Joe Cinderella was born into an Italian family in Newark, New Jersey, in 1927. He played mandolin, imitating his father, before picking up guitar when he was nine years old. He admired the music of Charlie Christian and Eddie Lang, and he copied the licks of Django Reinhardt. During formal studies at the Essex Conservatory he already had something of a reputation as a hotshot. Joe also had a bass-playing brother, Don Cinderella.
Joe was drafted at the age of eighteen and lived at Camp Lee in Virginia, serving in a special branch of the Army during the Second World War. Cinderella fell in with a group of players interested in progressive jazz, including tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh and trumpeter Conte Candoli. A staff sergeant who was interested in jazz guitar heard him playing. The sergeant gave him his own room, where he played guitar all day, and prevented him from being sent to Germany by putting him in a general's band as a drummer.
He married Angela Cipulla and lived in Paterson while working as a musician in New York City. In 1954, they had a daughter, Daria, who also studied music. The guitarist's recording career began in the following decade accompanying bassist Vinnie Burke and the wonderful singer Chris Connor. Most famous of his recordings, however, are a series of sessions done with adventurous bandleader and saxophonist Gil Mellé for hip labels such as Blue Note and Prestige. Tuning this guitar in a combination of fourths and thirds, his improvisational style produced a unique sound with close harmonies and single notes. Although his reputation as a modern axeman was ascending, Cinderella spent most of the '60s working as a studio guitarist, playing music for commercial recordings, radio, television, and film.
Here’s “Crystal Blue” from above album.
As a studio musician Cinderella performed with Judy Garland, the Beach Boys, Billy Joel, Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond and classical composer John Cage to name but a few. He taught guitar in a New Jersey college from 1969 and wrote several instructional books for jazz guitar.
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| Gers Yowell & Joe Cinderella |
Eugene Chadbourne, writing for Allmusic.com, said of Cinderella: "He was a technically brilliant, original player who for long periods let his creative talents become obscured not by piles of soot and ash but by their musical equivalent, commercial studio jobs.” Apparently quite patient about the unfolding of his career, guitarist Cinderella didn't get around to releasing material under his own name on his own label until 2002, following more than half a century in the music business. Unfortunately he recorded very few of his hundreds of compositions.
At William Paterson College he became a member of the adjunct faculty and helped establish the school's jazz guitar program. Previously a resident of Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, Cinderella and his wife moved to a housing community in the Whiting section of Manchester Township, where he died from natural causes on October 27, 2012.
(Edited from Wikipedia & AllMusic)
There are not many photographs of Joe on the Internet but here’s probably the last image/video of Joe playing his piano shortly before he died.