Lou Mecca: Knockout Guitar

In my post yesterday, I told you about Walt Namuth, a superb jazz guitarist from the Baltimore area whose finest playing wasn't recorded commercially. He hated the road. Another spectacular jazz guitarist who detested touring and made only a handful of recordings was Lou Mecca, a towering talent who gave up the guitar for a chiropractic practice when he was 35. He, too, hated the road.

Mecca recorded as a sideman with Gil Melle for Blue Note in 1954 and 1955—The Gil Mellé Quartet Featuring Lou Mecca and Five Impressions of Color, respectively. Then he recorded his own Blue Note album called Lou Mecca Quartet. His fourth and final album was Bridging the Gap, recorded in 1999 for the Japanese Pony Canyon label in Freehold, N.J., with Mickey Golizio (b) and Nat Garratano (d).

Born in Passaic, N.J., in 1927, Mecca's first exposure to music was through his father, Nicolino, a symphonic cornetist. Lou asked his father to teach him to play, a task his father entrusted to a family friend. But, as the friend later told his father, “Forget about it, Nick, he has no lip." So at 9, Mecca picked up a guitar at the nearby Master's School of Music. For 50 cents a lesson, he was given a lousy guitar and a book. Mecca dove in.

At 16, Mecca started taking guitar lessons Frank Staffa, who had played with Rudy Vallee in the 1930s. Mecca was a fast learner and soon quit high school to play professionally. He toured with an organ trio, followed by a group called the Californians. During World War II, he joined the Three Picketts and played saloons, starting with the Ball of Fire in Patterson, N.J. They played the same six songs they knew over and over that night without anyone in the audience noticing. Other local combos followed.

When he turned 18, in 1945, Mecca began touring with different groups throughout the U.S. and Canada. After recording two albums with Melle in the early 1950s, Blue Note had him record one as a leader. But the road was wearing him out and eating into his marriage. It also wasn't paying the bills. So Mecca promised his wife he wouldn't tour again and limited his playing in the 1950s to local joints.

At age 34, in 1961, while sitting in the reception area waiting for his wife's visit to a chiropractor to end, Mecca's interest grew. In September 1998, Mecca told Marcella De Simone of The Coast Star in Manasquan, N.J., why becoming a chiropractor appealed to him:

“I found people with all different ailments were waiting for treatment. I had trouble with my gall bladder and the chiropractor helped me. The chiropractor looked at my hands. He said, 'You could be a great chiropractor.' So I decided to become one."

Mecca attended chiropractic school and earned a Doctor of Chiropractic degree. After he graduated, he practiced for 25 years. After he retired in 1992, he was in a position to do whatever he wanted. “The very thing that I set out to do, to become financially independent, so I could eliminate the business aspect of music and only have to deal with the art form is what ended up happening," Mecca said.

Lou Mecca died on June 27, 2003, at age 76.

Here are six tracks:

Here's Gll Mellé's composition Ballad for Guitar in September 1954, with Gil Mellé (bar), Lou Mecca (g), Bill Phipps (b) and Vinnie Thomas (d)...



Here's the title track from Gil Mellé's Five Impressions of Color in February 1955, with Gil Mellé (bar), Don Butterfield (tu), Lou Mecca (g), Bill Phipps (b) and Vinnie Thomas (d)...



Here's Mecca playing Just One of Those Things from his Blue Note release, Lou Mecca Quartet in March 1955, with Lou Mecca (g), Jack Hitchcock (vib), Vinnie Burke (b) and Jimmy Campbell (d)...



Here's Tenderly from his finest and rarest Mecca album, Bridging the Gap, in March 1999, with Lou Mecca (g), Mickey Golizio (b) and Nat Garratano (d). The CD is selling for between $31 and $95...