Juan Tizol

Puerto Rican-born jazz musician

• Born: January 22, 1900
• Birthplace: Vega Baja, near San Juan, Puerto Rico
• Died: April 23, 1984
• Place of death: Inglewood, California

As a valve trombonist, and as the composer of the major jazz standards “Perdido” and “Caravan,” Tizol was an important participant in the music of the swing era and an early emissary of Puerto Rican musicianship to the United States.

Early Life

Juan Vicente Tizol Martínez (wahn TEE-zohl) was born in a village not far from San Juan, Puerto Rico. His father died when Juan Tizol was ten, and he was raised by his uncle, Manuel Tizol, a well-known musician and bandleader in San Juan. Juan Tizol’s uncle taught him violin and then euphonium and instilled in him the importance of punctuality and good money management.

By his teens, young Tizol had switched to the valve trombone and was playing in a local symphony orchestra. By the twentieth century, the valve trombone had lost favor among serious musicians because of its poor intonation, but its valve mechanism made it a handy instrument for performance of faster notes. The San Juan of his youth proved to be an excellent training ground for learning musicianship, because Puerto Rico enjoyed much cross-cultural fertilization. The Andalusian “tinge” that could be heard there later inspired Tizol’s compositions of “exotica,” such as “Caravan.”?

In 1920, Tizol immigrated to the United States. He remembered arriving in New York broke, and even his trombone had been lost on the way. He found his way to Washington, D.C., and was spotted by jazz bassist and fellow Puerto Rican Rafael “Ralph” Escudero, who gave him a job. Puerto Rican musicians were prized in orchestras for their musicianship and their ability to read music. In Washington, around 1920, he fell in love with an African American woman, Rosebud Browne. He wooed her successfully, and their marriage would last until her death in 1982.

During this period Tizol met Duke Ellington, who was playing with a small five-piece combo in the area. Ellington remembered Tizol some years later, in summer, 1929, when Ellington had landed a gig in a Ziegfeld musical, Show Girl; Ellington recruited Tizol because of his ability to quickly master the score.

Life’s Work

Upon his hire with Ellington, Tizol immediately proved his worth to the bandleader in his ability to read music and to prepare it. Tizol quickly became Ellington’s copyist and would remain on that task for Ellington until Tizon’s departure from the band in 1944. Ellington’s compositional brilliance materialized at the level of the sketch, and it was Tizol who fleshed out these musical ideas into parts for the band. Trumpeter Rex Stewart would declare that Tizol “truly was a very important cog in the Duke’s wheel.” Stewart is unambiguous in his estimation of Tizol’s contribution to the Ellington sound: Tizol was able to create genuinely playable components from the fanciful musical motifs imagined by Ellington.

During his time in Ellington’s orchestra, Tizol developed tremendously as a composer. During the swing era of the 1930’s and early 1940’s, the style of jazz composition known as “swing” was hugely popular, and one of Tizol’s most beloved compositions, “Perdido,” is in this style. Ballads—slow, romantic pieces—were also compositions that Tizol excelled in writing, and he wrote a number of such tunes for the Ellington band, such as “A Gypsy Without a Song” and “Have a Heart.” Later, after his time with Ellington, Tizol wrote more ballads of great popularity, such as “You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too” and “Escapade.”

The most popular of Tizol’s compositions are regarded as “exotica,” tunes that evoke Asian or Middle Eastern impressions, reflecting the fact that Tizol had grown up in a musical atmosphere in which Moorish melodies were a common component of song. Certainly his single most famous tune, “Caravan,” which has been played and recorded by many jazz acts, has an unmistakable Middle Eastern flavor, and from its first recording recording in 1936 it stayed in the Ellington songbook, with several recorded versions by that band alone. A sizable number of other Tizol compositions could be categorized as “exotica,” including other tunes written for the Ellington band, such as “Pyramid,” “Bagdad,” and “Bakiff.”

A significant number of Tizol’s compositions were Latin-flavored works. From the first Latin-styled piece, “Porto Rican Chaos” of 1935, Tizol went on to write major pieces such as “Moon Over Cuba” and the popular “Conga Brava.” In this, Tizol pioneered a fusion of jazz and Latin musics that would prove tremendously popular for decades. Tizol’s origination of the sound and idea of Latin jazz is often overlooked, but of American jazz artists, he was there first.

His importance as a trombonist merits mention. He was known as a band trombonist, and the valve trombone’s precision, that is, its inability to “smear” notes, was favored by Ellington. Tizol’s ability on the instrument gave the valve trombone a model that younger jazz trombonists would follow in later decades.

Tizol left the Ellington band in 1944, preferring to stay in California where his wife wanted to live. He went to work for trumpeter Harry James, and for the next twenty years would often alternate between playing for James and Ellington. He also played for Louis Bellson in the 1950’s and was a vital member of the Nelson Riddle Orchestra when recordings were made featuring Frank Sinatra. During the 1956-1957 season, Tizol played for Nat “King” Cole at the height of the singer’s popularity. In the 1960’s, Tizol retired from the music business and spent his last years in the Los Angeles area, dying in 1984 of a heart attack.

Significance

Tizol was an important voice in establishing Latin American cultural sensibilities in the mid-twentieth century United States, a time when Latinos were often thought of disparagingly. His performance abilities were first-rate, his compositional powers shined brightly even under the huge shadow of Ellington, and his theoretical and transcription work helped make the Ellington band the musical titan it became. As the one “white” face in an otherwise “black” orchestra, Tizol was an early transgressor of racial barriers that would defeat others for many years. His importance as being the founder of Latin jazz fusion cannot be overstated. Nonetheless, what may be the single most important part of Tizol’s legacy may be his tune “Caravan,” which remains one of the most beautiful and most frequently played jazz standards of all time. “Caravan” alone makes him a musical immortal.

Bibliography

Sarrano, Basilio. “Juan Tizol: His Talents, His Collaborators, His Legacy.” CENTRO Journal 18, no. 11 (Fall, 2006): 82-99. Extensive and informative writing on Tizol, which discusses Tizol’s biography at length and gives a detailed estimation of Tizol’s compositional activities. This is a good source of information on Tizol’s Puerto Rican background and the “Mingus incident,” in which Tizol clashed with bass player Charles Mingus.

Dietrich, Kurt. “The Unique Juan Tizol.” In Duke’s Bones: Ellington’s Great Trombonists. Rottenburg, Germany: Advance Music, 1995. A fascinating chapter on Tizol in this book, which concentrates upon the specific musical components of Tizol’s playing for Ellington. Also, a discussion about Tizol’s uncertainty in being a “legitimate” musician in a “jazz” orchestra.

Stewart, Rex. Boy Meets Horn. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991. This autobiography of Stewart, a cornetist for Ellington, includes anecdotes about Tizol’s contributions to the band.