In Sunday’s (6/19) Denver Post, William Porter writes, “Charlie Burrell’s big left hand cradles the neck of the upright bass like a baby, his right hand coaxing a cascade of notes from the instrument’s wooden belly: alternately popping and loping across the strings, always in perfect time. … He could be back in the Paradise Club in Detroit, the city where he grew up in poverty. Or with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in the early 1960s, when he was its first black player. Or on the stages of Club Algeria or Lil’s After-Hours in Five Points’ heyday, backing jazz legends Billie Holiday, Erroll Garner and Charlie Parker. But Burrell is in his home just north of City Park, amid his studio’s memorabilia and sheet music. … At 90, Burrell is both a pioneer—he has been called the Jackie Robinson of classical music—and one of the few surviving links to the glory days of midcentury jazz. … By his teens he had regular jazz gigs but, after a Navy hitch and a music degree from Wayne State University, was refused auditions with four symphony orchestras. … When he came to Denver to visit his mother in 1949, he met John VanBuskirk, principal bassist with the Denver Symphony [now Colorado Symphony Orchestra], on a streetcar. He wrangled a tryout, landing the job with conductor Saul Caston’s approval, but no press fanfare. … Burrell stuck with the DSO for 10 years, supplementing his income at Five Points hot spots such as the Rossonian Hotel, where he was house bassist.”
Posted June 21, 2011
