Stacy Rowles (September 11, 1955 - October 27, 2009) was a Los Angeles-based vocalist, trumpeter and flugelhorn player, making a name for herself in the 1970s and onward. She was a member of the U.S.-based ensembles Maiden Voyage and Jazz Birds (with friend and colleague Betty O'Hara), The DIVA Big Band, and The Swinging Ladies, as well as the European group Witchcraft. She toured around the world and was better known in Europe than in America.
Stacy collaborated with many musicians in the jazz world, including her father, pianist Jimmy Rowles. She also did innocative work with the live jazz/dance performing group The Jazz Tap Ensemble, directed by bassist Eric Von Essen. Stacy did many interviews over the years, and was a guest on the radio program "Piano Jazz," hosted by Marian McPartland. In the early ’90s, Rowles and her father played weekly at Linda’s, a Los Angeles jazz club.
In the The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz (1999), Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler called Stacy Rowles "a respected and creative artist" who played "with the kind of warmth and precision long associated with her father."
"Dad and I just have this thing about music that is incredible," Rowles told The Los Angeles Times in 1992, before she and her father performed in Huntington Beach. "And it only happens when we play together. It's like an unexplainable understanding of where we're going and what we're going to do. And it's just there. It's like a language, but it's not spoken -- like a communication. There were several times when I was a teenager when he would bring people home to show me off. He'd bring Snooky Young and all these trumpet players home in the middle of the night and wake me up and say: 'Come down and play.' And so I'd have to drag myself out of bed, come down and play some march or something which -- being in junior high school or high school at the time -- was all I knew," she said.
In a 2003 review, Don Heckman wrote in The Times that Rowles' flugelhorn playing, "even more than her trumpet work, combined a warm often sensuous sound with brisk swinging, melodically based improvisations."
Stacy studied piano from the age of six, but didn't have the same rapport with the instrument as her father had. She eventually tried an old trumpet, which once belonged to West Coast swing trumpeter Pete Candoli. that had been lyting around in the Rowles house, This quickly became her chosen instrument.
The vibraphonist and teacher Charlie Shoemake, with whom she studied, said of Rowles, “Stacy was a natural talent. She listened to the right people, and her ear took her to the right places.” As a music student at Orange Coast College, Stacy was voted best soloist.
By the time she was in her teens, Stacy was already performing on major jazz stages. In 1973, she appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival; in 1975, she played in an all-female band organized by Clark Terry for the Wichita Jazz Festival. In 1979, she and Ann Patterson were two of the founding members of the Maiden Voyage Big Band. In the 1980s, she played with the trombonist Betty O'Hara in Jazz Birds Quintet, which had formed from the big band. In 1984. Rowles recorded her debut album for Concord Records.
She was part of a musical circle centered on guitarist and composer Nels Cline and Rowles played on the Enja album Angelica (1987) with Tim Berne. In performance and on record, she has performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Tommy Flanagan, Frank Mantooth and the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra. They also toured with her father, with the Swinging Ladies (with Lindy Huppertsberg, Lisa Pollard, Shannon Hirata, Megan Foley, and Jill McCarron). Jazz Tap Ensemble, and the DIVA Big Band.
Discography
Tell It Like It Is (with Jimmy Rowles, Donald Bailey, Chuck Berghofer, Herman Riley), Concord Records, 1984.
Angelica with Niels Cline and Tim Berne. Enja, 1987. Re-release as CD, 2014.
Looking Back, with Jimmy Rowles. 1988. Re-released on Delos lable, 1992.
Jimmy Rowles (With Harry "Sweets" Edison*, Ray Brown, Don Bailey & Stacy Rowles), Sometimes I'm Happy, Sometimes I'm Blue. Orange Blue, 1988.
Ben Sluijs Quartet, Stacy Rowles, Till Next Time, 1991.
Me and The Moon, with Jimmy Rowles. 1993. Re-release, American Jazz Symposium label, 2004.
The Music of Eric Von Essen, Vol III (with Alex Cline, Nels Cline, Jeff Gauthier), Cryptogramophone, 2002.
Witchcraft: Live (with Carolyn Breuer, Anke Helfrich, Lindy Huppertsberg, Carola Grey), 2004.
Frank Mantooth : Ladies Sing for Lovers, track 9. Re-released 2014.
References
Leonard Feather, Ira Gitler. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. Oxford University Press. 1999.
Stacy's profile on AllMusic.
Obituary in The Los Angeles Times, November 8, 2009.
Obituary in The New York Times, November 6, 2009.
External Links
Stacy's guest appearance on the late Marian McPartland's radio program "Piano Jazz."
Rowles playing "I Fall in Love So Easily" on flugelhorn in 1995.
Rowles' father, Jimmy, on piano with the great Joe Pass on "'Tis Autumn."
Jazz Tap Ensemble demo reel.
Stacy singing "'S'Wonderful" in a lovely tribute video.
Musical slideshow video featuring Stacy Rowles.
