Joe Roland, a New York native born on May 17, 1920, was the son of a prominent podiatrist at the Savoy Plaza Hotel. Joe’s musical studies began on piano in his early teens, and soon after, he switched to clarinet. “I dug clarinet, went to Juilliard for three years and graduated in 1939,” said Joe. Then I had all kinds of small groups playing in every gin mill and dive. My idol was Benny Goodman, and all I wanted to dow as swing. I played clarinet until I was 20; then a relative studying music left a small xylophone in my house for storage. I folded it up and took it out on a couple of club dates. I didn’t give up the clarinet entirely until I went into the army.”

In 1942, at 22, Joe was drafted and became a radio operator in the Air Corps. He spent a couple of years in the Aleutian Islands off Alaska and brought along a small portable set of vibes. He was always on the look out for a unit of Black troops who might have a small band he could sit in with. He completed his Army duties and was discharged at the end of 1945.

Soon after his release in January 1946, he bought a real set of vibes, got to know Terry Gibbs, and turned his Second Avenue apartment into a recognized hangout for young, ambitious musicians. Terry, Tiny Kahn, Frank Socolow, Eddie Bert, Norman Faye, Harry Biss, Eddie Shu, Red Rodney, and George Wallington were among the bop-minded musicians who mingled in the sessions at Roland’s place.

Joe had enough money saved up not to worry about working steadily for a while. Thanks to Leonard Feather, he played a couple of off-night sessions at the Three Deuces and made a record date early in ‘49 for Eddie Shu, the results of which were released in 1951 on a 10-inch LP on the Mercer label.

On July 21, 1949, Joe Roland recorded his first date as a leader—the result of a rare quintet session for Larry Newton’s Derby label—featuring Ray Turner (tenor sax), Red Mitchell (piano), Joe Puma (guitar), and Paul Szglay (bass). Four tracks were recorded but remained unreleased until 1952, when two instrumental tracks in the bop style of Charlie Ventura, “Free of Charge” and “Henry VIII,” both by uncredited composers, were released by Eddie Heller, head of New York’s Rainbow Recording Corp. label on a 10-inch album entitled Cavalcade of Jazz under the name Chubby Jackson All Stars. The other two quintet tracks featuring singer Paula Castle, “Leaving Town Tonight” and “A Fool and His Love,” remained unreleased. Notably, this Joe Roland session featured a young Red Mitchell on piano, an instrument with which he began his professional career before becoming one of the best double bass players in the history of jazz.

Joe Roland was a persistent cat. He had been trying since early 1949 to prove a point with his new string group. The whole thing started on the exchange floor at Local 802 one day when Joe got into a discussion with a cellist about the use of strings in jazz. The cellist said, “All you have to do is write the music right. If the notes are there and the right inflections marked, we can play anything you jazz guys want.”

The cellist and a violinist went with Joe to a nearby record shop, where he played them Miles Davis’ “Move” and “Budo” to show them what he had in mind. Both insisted they could make it work. So, Joe went home and wrote out “I Hear Music” for vibes, string quartet, and rhythm, and the Roland Symfonet (Joe’s own rather grim name for it) was born.

After writing numerous arrangements for his Symfonet, Joe landed a television appearance in November 1949. “They said they would hireme at Bop City if I only had some records to give to the disc jockeys because they didn’t want to play an unknown group. “So I paid for a whole session myself and had a few hundred records pressed. Symphony Sid played themevery night, but we still didn’t get the job.”

The group, under the name of Roland (Modern) Symfonet, consisted of Joe Roland (vibes), Joe Puma (guitar), Ishmael Ugarte (bass), and Harold Granowsky (drums), plus four strings: Gus Oberstein and Jules Modlin (violins), Mike Barten (viola), and Sid Kassimir (cello), working as a separate organic section. They recorded three instrumentals—”Dee Dee’s Dance,” “Half-Nelson,” and “Sally Is Gone”—and a nice tune, “Love Is Just A Plaything,” sung in the Vaughan style by Paula Castle, a fine singer who enjoyed a brief flash of prominence performing with Chubby Jackson’s big band. The records were pressed on Roland’s own label.

In late 1950, Leonard Feather was appointed general manager of Mercer Records, a newly founded label by Duke Ellington’s son, Mercer. Through Feather, Mercer issued “Half-Nelson” and “Sally Is Gone” for domestic distribution on a 78 rpm record, titled Joe Roland, His Vibes & His Boppin’ Strings. The three instrumental tracks were also included on a Mercer 10-inch album (LP 1002) titled New Stars—New Sounds, along with the session Roland recorded with Eddie Shu and a couple of tracks from organist Wild Bill Davis’ trio. Leonard Feather wrote in the liner notes: “Joe Roland, the vibraharpis twith the Shu group, also appears here on three sides featuring his own ensemble, long before Parker or any other jazz stars started fronting strings outfits, Roland was trying to establish the idea of a modern jazz group featuring strings. Unlike most units of this kind, Roland’s strings do not confine themselves to sustained notes or backgrounds. They actually phrase the bop melody themselves, establishing the theme on all three numbers—an idea that has never before been tried with strings. Roland’s vibeswork is brilliant enough to indicate that hemay soon be classed with Milt Jackson, Terry Gibbs and other acknowledged leaders in the modern jazz field on this instrument.”

There was no pianist on the Symfonet records, but theweek they played at Birdland in March 1951, Joe added Billy Taylor to round out the rhythm section and, for fun, used Norma Carson’s trumpet for a couple of nights.

Joe pointed out, with pride but without vanity, that not only had he involved strings in the bop movement before Bird or anyone else, but also that his group was the only one in which the strings themselves played the actual bop melody in the first chorus, rather than simply providing background or surrounding a horn solo.

Roland expanded the idea by incorporating some well-known standards tomake itmore commercial. He also included entertaining novelties, such as an arrangement of “Jumping with Symphony Sid,” in which the strings, for the first 12 bars, gave the repeated two-bar riff a slow, elegant Mozart string quartet treatment.

He managed to interest Billy Shaw’s agency in his group. Billy talked a lot,mentioning numerous outside jobs and a possible record deal with Columbia; meanwhile, two of Joe’s principal string players went on tour with Charlie Parker.

Discouraged by the inability of the Shaw office to secure work for his boppish strings unit, Roland temporarily took a sideman position with cellist Oscar Pettiford in the spring of 1951. Ironically, Oscar had left Shaw’s aegis several months earlier after three months out of work. He reorganized his group to include Roland, Howard McGhee (trumpet), Kenny Drew (piano), Tommy Potter (bass), and Art Taylor (drums), and went on tour.

By this time, Joe’s vibraphone work had acquired great skill and finesse. As Terry Gibbs noted in a 1951 Blindfold Test, “players like Joe are a real challenge in the rapidly expanding vibraphone field.”

As a player, Joe moved between two schools. His personal preferences ranged from Lionel Hampton to Terry Gibbs to Milt Jackson. Joe appreciated not only the fabulous technique and speed of Terry’s work but also the grounding, drive, and emotional intensity of Hampton’s performances, combined with the harmonic invention of “Bags.” The resultwas a careful culling of the best from all three influences into a remarkable new stylization of the vibraphone.

Later that year, Joe replaced vibraphonist Don Elliot during an eighteen-month successful engagement with the George Shearing Quintet, which featured Chuck Wayne, later Dick Garcia (guitar); Al McKibbon (bass); and Marquis Foster, later Denzil Best (drums).

Columnist Robert Sylvester wrote in the Daily News in July 1952: “Broadway show business is at its lowest ebb, but midtown jazz music seems to be holding up just fine. George Shearing has a new quintet, one of the most novel and melodic groups in modern musical history, and among his new boys is one Joe Roland, a vibraharpist who simply never does anything wrong and never gets very frantic doing the right things, either. Roland is obviously a trained and sound musician with a fine feeling for jazz, and more importantly, the kind of authority that all small groups need. Now if George would just stop those corn-ball jokes, everything would be simply fine.”

During the summer season of 1952, Joe Roland also appeared with his own trio in Atlantic City. After leaving Shearing, Roland worked as a freelancer and, along with trumpeter Howard McGee, was featured in the new show at Le Downbeat (263 W. 54th St.) in April 1953. In May, Joe Roland became a member of a band consisting of Bobby Hackett (trumpet), Lou McGarity (trombone), Tony Scott (clarinet), Clyde Lombardi (bass), and Ed Shaughnessy (drums), which provided accompaniments for five pianists in the Broadway show Pianorama World.

In September 1953, star swing clarinetist Artie Shaw, returning to the music scene after a three-year absence, reorganized his Gramercy Five, and opened at New York’s Embers in early October. For this revival, Shaw surrounded himself with jazzmen of undeniable ability: Hank Jones (piano), Joe Roland (vibraphone), Tal Farlow, later Joe Puma (guitar), Tommy Potter (bass), and Denzil Best (drums), who was replaced by Irv Kluger after just over a month. The group was highly anticipated because of its members’ excellent musicianship, but it did not gain the critical and public approval that its leader had hoped for. “Artie’s clarinet is amere shadow of the splendid solo instrument it oncewas,” said Jack Tracy in Down Beat.

He commented on the group, stating, “It often manages to squander the solo skills of Farlow and Roland. It’s tea room music, not jazz, and it’s time someone said so. Either the parade has passed Artie by, or he just doesn’t care anymore.” In March 1954, after six months of touring, Roland left Shaw’s unit in Detroit and returned to New York.

Back in his hometown, Roland was looking for work, and soon a job came up. Sidney Siegel, president and producer of Seeco, the finest record label in Latin American music, sought to forma jazz-mambo quintet with the commitment to record some singles.

At that time, the sophisticated sound and commercial style of George Shearing’s quintet—with Cal Tjader on vibraphone and Afro-Cuban percussion by Armando Peraza and Candido—were in vogue. With the mambo craze in full swing, Siegel thought of Roland to lead his recording project aimed at the Latin public, consumers of his extensive catalog. The musicians Roland chose for this purpose were a mix of jazz musicians: Sam Mario (piano) and Dante Martucci (bass), along with two members of the rhythm section of Machito & His Afro Cubans: José Mangual (bongo) and Luis Miranda (conga). Roland’s quintet played dance music that also fed into the growing interest in mambo music within the pop, jazz, and R&B fields. The quintet recorded four songs, “Ravel’s Bolero in Mambo,” “Poor Butterfly,” “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You,” and “Lovers Mambo,” released as singles on both 78 rpm and 45 rpm, which were widely received commercially in the New York area. Soon after, with the addition of Machito’s timbalero Ubaldo Nieto and Argentine Doug Duke playing organ instead of Mario’s piano, Roland’s quintet became a sextet that, at Sidney Siegel’s request, recorded four classic Christmas songs, “Sleigh Ride,” “Christmas Song,” “Jingle Bells,” and “Let It Snow, Let It Snow.” These were commercially released later in the year on two singles and an EP entitled Christmas in Wonderland with the Joe Roland Sextet, which became quite popular among mambo dancers.

Information on the careers of pianist Sammy Mario and Doug Duke is scarce. Mario participated as a studio accompanist for singers on the Seeco label, while Doug Duke is known to have already been on the one-night circuit for 15 years and had played with bands such as Lionel Hampton, Shep Fields, and Mitchel Ayres; he was working freelance at the time.

After his experience with Seeco, Roland, always restless, decided to form his own jazz quintet, featuring Freddie Redd (piano), Dick Garcia (guitar), Dante Martucci (bass), and Ron Jefferson (drums). With the recommendation of Lenny Hambro and Eddie Bert, Roland managed to sign an artist contract with Ozzie Cadena of the Savoy label, making his debut recording at the Rudy Van Gelder studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, onMay 10, 1954.

As part of the deal, Cadena acquired Roland’s Symfonet masters, which he reissued on the A-side of a 10-inch disc (MG 15034), while the B-side included the newly recorded quartet. Cadena himself wrote about the Symfonet in the album liner notes, proudly praising Roland’s talent in “merging his Jazz Quartet with a Contemporary String Quartet, an experiment that proved to be a great success.”

Regarding the four quartet tracks, Cadena wrote: “Joe Roland dedicates the first tune, ‘Garrity’s Flight,’ to the proprietor of ‘The Birdland Show,’ Bob Garrity. The standards ‘Indian Summer’ and ‘I’ve Got the World On a String’ are wonderfully well executed, and their simplicity contributes greatly to their picturesqueness. ‘Stephanie’s Dance’ was written by pianist Freddie Redd, who also contributes excellent piano solos. Ron Jefferson is on drums, and Oscar Pettiford once again demonstrates why he has been called the best jazz bassist since Jimmy Blanton.”

Roland recorded another Savoy session at Van Gelder’s in October 1954. Bassist Dante Martucci and pianist Wade Legge replaced Pettiford and Redd. The tunes recorded were all original compositions by Legge, a 22-year-old upcoming modernist brought from Buffalo to New York by Milt Jackson. He had played with Dizzy Gillespie in 1952 and displayed a warm, moving single-noted modern style of piano. The tracks included “Gene’s Stew,” “Music House,” and “Joyce Choice,” which are up-tempo, while “Spice” is a slow, then double-time piece that is very pretty and reminiscent of Monk’s “‘RoundMidnight.”

A year later, Savoy released a 12-inch album titled “Joltin’ Joe,” which included the two quartet sessions and the four Symfonet tracks. Alain Stein, in his liner notes, wrote: “The four tracks, ‘Half Nelson,’ ‘Love Is Just a Plaything,’ ‘Sally Is Gone,’ and ‘Dee Dee’s Dance,’ were recorded as an experiment with strings. The string quartet is treated here in the same way that a saxophone section might be used. They state the riff in unison and with amazing cleanliness (no ‘sawing’) and then serve as a voiced backdrop behind a vibes-guitar sequence of solos. In listening, note the excellent phrasing of the string quartet. Although strings have become amuch-used orchestral jazz voice, it is very rare indeed when they have been used on up-tempo pieces and come off successfully in a jazz rhythm feeling. Listen to some of the old Gene Krupa-with-strings and Tommy Dorsey-with-strings band recordings from the late 1940s to see what I mean. Harold Granowsky, one of Lennie Tristano’s first drummers, lays down a heavy rat-tat background with dominant cymbals. Joe Puma, a professional guitarist since only 1948 and self-taught, plays interesting lines over the background.”

After the Savoy period, Joe signed with Bethlehem Records. Under the supervision of Creed Taylor, the label’s A&R director, Joe recorded an excellent 12-inch album (BCP-17) on March 17 & 18, 1955, which was rated with four stars and praised by Nat Hentoff in his Down Beat review: “A very well-conceived program of chamber music with Roland on vibes; Dick Garcia on guitar; Freddie Redd on piano; Dante Martucci on bass; and Ron Jefferson on drums. Redd, Ugarte, Roland, and Garcia wrote the four originals, of which I particularly dig Roland’s ‘Goodbye, Bird’ and Ugarte’s ‘Robin.’ Each of the five plays with consistent taste and swing. The LP should further remind listeners that Roland is one of the best vibists in jazz and Garcia one of the more important younger guitarists. This is a group that could become a valuable small combo if economic conditions allow it to stay together during the first perilous months.”

The final track on this compilation, “Laura,” was recorded in March 1956 by the Joe Roland Quartet for a sampler album produced by Creed Taylor, who had moved from Bethlehem to become ABC-Paramount’s new head of A&R. Titled Creed Taylor Presents Know Your Jazz (ABC-115), the album included 11 tracks, each dedicated to a notable jazz musician, among them Billy Taylor, Donald Byrd, Al Cohn, Mundell Lowe, Kenny Clarke, Tony Scott, Oscar Pettiford, Charlie Rouse, and Jimmy Cleveland. Joe Roland’s introspective approach, along with the subtle accompaniment provided by Billy Taylor (piano), Oscar Pettiford (bass), and Kenny Clarke (drums), reflects the influence of the Modern Jazz Quartet and Roland’s admiration for Milt Jackson.

From 1956 onwards, Roland played and recorded with the groups of Aaron Sachs and Mat Mathews. He later worked as a freelancer in the New York area, doing studio work, such asmusic for jingles and backgroundmusic for TV.

In 1968, he moved to Miami, where he became an important figure on the local scene, playing at the Apache Lounge of the Four Kings Motel, with drummer Frank Duboise’s quartet, featuring Jim Progris on piano and Howard Waters on bass.

Joe Roland was an influential part of a thriving jazz scene in South Florida formany years. He also appeared at the New Headliner Lounge in Fort Lauderdale in 1972.

From 1977, he established a 13-year “gig” at Monty Trainer’s Bayshore Restaurant in Coconut Grove, where he was credited with training many young musicians from the University of Miami. He worked steadily throughout his life in local clubs, accompanied by bassists such as Mike Groninger, Lew Berryman, and Mark Trail, and singers like Sandy Patton. He died of natural causes at the age of 89 on October 12, 2009, in Palm Beach County, Florida.

Though relatively underappreciated during his lifetime, Roland’s energetic approach to the vibraphone continues to resonate with jazz aficionados. His contributions to jazz are integral to the history of the vibraphone inmodern jazz.

—Jordi Pujol (Taken from the inside liner notes of FSRCD 1157)