James Mundell Lowe (April 21, 1922 – December 2, 2017) was an American jazz guitarist who worked often in radio, television, and film, and as a musician who was on many sessions through the years despite never becoming a household name,
Mundell Lowe learned to play guitar from the age of six, growing up in and around Laurel, Mississippi, the son of a Baptist minister. He helped his father hoe cotton on his farm but had no aspirations to work on the land. Aged ten, he acquired his first six-string guitar and became hooked on jazz. Having listening to Charlie Christian, he knew at once which style to emulate. Three years later, he absconded from home and headed for New Orleans where he frequented the Bourbon Street jazz clubs.
Although his father eventually caught up with him, Lowe ran away again -- this time to Nashville where he worked on the Grand Ole Opry radio program and briefly joined the Pee Wee King band. In 1940, he graduated from school, had a stint with the orchestra of Jan Savitt and was in 1943 drafted for military service, posted at a camp near New Orleans. There, he had the good fortune to meet the resident entertainment officer, John Hammond Jr. who organized weekend jam sessions. He performed in an Army dance band while in Guadalcanal.
Though assigned to Fort McPherson near Atlanta and posted to the Engineering Corps, Lowe's acquaintance with Hammond proved beneficial after his demobilization. In 1945, Hammond helped Lowe get a job with the Ray McKinley Orchestra (leader of the post-war Glenn Miller band). After that, Lowe worked in small combos, recording sessions and club dates with most of the big names of the genre, including Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Ben Webster and Red Norvo. He then worked intermittently for the next few years at Café Society and other clubs in New York.
In 1965 he moved to Los Angeles and worked for NBC as a staff guitarist, composer, and arranger. He wrote music for the TV shows Hawaii Five-O, Starsky & Hutch, and The Wild Wild West, and the movies Billy Jack and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask. He recorded with Carmen McRae and Sarah Vaughan.
Lowe also subsequently branched out into music education. During the succeeding decades he was active as a teacher of film composition at the Grove School of Music in Studio City and at the Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles. During the 1980s, he worked with André Previn, Tete Montoliu, and the Great Guitars.
Mundell Lowe was inducted into the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame and received a Lifetime Achievement prize at the San Diego Music Awards in 2008. During his career, he also worked with Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Hodges, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Lee Konitz, Peggy Lee, The Everly Brothers, Fats Navarro, Shirley Scott and Dinah Washington. Lowe was married to singer Betty Bennett, his third wife, for 42 years. In his last years, the couple lived in San Diego. He struggled with ill health during his later years and had bounced back from angina, bladder cancer, kidney disease and stage IV lung cancer.
![]()
Lowe was characteristically spry his 95th birthday concert at the San Diego jazz club Dizzy’s. Rather than just play a few songs, as had been anticipated, he performed for nearly an hour with a band that included fellow guitarists Jaime Valle, Bob Boss and Ron Eschete.
He had also fractured his hip from a fall, six weeks before his death. He died at his home in San Diego on December 2, 2017, at the age of 95 after receiving hospice care.
(Edited from Wikipedia, a bio by I.S.Mowis @ imdb & The San Diego Union Tribune)