Eddie Hazell (February 6, 1934 – November 2, 2010) was an American jazz guitarist and singer.
Edward E. Hazell grew up in the Little Falls, New Jersey area and began performing as a professional musician with a band called The 3 Echoes while still in high school. After completing his military service during the Korean War, he initially worked outside the music scene. In the late 1950s, he toured again, playing clubs such as Mr. Kelley's in Chicago, the Town Tavern in Toronto, and The Tenement, The Happy Medium, and The Most in Manhattan.
In the 1960s, he performed in Chicago clubs with comedian Bill Cosby, as well as with Rich Little at the Four Seasons in New York and the Americana Hotel in Puerto Rico. In 1961 he released his first album; in the years that followed, he made appearances on television shows such as The Merv Griffin Show, AM New York, Today Show, Kraft Music Hall, and Broadway Tonight. He also made successful guest appearances in Japan.
In the mid-1970s, he performed with his own trio at New York's Stryker's Pub, and he also appeared as a singer and actor in numerous jingles. He worked mostly in the New York and New Jersey area in a trio with drummer Lou Slingerland (later Vinnie LeBue) and bassist Bernie Taylor (later Jim Hankins).
Writing in the New York Times in June 1975, critic John S. Wilson reported on Hazell’s trio at Stryker’s Pub in New York: “Nothing that Mr. Hazell chooses to do an be taken for granted, because his approaches are personal and imaginative and the guitar solos – both chorded and single-stringed – which are spread generously through his work, put an emphasis on a combination of both rhythm and melody that is rarely followed by jazz guitarists these days. What he achieves is an unusual mixture of superior supper club performance and bright, swinging, exciting jazz.”
Between gigs and recording much of the great American songbook on albums for various labels including Columbia and Audiophile (“Eddie Hazell Live At Gulliver’s”, “Take Your Shoes Off Baby”, “Eddie Hazell in Concert”, “Eddie Hazell Live From The Embers” and more), he also did TV commercial work as a singer and performer for various products including Chase & Sanborn coffee.
From the 1980s through to when Hazell stopped performing due to complications from Parkinson’s Disease, the Eddie Hazell Trio played concerts and clubs in the New York-New Jersey area with drummers Lou Slingerland and later Vinnie LeBue and with bassists Bernie Taylor and later Jim Hankins.Hazell’s friend Edward Petkus, professor emeritus at William Paterson University, wrote the biography Someone Out There is Listening: The Life of Eddie Hazell, jazz guitar-vocalist.
Eddie died September 2, 2010 in Vernon, New Jersey at the age of 76.
(Edited
from Wikipedia & Legacy obit) (Hazell is not to be confused with R&B
guitarist Eddie Hazel.)