Bill Potts

Best known for his brief but seminal collaboration with the legendary tenorist Lester Young, jazz arranger, composer, and pianist Bill Potts was born April 3, 1928, in Arlington, VA. After first receiving a Hawaiian guitar from his father, he quickly switched to accordion and won a talent contest at 15 with his rendition of "Twilight Time." While in high school, Potts discovered Count Basie and immediately set his sights on a career as a professional musician, studying composition while transcribing musical charts for the U.S. Army Band from 1949 to 1955. During this same period he served as chief arranger for THE Orchestra, the boastfully named 15-piece ensemble led by drummer Joe Timer and fronted by disc jockey Willis Conover of Voice of America fame. Potts not only wrote the band's charts, but also authored four songs ("Pill Box," "Light Green," "Playground," and "Willis") on its sole official LP, the 1954 Brunswick release Willis Conover's House of Sounds Presents THE Orchestra. Potts also recorded many of THE Orchestra's live appearances, among them gigs featuring surprise guests Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and many of these tapes later resurfaced on LP. Potts was leading the house band at Washington, D.C.'s Olivia Davis' Patio Lounge when in December 1956 the club booked Young, by this point a figure in physical decline as a result of years of steady drinking. Intrigued by the possibilities of making an LP with the renowned saxophonist, Potts outfitted the club with recording equipment, convincing Young to participate despite his contractual obligations to producer Norman Granz. Over the course of two nights, the band cut what would become one of Young's final and most memorable sessions, a series of standards that, when officially released more than three decades later under the title Lester Young in Washington, D.C., would prove instrumental in rehabilitating critical opinion of his autumnal work. In 1957, Potts wrote, arranged, and played piano on every cut of drummer Freddy Merkle's LP Jazz Under the Dome; two years later, after recovering from an auto accident that confined him to a body cast for months, Potts finally headlined his own session with The Jazz Soul of Porgy and Bess, an all-star interpretation of the Gershwin opera featuring contributions from Art Farmer, Bill Evans, Bob Brookmeyer, and Phil Woods. The album was the recipient of enormous critical acclaim but appeared at roughly the same time as Miles Davis and Gil Evans' own examination of the material, and went largely unnoticed. After several years in New York City, Potts returned to D.C. to continue writing and arranging -- he also toured with Woody Herman, Stan Getz, Ella Fitzgerald, and many others. In 1974, Potts began teaching music theory and arranging at Montgomery College in Rockville, MD, a gig he maintained until 1990. During that time, he led his big band twice a year at Blues Alley, Washington's primary jazz venue, and in 1988 released the LP 555 Feet High. Potts moved to Fort Lauderdale, FL, in 1995 and remained there until his death from cardiac arrest on February 16, 2005.
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