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John Pisano with Chico Hamilton's Quintet on Bobby Troup's "Stars of Jazz" show — 1957
John Pisano on the movie set of "The Sweet Smell of Success" with Paul Horn, Bassist Carson Smith, and the movie's star, Tony Curtis clowning on the flute. — 1957
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CHICO HAMILTON QUINTET
“When I got out of the service, I came back to New York with the intention of attending the Manhattan School of Music. At the time, they did not accept guitar as a major instrument, so I would have had to study piano, or something else. Shortly before I started, I received a call from Paul Horn, the saxophone player, whom I had met in Washington, D.C. He was in the Army band while I was in the Air Force.
Paul had started working with Chico Hamilton’s band. He informed me that Jim Hall was about to leave the band, and he had Chico bring me out to California to audition. I joined the band and ended up staying out here in California.
We had a cello player in Chico’s band by the name of Fred Katz, and you might call what we were doing at the time a ‘chamber jazz’ quintet. Jim had written some marvelous arrangements for the group, and they could be very difficult. Fred, who had a lot of classical training and did a lot of writing, also heavily influenced the band. So, it tended to lean in that direction.
We did the music to the movie THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS with Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster, which has become sort of a cult movie. We also appeared in the documentary JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY. During that time, Paul had left the band and I had an opportunity to work with his replacement Eric Dolphy for about eight months.
When I was working with Chico in Pittsburgh, there was this young guitar player who used to come into the club, and I gave him some ideas and various things to work on. As it turned out, it was George Benson. Much later, George mentioned my name in an article in DOWNBEAT magazine and also on the back of one of his record albums, saying that I was one of the people who had helped him along early in his career. He certainly has come a long way!”
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