews between us, of all the interesting things that have happened in our lives. That turned out great.

DI: You’ve played music for 77 years.

JF: 35 of those years were just playing bass, which helped me in my jazz playing. Subconsciously, when you’re playing bass, you’re hearing the basic note of those chords. You’re hearing the chord changes. The bass catalogued subconsciously, in my mind, the way the chords go in music.

DI: What would you say to someone out there who’s just starting to play today?

JF: First of all, I’d tell them to get a legitimate background. Don’t learn to run before you can walk. Then, listen -- just listen. You can talk all about the books, you can say this, you can do this. But, listen. A lot of the fiddle players in the symphony, adults, say, “I want to learn to play jazz.” Well, they have been so steeped in academia in the fiddle. “Hold your hand like this. Hold your bow like this. Don’t do this. Don’t do that.” They’re in a straightjacket, and they’re panicked to try anything that is not on the written note, instead of just listening up, and…listening. Do your own thing, even if it’s not what the teacher would tell you to do.