* En anglais uniquement
The name of this artist may come up in connection with British satirists Monty Python's Flying Circus and an infamous skit involving self-defense against an assailant armed with the surname of a jazz musician.
Tommy Mace is doubly suited for membership in this threatening club, pun intended, since his family name has been used for several different weapons historically, from a face-bashing implement in the days of the knights to the blistering spray favored in the dark night of an urban environment. The
Mace name was no doubt shortened from something else altogether when the family arrived in America from Sicily in the early 20th century.
Tommy Mace, beginning with the saxophone as a child, mastered most of the reed family, including the oboe. To some listeners, the oboe as a jazz instrument might seem just as threatening as either kind of mace, if not both.
Charlie Parker With Strings is a recording project that at least upon its initial release serves as an example of the jazz audience reacting as if threatened with bodily harm. There were critics who were bothered mightily by certain filigrees provided by the oboe player in the orchestra assembled by
Parker and his arrangers.
Mace can take credit for these swinging oboe passages along with membership in a variety of great big bands, including those of
Artie Shaw and
Paul Whiteman.
His professional career began in the late '20s when
Mace was still placed in Hartford, CT. In the next decade he performed with excellent players such as vibraphonist
Red Norvo, violinist
Joe Venuti, and trumpeter
Wingy Manone.
Shaw and
Whiteman came along in the '40s, utilizing
Mace's talents on clarinet and flute as well as saxophones and oboe. Other bandleaders he worked with during this period included
Jan Savitt,
Freddy Martin, Anson Weeks, and the progressive
Charlie Ventura.
Mace's next move was to dig his way into the Broadway pit bands, a sure way to have a steady paycheck in the New York City music scene. It was this type of music that occupied most of his time through 1966, following which he relocated to Florida, continuing to freelance as a reed player.
Mace was interviewed on the subject of virtuoso keyboard players for articles published in 2004. ~ Eugene Chadbourne