Brian Nova is a talented and versatile guitarist who's performed with jazz elite including Stanley Turrentine, Bud Shank, and Dizzy Gillespie. But, when he performed his family in Hawaii, all they wanted to hear was some slack-key music.
"My jazz career in Hawaii's over. It lasted about a song and a half," Nova said, with a laugh.
In contrast, he thoroughly impressed our KNKX studio session audience last year, when he came in to perform with pianist Shelly Berg, bassist Terry Miller, and drummer Gary Novak.
Nova grew up on Seattle's south end, raised on funk and rock music. A friend's mom noticed his talent and thought he'd benefit from a trip to the local jazz club, Dimitriou's Jazz Alley, to see the guitar legend Herb Ellis.
"I went kicking and screaming. I thought, I don't want to hear some old guy play 'Misty' all night long. I still have a mark on my chin where my my chin hit the table. I just didn't know the guitar could be played that way. I was 19," Nova said.
Nova caught on to the busy jazz scene in Seattle in the late-'80s and early-'90s, playing with and learning from the city's top musicians, like bassist Buddy Catlett, who worked with Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong.
"It was really a lot of fun back then. There are a lot of places to play. You could play five nights a week. I did play five nights a week," Nova said.
Pianist and singer Primo Kim taught Nova thousands of jazz standards, and when he left Seattle, it was that knowledge that led him to connect with the guitarist he calls his musical father— the great Joe Pass.
"Primo taught me thousands of songs in any key. So, I was kind of armed for it. That's what kind of caught his ear more than anything," he said.
Nova worked with several jazz greats on the road, like saxophonist Eddie Harris, who encouraged him to sing. He also got to work with the guitarist who first sparked his interest in jazz, Herb Ellis, who taught him the importance and the power of rhythm guitar.
"It's like Mike Tyson, like boxing. You don't really know how much it hurts to get punched until you're in the ring with someone that actually knows how to punch. There's nowhere to hide, there's nowhere to go, and that's kind of the way Herbie was. He was a freight train," Nova said.
Nova recently settled back in the Seattle area and released a new album of standards called They Say It's Wonderful. He's glad to be closer to his family in the Pacific Northwest, both personal and musical.
"I was missing the Seattle scene. There's just something about it. I've moved back," he said. "I've moved out of Seattle probably a dozen times and moved back now 13 times. I just I love it here. It's really home."
Songs heard in this episode:
- "From the Beginning"
- "The Say its Wonderful"
- "Love for Sale"
