If a tuba married a trombone, their kids would be baritone horns. As former high-school band members may recall, the baritone looks like a tuba that was left in the drier too long, and its sound is most akin to the valve trombone. Not many musicians played the instrument in jazz ensembles, since other horns can do the job more easily [...] One of the only jazz musicians to lead a recording session on the instrument was Gus Mancuso.

Born and raised in Rochester, N.Y., Mancuso began playing drums at age 11 before switching to trombone. He had five brothers who also were musicians, and he began playing the baritone horn in the Army band. Mancuso doubled on piano, bass, trumpet, trombone and vibes, and he recorded intermittently as a pianist and bassist with Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine, Quincy Jones and Carl Fontana [...]

After his discharge, Mancuso caught the ear of vibist Cal Tjader, who brought him to the attention of Fantasy Records in San Francisco. Tjader arranged Mancuso's first album in 1956, 'Introducing Gus Mancuso.' Mancuso recorded only one other leadership album, 'Music for New Faces,' also for Fantasy, in 1958. Like most albums of the period, these two for Fantasy swing like crazy and are quite tasty. Given how good these two albums are, it's hard to understand why Mancuso wasn't more widely recorded as a leader. It's also odd there's so little about Mancuso online. In all likelihood, Mancuso dropped the baritone horn, picked up the bass and moved the family to warmer Las Vegas, where there were plenty of gig opportunities.

According to Peter Levin, Mancuso is still active in Las Vegas on piano: "He's a regular performer at the Bootlegger and is on the board of the Las Vegas Jazz Society, and appears to be a much-loved figure in the Las Vegas jazz world. There are YouTube videos of his quartet Jazzology, as well as a few of him solo."

The good news is we have two albums by this unheralded multi-instrumentalist who at this point in the 1950s was playing the baritone horn with enormous polish and spirit.

—Marc Myers, JazzWax (November 19, 2018)