Lou Levy

Louis Abraham Levy, pianist: born Chicago 5 March 1928; three times married (five children); died San Clemente, California 23 January 2001.

Louis Abraham Levy, pianist: born Chicago 5 March 1928; three times married (five children); died San Clemente, California 23 January 2001.

"As far as I'm concerned Lou's got a job for life with me if he wants it," Stan Getz told me in July 1981. "He's been my favourite pianist since we were together in Woody Herman's band in 1948. He's worked for Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Peggy Lee, but he should have been in my quartet all along." By the end of the year Getz had replaced Lou Levy with another pianist.

But the two men remained friends until Getz died in 1991. "Stan and I have been together on and off for more than 30 years," Levy said.

Off the stand we've been the closest friends, so it's natural that we have a musical rapport. We understand each other's playing and agree on just about everything musically. You'll notice with Stan that whenever anyone else is playing he listens. That's so rare in most of the bands I've played in.

It was important for Getz to have Levy's approval. After playing a particularly stunning solo one night he turned to Levy and said "Now who's your favourite tenor player?" "Al Cohn," replied the deadpan Levy. "Isn't he yours?"

Levy, shunned by the major record companies, was nevertheless one of the best jazz pianists of all. He was second to none as an accompanist, being fought over by the top singers. He worked as Frank Sinatra's pianist from 1967 and in addition to Fitzgerald, Vaughan and Lee, he played for Lena Horne, June Christy, Nancy Wilson, Anita O'Day, Mary Ann McCall, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Herb Jeffries and for his long-time partner Pinky Winters.

Peggy Lee used Levy as her accompanist for 18 years from 1955. She paid her trio well and always saw to it that they travelled first class when on the road. But inevitably there were dips in such a long association. On stage she was fulsome in praise of her musicians, but occasionally she would embarrass them by criticising them to the audience. One night after the second tune at the Basin Street East Club in New York she started to say some uncomplimentary things about them. So, instead of going into the next tune, Levy played the "closer", Lee's exit music, and then walked off the stage and out of the club.

Levy, who thought it irrelevant that he had played on Sinatra's recording of "My Way", was a friend of the singer's and played at Sinatra's home each Christmas Eve. He recalled, during one of several broadcasts that we did together, playing at many of Sinatra's parties and in particular at one where the guests included Ronald and Nancy Reagan, James Stewart and Jack Benny.

Seemingly gifted with unfailing taste and imagination, Levy had begun to study piano when he was 12. He listened to the recordings of Lester Young and Charlie Parker and the pianists Bud Powell and Art Tatum. He quickly matched their dexterity and grew up already versed in the new Bebop music. He was never a fortissimo player, but as his extended solos with Getz showed, he none the less played with great power. "I hope it's the kind of fire Bud Powell had," he said.

He began his career with bands in Chicago in 1945, playing with men like Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt. By 1947 he was working with top bands like those of Chubby Jackson and George Auld. In that year he worked for two weeks as Sarah Vaughan's accompanist when she came to the city. "She taught me so much, because she played piano, and it was from her I first learned about accompaniment." With Jackson he toured Scandinavia, working for the first time with the trumpeter Conte Candoli and the vibraphone player Terry Gibbs.

Levy first attracted international notice when in 1948 he became the pianist in Woody Herman's "Four Brothers" band, which included the tenor players Stan Getz, Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. Levy joined them in creating the new style of "cool" jazz. It was here that he became a drug addict, and his addiction lasted till the end of his life. As late as last year his friend Herb Alpert was paying for Levy to attend a $1,000-a-day rehabilitation centre.

The big band business collapsed in 1949 and Herman disbanded. Levy went with the Charlie Shavers-Louie Bellson sextet and then joined the revitalised Tommy Dorsey band in 1950. He left music to work in publishing for three years before returning in 1954 to play as a soloist at the Blue Note in Chicago. He worked for the impresario Norman Granz as accompanist to Ella Fitzgerald from 1957 to 1962 and during the same time played concert tours for Granz with Getz and the Jazz at the Philharmonic units. He had long solos throughout the Stan Getz albums that Granz recorded during these years. Levy appeared on innumerable recordings but his best exposure on a major label, virtually as an equal partner, came on the two albums with Getz done for the Concord label in 1981.

During the Eighties and Nineties Levy taught piano accompaniment at the Dick Grove School of Music and, in what was to be the consummation of his musical life, recorded three superb albums for the French Gitanes label. One, By Myself, was of solo piano and another, Ya Know, featured the two basses of Eric Von Essen and Pierre Michelot. The third, Happy Madness, a collection of songs sung by Pinky Winters, showed that the two were as good a match musically as they were in the rest of their lives.

Levy never recovered fully from the removal of a brain tumour two years ago. He died suddenly at the home of Max Bennett, the bass player who had worked alongside him in the years with Peggy Lee.