The late BOB BODLEY was born June 9, 1950 in Cincinnati, OH. He was house bassist at the Blue Wisp jazz club for 15 years and had a day gig as a wallpaper hanger.  As his bandmate Phil DeGreg said of him, "He served the music and that's perhaps the greatest thing you can say about a musician.” 

 

[Excerpted from CityBeat article “Yes Bob, We Dig” by Katie Laur Aug. 30, 2001. Laur recalls a time Bodley was playing bass in a group with guitarist Cal Collins at the Blue Wisp: ] 

 

When Bob Bodley played a solo, I was momentarily transfixed. It quieted my mind, and I was able to listen to the foundation of notes he laid down, followed by deep, silent spaces.Years ago, when I first sang on that stage with this trio,I could have sworn I felt electricity coming from Bob to the piano player and the drummer. "The bass is the earth, he said when I asked him about it. Bob was the first player most musicians called to do a job. He'd started out as a youngster playing with Ed Moss, then moved to New York, where he played with some of the seminal figures. He moved back home in 1990, and the transition was "cool" he said. "Nothing much had changed." Knowing Bob,he returned on a Thursday and had a gig by Friday, playing with excellent piano players always: Ed Moss, Steve Schmidt and Jim Connerly. When the Blue Wisp job came open,he took it.

 

Bob was tall and slender, his face full of lines and planes like an Indian's. He had high cheekbones and a full head of light brown hair, cut like the Dutch boy's on the paint can. He was a serene kind of man who never lost his composure. He wasn't just cool - he was Clint Eastwood material. "You dig?" he always asked, and we did. The pianist Steve Schmidt said of him, "Bob Bodley is a great bass player. He understands music from the bottom to the top. He understands the right bass note to play against the soloist,and he understands the middle voices as well as the melody. Lots of players forget the melody, but not Bob.He always knows exactly where he is. 

 

“I was a kid in the 1950s," Bob told me when we sat down to talk in the band room for a few quiet moments. These guys used to come around and give you an accordion if you paid for and finished 20 lessons.You paid for the lessons, and if you learned to play the instrument you got to keep it. It looked easy to me.” It was like when he learned the E-flat lap tuba, a Dixieland horn,at Moeller High School. It was there, in fact, in the band room, that he picked up a discarded Kay upright bass with only two strings, had it restrung, adjusted the bridge,cleaned it up a little and started playing gigs. "I played my first gig when I was 15, and I just never stopped, he said."You dig?" I nodded. “I was playing bass, doing weddings, club dates,but I was still just two-fingering it, really. Then I met Dee Garrett when Dee Felice was playing at the Buccaneer. He turned me on to Jazz, to the repertoire, the changes, and concurrently I took some bass lessons. Eventually I met Ed Moss and started to hang there at the Golden Triangle. That was a six-night-a-week gig, too." 

 

Bob eventually moved to New York. He found work and sublet a loft, where every important musician stopped by for a "hang" and ended up staying to jam. He worked there for 14 years. "The best thing about New York," Bob said, "was that someone like Miles Davis was your neighbor. He worked with Woody Herman's band and toured and recorded with Art Farmer and Lionel Hampton and with the pianists Dave Friedman, Horace Silver and Mose Alison. Some time in the 80s, he said, the scene in New York started drying up, and for a while the city felt dangerous to him. When his wife, Cynthia, inherited her father's house in Indiana in 1990, they moved back and Bob simply took up where he left off. 

 

Where did the confidence in his gift come from? How did he know he could learn to play that accordion when he was a kid? "Just did”, Bob said, teasingly. "Those little black buttons on the side? They represent the circle of fifths and extensions to the circle of fifths. It's cool. I liked playing the accordion. "Anyway, I had to do it. That was the deal. You gotta pay for the hang. You dig?”

JOE LUKASIK, clarinetist, was born in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY immersed in a mixture of Polish and American culture. He attended high school in Erie, Pennsylvania and studied music at New York University, Manhattan School of Music and Columbia University.

 

Musical influences include Coleman Hawkins and Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young, the Polish clarinetist Bernie Witkowski, clarinetist Tony Sciotto, and Louis Armstrong, among others. He played 10 years with Horace Henderson, Fletcher Henderson’s brother – nicknamed “little smack” and “smack” respectively.

 

Lukasik served for nine years in the 552nd Air Force Band of New York Air National Guard.

He spent over 25 years in the Denver area, where he studied music at the University of Colorado before serving for nearly twenty years as part-time Instructor of Clarinet and Director of Jazz Ensembles at Metropolitan State College (now Metropolitan State University) and as part-time Instructor of Clarinet at the University of Colorado at Denver. During these years, Joe was actively involved with the International Clarinet Association, and he appeared several times as a guest artist and clinician at the annual ICA Conventions. While in Denver, he spent several years performing regularly with Horace Henderson and numerous groups (including his own combos) in the Metro Denver area and throughout the western US.

 

After that, Joe and his wife Sally moved to Hemet, CA, and Joe kept a busy schedule as a free-

lancer up and down the California coast.

 

The Lukasiks moved to Cincinnati in 1995. Through the years, Joe has enjoyed playing and

performing with the incredibly talented pool of musicians in the greater Cincinnati area.

 

He has performed at numerous well-known establishments, including the Dee Felice Café, the

Orchids at Palm Court, the Mayerson Jewish Community Center, Caffe Vivace, Cincinnati-area

Country Clubs and is currently playing at Sitwell’s Act II with the group “Queen City Vintage

Vibe.” He has enjoyed playing with well-known Cincinnati groups, including the Buffalo Ridge

Jazz Band, the Faux Frenchmen, the Pete Wagner Orchestra, and aboard the BB Riverboats,

Joe has continued to coach and mentor students, and he is an active artist for the Arts and

Humanities Resource Center (a local non-profit which provides live music for our elderly

community.) 

 

Lukasik’s musical talents have afforded him the opportunity to perform throughout the United States as well as Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands. He has made numerous recordings throughout his career. His work has included tv and radio jingles, several children’s CDs, a polka recording for Everest Records, a CD of Polish and Ukrainian music with his group “Saffron” as well as the CDs “Joe Lukasik-Straight Ahead” and “Clarinet Duel in the Sun” with John Denman. He also has made several recordings with Cincinnati’s Buffalo Ridge Jazz Band. In addition, Joe can be heard on the J. Curve “Cincinnati Jazz Collection Volume II” with Phil DeGreg.

[From Pat Kelly] Ed Moss was on the scene - and created a scene - in Cincinnati jazz since the early 1960s. He was a brilliant pianist, composer/arranger, entrepreneur, and chef. His clubs and enterprises included Reality Foods, Love's Coffee House, The Golden Triangle, Emanon, Mozart's, and the Jazz Club at Schwartz's Point. He presented vibrant jazz in Cincinnati during times when it was all but dried up. Ed passed away in 2016 but his legacy lives on with the revived Schwartz's Point Jazz and Acoustic Club, owned and run by his daughter Zarleen Watts. 

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“He was kind of tough on people,” recalled Zarleen. But he also provided places for people to develop their skills. “He let people stretch out,” she said, among them the trumpet player Brian Newman, who has toured with Lady Gaga. Moss was legendary for shushing people who talked during musical performances at The Point. Zarlene said,  “He told me that he was a dragon when he was younger, but became a bear as he got older.” Moss had a spiritual side and studied Gurdjief and Ouspensky. He was a band-leader and composer, arranger and player. Besides piano, he played baritone and later soprano saxophone. A college English major at Marshall, he later got a Masters in Music at IU Bloomington, and later in Boulder, Colorado wrote an opera for his doctoral dissertation.

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[From CityBeat] The pianist was a West Virginia native who began playing in Cincinnati while commuting between Huntington and Indiana University, where, at 20, he was serving a fellowship. Moss eventually settled in Cincinnati and opened several clubs and restaurants (he also had a passion for good food). Moss’ most recent endeavor was the Schwartz Point Jazz Club, located on Vine Street, between Over-the-Rhine and Corryville, where he performed weekly with his Society Jazz Orchestra (a regional staple for more than three decades). The club was small and intimate, and beloved by in-the-know local musicians and Jazz fans.

 

Moss’ dedication to Jazz led him to host workshops at the club, where he’d try to bring together club players and students from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. In Michael Kearns’ 2013 CityBeat profile of Moss and Schwartz Point, the musician said, “Some things you can’t learn in a classroom. You can learn theory and get help learning your instrument, but you have to learn on the bandstand.”

 

Although unable to play the final few months of his life due to illness, Moss had remained busy not only with performances, but also with album releases. 

LYNNE SCOTT  was born in Cincinnati, OH to a musical family. Her father, Bruce, was a gifted clarinetist who taught at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, led an orchestra on radio for many years, and was a well known music educator in Ripley, OH. Her mother, Teresa, taught

piano, and her four brothers are all musical, one of them a highly regarded west coast jazz and classical trombonist. Her children and grandchildren have all inherited musical talents of their own. When she was quite young, she and her mother would play and sing at many area Retirement Homes, and at the age of 9 1/2, she and her mother were chosen to be guests on the popular TV show – Harris Rosedale, where she sang “Birth of the Blues”....a song she learned verbatim from listening to Leslie Uggams, her idol at that time. They won a toaster!!

 

She was always active in music during high school with band, vocal arts, and choral groups, having won Ohio State vocal competitions each year. She was diverse in her love for music, influenced by many, i.e. Nancy Wilson, Sarah Vaughn, Maureen McGovern, Stevie Wonder,

Bobby McFerrin, and others. After High School, Lynne returned to Cincinnati to study music part time at CCM, working as a bookkeeper for Merril Lynch by day, and studying privately with vocal coaches Bob McSpadden and Madame Kruse.

 

She began singing at the Lookout House after one year of being in Cincinnati, and that led to many other club dates and opportunities in the music field. She joined Cincinnati Musicians Assoc. Local 1, where they suggested she change her birth name of “Linda” to Lynne because

there was a popular recording star with the name “Linda Scott” and they didn’t think it would be good to use the same name. At that time, many musicians used “stage names”, so Lynne it became – and stuck. She has remained a Life Member of Local 1, and also still works in their office as Membership Director.

 

Lynne has appeared regularly on Midwest radio and TV, and has played most of the top venues in the area. While singing with Jerry Conrad’s Rhythm & Brass, she appeared on the Len Mink Show, the Nick Clooney Show, the Vivian Della Chiesa Show, The Bob Braun Afternoon Show,

and the 1180 Club Radio show. She spent ten years singing with the Teddy Raymore Trio at Dante’s and was featured “girl singer” with the Pete Wagner Orchestra/Band for several years. She also sang with the vocalese group “Close Company” for three years and with the RL Big

Band. Recently she has performed with the world renowned Blue Wisp Big Band.

 

Lynne appeared weekends with the highly acclaimed “Frank Vincent Trio” at the Celestial in the Incline Lounge at Highland Towers for 8 years, with Jack Doll. Jr. at the Phoenix, the Phil DeGreg Trio at the original Horseshoe Casino in the Jack Binion Steakhouse, regularly at the

Cincinnati Netherland Hilton Hotel in the Palm Court Lounge with the Jim Hart Trio, the Don Steins Trio at Sorrento’s Restaurant and Lounge and The Pub in Rookwood, Washington Platform with various groups and most recently at Caffe Vivace with Lee Stolar and Steve

Schmidt.

 

She has several recordings available – with Frank Vincent & friends, Rob Allgeyer Trio, Teddy Rakel, the Cincinnati Horn Connection, the Pete Wagner Orchestra., Tom Schofield/Kenny Poole, Don Steins/Paul Hawthorne and Pat Kelly.

In five decades of playing bass, Michael Sharfe has cemented his place as a major figure on Cincinnati’s musical scene. His skill, passion, versatility and musical curiosity have led to credits on more than 250 CDs and 150 vinyl discs. On the live stage, he has been deeply involved with the institutions and musicians that define jazz in Cincinnati.

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Sharfe began guitar lessons at age 9, studying classical guitar while playing electric guitar in rock bands. Discovering Black radio station WCIN, he started playing electric bass with Black soul groups. “The bass was always speaking to me in that music,” he says. At 21 Sharfe bought his first acoustic bass; at 22 he entered Dayton’s Wright State University with a double major in classical guitar and string bass. Five nights a week at Suttmiller’s Supper Club, he was backing Vegas entertainers; afterward, he would catch the last set at Gilly's, hearing jazz legends like Charles Mingus. 

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Lured back to Cincinnati as first-call bassist for Fifth Floor Studios, a major Midwest center for recording, the young bassist joined the Ed Moss Trio at Emanon. There he met pianist Steve Schmidt, who asked Sharfe to join him and John Von Ohlen in the Blue Wisp Trio. Backing national stars weekly, the trio also formed the nucleus of the Blue Wisp Big Band, with which Sharfe still performs. 

 

Sharfe went on to appear with symphony and pops orchestras, hold down several big-band chairs and tour internationally with pianist Lynne Arriale and nationally with guitar guru Adrian Belew. He counts as a favorite memory traveling with Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops to Carnegie Hall for the 1999 celebration of Duke Ellington’s centenary. There he found that he was to perform a duet with a singer -- Mercedes Ellington, Duke’s daughter. “The entire orchestra stops playing, and it's just me and her,” he recalls. “I didn’t know that was coming till I was at the rehearsal.”

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Currently a guiding voice in several small ensembles, including the Cuban-inflected Mambo Combo, Sharfe directed a jazz series at Washington Platform Saloon from 2012 through 2021.

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In his 2014 CD “The Sideman Theory,” Sharfe reflected on his career as a consummate sideman, having performed and recorded with such diverse luminaries as tenor sax visionary Joe Lovano; jazz guitar giants John Scofield, Herb Ellis and Joe Pass; bop legends Sonny Stitt, Red Rodney and Slide Hampton; singers Rosemary Clooney and Michael Feinstein; and practically every jazz player of note in Cincinnati. He has shared the stage with entertainment legends like Bob Hope, George Burns, Steve Martin and Red Skelton.