Jazz guitar player Howie Collins’ first instrument was the banjo which he began to study at the age of ten in 1940. Four years later, attracted by the jazz guitar chord solo styles of Tony Mottola, George Van Eps and others Collins began to study the jazz guitar. He took lessons from a local teacher, Al Peterson. By the time he was sixteen he was playing professionally in hotel bands in New York’s Catskill Mountain region performing chord melody jazz guitar solos. Collins studied at Hofstra University from where he graduated in accounting. At that time he played the guitar on many evening club dates in New York.
Howie Collins’ career in music came to a halt for a while as after graduation he joined the US Marine Corps while the Korean war was in progress. He left the army in 1953 and worked in a bank during the day and as a jazz guitar player at nights. At this time he became friendly with jazz guitar player Barry Galbraith, playing jazz standards for guitar and studying with this great guitarist. It was Galbraith who persuaded Collins to make the jazz guitar his career. In 1955 he began working with several big bands. Including that of trumpeter, Ralph Marterie. He also worked on a USA tour with the popular British orchestra led by Mantovani. Following this time Collins played many evenings in jazz clubs He took over Jimmy Raney’s seat playing jazz guitar chord melody arrangements with pianist Jimmy Lyon at New York’s Blue Angel club for a while. From 1956 to 1958 he studied classical guitar at the Manhattan School of Music with Albert Valdes Blaine.
From 1955 to 1961 Howie Collins once again worked with many bandleaders including Neil Hefti, Skitch Henderson and Warren Covington. 1955 also marked the beginning of a fifteen year period of studio work including a spell working on singer Pat Boone’s ABC Television shows. At the same time Collins continued playing jazz including two years (1960-61) wth pianist George Shearing and singer Nancy Wilson. In 1961 he joined the Benny Goodman band for a South American tour.
In recent years Howie Collins has spent most of his time teaching and playing club dates in the New York area. He has also played in the pit orchestras for several Broadway shows. In 1971 he took up the seven-string guitar originally developed by George Van Eps and also for a while studied the viola.
Jazz guitar player John Collins originally studied music with his mother Georgia Gorham who was a professional band leader. In the mid 1920s his family moved to Chicago. There Collins studied with the respected guitar teacher Frank Latham. When he was fifteen he began to play with his mother’s band. In 1934 he was heard by the legendary pianist Art Tatum who offered him a job with his band.
After leaving Tatum’s band, John Collins went on to play for three years with trumpeter Roy Eldridge. From 1940-42 he worked in New York City with many top jazz men including Benny Carter, Fletcher Henderson, Lester Young and Dizzy Gillespie. After four years in the US Army Collins played with bassist Slam Stewart from 1946-48 and pianist Billy Taylor from 1949-51. In 1947 he won Esquire magazine’s New Star Award. After a recommendation from Irving Ashby, Collins was hired in 1951 to fill the guitar seat in the Nat King Cole trio. He stayed with Nat King Cole until the singer’s death in 1965.
Always respected as a fine soloist by his fellow musicians, John Collins was relegated to a background role playing rhythm jazz guitar for the fourteen years he was with Nat King Cole. From 1965-71 he toured with pianist Bobby Troup’s quartet and this gave Collins the opportunity to once more display his talented solo jazz guitar work.
In more recent times John Collins freelanced around the Los Angeles area leading his own quartet. And backing star singers such as Sammy Davis Jr, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and Nancy Wilson. A wonderful tribute was made to John Collins when the Mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, proclaimed September 15, 1985 ‘John Collins Day’ in the city of Los Angeles. A sign of the high esteem in which the jazz guitarist is held.
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