Drummer Jerry Granelli passed away today at the age of 80 in his home in Halifax. As a legendary figure in the jazz scene, and Halifax’s music scene, in particular, Granelli has left a mark on many musicians and a hole in his wake.
Granelli cut his teeth on the jazz scene in his native San Francisco, where he studied with Joe Morello, best known for his work with Dave Brubeck. It was in San Francisco that Granelli, in his early 20s, joined the trio of pianist/composer Vince Guaraldi.
While best known for his work with Guaraldi and his A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack, Granelli led a fruitful career as both a bandleader and sideman. After leaving Guaraldi’s band Granelli played a wide variety of artists: Mose Allison, Carmen McRae, Lou Rawls, Ralph Towner, and even studio work with a young, pre-Family Stone, Sly Stone.
Granelli later discovered Buddhism, which had a strong influence on his teaching and improvising, comparing his first time hearing Tibetan Buddhist master Chogyam Trungpa to hearing Charlie Parker.
Since moving to Halifax in the late ’80s, Granelli led the Creative Music Workshop: an eight-day program during the Halifax Jazz Festival for artists of all disciplines and skill levels. Over the years, Granelli brought in a who’s who of improvising musicians to serve as guest faculty, including Bill Frisell, Dave Douglas, Julien Priester, and many more.
“We’ve lost Jerry Granelli,” writes musician Kev Corbett who, at the age of 15, had attended a summer rock camp under the tutelage of Granelli.
“Jerry had moved here with the flood of dharma sangha in 1987.
“We were all mildly terrified to take Jerry’s rhythm class, first thing every morning for the two sweltering weeks we were holed up each year in what is now the Maritime conservatory building. But the way he spoke of internalizing the keeping of time spoke to my young drummer’s soul in a way that I had never experienced. He was the first one who understood, even as irascible and grumpy and dry as one might be if you were a Jazz legend teaching a bunch of kids who are into hair metal.
“And he was a jazz legend. You know him for a certain holiday album, but he was so much more than that. He studied with Joe goddamn Morello. He was inventing free jazz when his friends in the Dead were inventing improv rock. He played with Mose, Ornette. All the boys knew him. I have never seen a more graceful brush technique, or a more focused look, when he’s locked in and listening.
“We all had big talks. Not just about how to be a musician, but how to just be. ‘Be the bacon on the salad.’
“In the Buddhist tradition he lived in every day for the last 50 plus years, you make friends with temporality, with the absurdness and wonder and failures and miracle that you were here at all. That’s the deal, with improv music as well: you experience a beautiful moment, a wrenching moment, a furious moment, a calm moment, whatever it is, and then it’s gone, not recorded, nor meant to be, just take it for what it was. Life.
“There are so many musicians I wish I could have seen, but I’m so glad I got the chance to experience his teaching.”
In his seventies, Granelli would revisit A Charlie Brown Christmas, performing the record with his trio each Christmas season.
Even with health issues in his later years, including a two-month stay in the ICU this past winter after suffering internal bleeding and a collapsed lung, he continued to perform and educate, having led a workshop on Sunday.
Granelli’s influence looms large over the Halifax music scene, with many artists such as Andrew MacKelvie, Andrew Jackson, Ross Burns, and Hillsburn’s Jackson Fairfax-Perry having been mentored by him and/or recorded with him.
While volunteering with the Halifax Jazz Festival in 2019, I worked the door at 1313 Hollis Street, where Granelli played every night. Some nights would showcase groups of CMW students, others were ensembles made up of faculty and alumni.
The performance which stood out the most to me featured dancers: musicians improvised while a woman danced in the middle of the floor, just feet away from the audience. Granelli, armed with a small percussion instrument, danced and swayed closely with her, with an intimacy that would have been strikingly powerful from any performer, even more so a man pushing eighty.
“Jerry’s concept of music and art was that EVERY human has something uniquely CREATIVE to offer to this universe and there’s a deep beauty to that. This COMPLETELY changed my perception and has allowed me to be FREE,” writes Andrew Jackson, a mentee and colleague of Granelli. “Over the next decade, Jerry was SO supportive and gave me so many opportunities to learn from him on the bandstand and in classes.”
In the wake of Granelli’s passing, all Creative Music Workshop events have been paused.
It’s fitting that Granelli’s final recording as a leader was 2020’s Plays Vince Guaraldi & Mose Allison, a tribute to two of his earliest bosses, in a way bringing an incredible life full circle.