Collection: Isao Suzuki

Isao Suzuki was born in Tokyo in 1933, heard Milt Hinton play on a United States military base in 1953 and decided that was what he wanted to do, and taught himself double bass on the same bases where he had heard Hinton. He spent his early professional career working with Hidehiko Matsumoto, Sadao Watanabe and Shotaro Moriyasu, led his own ensemble in Tokyo from 1965 to 1969, and in 1969 was recruited by Art Blakey to join the Jazz Messengers in New York. What he found there deepened his playing: Ron Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk were among the musicians he recorded and performed with during the New York period. He returned to Japan in the early 1970s, went back to leading his own groups and working with visiting American musicians including Kenny Burrell and Mal Waldron, and began his recording career as a leader on Three Blind Mice. “Blow Up” (TBM, 1973) won the Japan Jazz Prize. “Black Orpheus” (TBM-63, 1976), recorded at Aoi Studio with pianist Tsuyoshi Yamamoto and drummer Donald Bailey, is the album that made his name internationally in the decades after its release: a trio session built from modal and soul-jazz playing that sits at the core of the Three Blind Mice canon. He also expanded his instrumental palette through the decade, playing cello and piccolo bass alongside the double bass that had been his primary voice. He mentored a generation of younger Japanese jazz musicians, including a teenage Hidefumi Toki who joined his group in the early 1970s. He established a jazz club in Osaka in 1987. Suzuki died of COVID-19 pneumonia on March 8, 2022, in Kawasaki, aged 89.