They both arrived in Tampa Bay in 1977. Michael Ross, fresh out of high school in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a new enrollee at the USF School of Music who had recently sold his electric bass to go solely acoustic. Fred Johnson, a 27-year-old former Marine, a singer who came down from Boston after playing a few gigs at the Hurricane Seafood Restaurant on Pass-a-Grille Beach.
They met and became friendly early in their Tampa Bay tenures, and have shared stages many times, but it took four decades for the pair to start a long-discussed musical project. In 2017, Johnson and Ross formed a duo consisting of acoustic bass and voice, with Johnson adding percussion. Their periodic gigs have wowed audiences from a Sarasota and the Tampa Bay area to the small town of Blue Ridge in north Georgia. The tandem, which has designs on taking their act international, will perform on October 12 as part of the Jazz on the Deuces program at the Historic Manhattan Casino in St. Petersburg. They’ll be joined by young keyboardist Liston Gregory III.
RELATED: CL Music Issue 2019 — Tampa Bay’s jazz scene is alive and well
Johnson and Ross are among an elite group of local elders who have kept the jazz fires burning, even when they were mere embers. The list includes saxophonist David Pate, percussionist Gumbi Ortiz, drummer John Jenkins, bassists Mark Neuenschwander and Billy Pillucere, singers Belinda Womack and Kitty Daniels, guitarists Larry Camp and LaRue Nickelson, pianist William Evans, multi-instrumentalist Patrick Bettison, plus the brothers Ron (keyboards) and Dave (drums) Reinhardt. And there’s the elder elder — bassist and Duke Ellington alum, John Lamb, still busy and vibrant at age 85.
They are music educators, mentors, ambassadors and, foremost, first-rate jazz musicians who ply their art in front of audiences.
IF YOU GO
Jazz on the Deuces w/Jeremy Carter Group/Shawn Brown Band/Fred Johnson and Michael ross/late night pro jam feat. James Suggs, Paul Gavin, and more. Next Sat. Oct. 12, 5 p.m.-midnight. Manhattan Casino, 642 22nd St. S., St. Petersburg. $20-$100.stpeteartsalliance.org.
Michael, Fred and I are sitting in my living room in St. Pete, about to conduct the interview for this story. Ross’s brown T-shirt is emblazoned with an image of a turntable arm sitting on an LP. Johnson’s plain black T contrasts with his bushy white goatee. I arrived in the Bay area in December 1976 and started writing about music in 1980. So there’s reminiscing to be done. We dredge up long-gone venues (Old Chicago, The Wine Cellar, Sky Lounge, Penrod’s Palace, Maestro’s, The Flame, Studebaker’s, The Columbia Restaurant, the Tarot Pub, Roughriders). We revel in the glory of the early ’80s, when one could catch Fred Johnson’s band at B.B. Joe’s on Central Avenue in St. Pete, and walk a few doors east to The Garden to see Michael Ross’s quintet, Liquid Bebop.
“In those days, it was nothing to get a gig,” Ross muses. “Liquid Bebop had half the commercial viability of Fred’s group. We were playing straight-ahead instrumental jazz five nights a week. If you lost a gig, you could go down the street and get another one.”
Those days are long since gone. Between the three of us, we can’t think of a venue in Tampa Bay that qualifies as a bona fide jazz club — one that emphasizes the music, and listening to it, rather than as a subdued sideshow for a dinner crowd. Currently, jazz gigs are often tied to special arts events, occur as one-nighters at places like the Side Door at the Palladium, or as jazz nights that are part of a broader range of music programming. The Hangar at Albert Whitted Airport holds a well-attended jazz jam on Monday nights.
Yet — “I’m working as much now as I did in the ’80s,” Ross says. “You have to do some teaching, and you have to be willing to drive a lot. I still have a nice career in music, but I’m hustling all the time.”
Johnson is currently an artist in residence and community engagement specialist at the Straz Center. Over the years, he’s earned international recognition, if not quite jazz stardom, by regularly playing overseas festivals and gigs. From 2009 to 2017, he did what he calls “the longest commute.” Based in New York, Johnson headed up the arts program at a nonprofit called Intersection International that took him to Israel, Palestine, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Cleveland and Memphis, where he employed performance and dialogue to promote peace and concord. His family remained in St. Pete, and Johnson made regular trips home.
After Johnson returned to the Tampa Bay area full time in ’17, he and Ross resumed talk about their project. “There was never any question it would be a bass and voice thing,” Johnson says. The duo in waiting finally decided to do it.
“To be honest with you, at first I was a little scared,” Johnson says of the format. “When you’re doing voice and bass, there’s no room for error. If I mess up, it’s clear. If Mike messes up, it’s clear. You have to really lock in and listen to each other. It took a few gigs, but it’s my favorite [musical] thing to do now.”
“It was a little tentative in the beginning,” Ross chimes in. “But we never fell on our ass.”
The Fred Johnson/Michael Ross Duo dances a fine line between structure and spontaneity. They play tunes, including such standards as “Autumn Leaves,” “Nature Boy,” “God Bless the Child” and “Summertime,” as well as pop numbers like Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Lovely Day,” and the surefire audience-grabber, “Just My Imagination.” Because of their unique instrumentation and jazz sensibilities, Johnson and Ross add their own contours to these songs, while keeping them familiar.
Johnson, 69, delivers soaring, soulful vocals with a jazz-like elasticity and an innate connection to blues and gospel. His ability to hold finely pitched notes for extended lengths is nothing short of remarkable for a singer of any age, let alone someone approaching 70. Ross’s bass work, unencumbered by other instruments, is agile and full-bodied, with loads of natural sustain. He provides bedrock rhythmic and harmonic support, and frequently launches into exhilarating solos. Johnson is also deft at a cappella segments.
While their performances requires a deep connection with each other, the duo never loses sight of the notion that they are there to entertain an audience — audiences that might be puzzled at first. “They can be like, ‘What the hell is this?’” Ross quips. “A guy with an acoustic bass and a guy singing and playing percussion? It doesn’t add up.”
But, Johnson adds, it doesn’t take long before, “I can sense the people leaning in — ‘Oh, I get this.’”
A technique that helps the artist-audience connection along is what the duo calls “sound sculptures.” It’s where Johnson asks for random words and phrases from the audience, and then he and his partner craft a song on the spot.
“We’ve seen it time and again,” Ross says. “Some people in the crowd might be half-engaged. Then we do a sound sculpture and they’re with us for the rest of the night.”
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Having covered the interview basics, our discussion turns to the viability of jazz in the Tampa Bay market. Specifically: Could our area support a full-time jazz club? (And by full-time, we’re not talking seven days a week, but a place dedicated to presenting jazz in all its iterations.)
I’m probably the most skeptical, having seen a slew of venues open and close over the years, with owners tapping out because they simply could not sustain attendance and generate consistent bar revenue. Ross and Johnson are more optimistic, if not exactly bullish.
“I could see it working,” Ross says. “But you couldn’t do it with one house band. You’d have to rotate different acts through.”
Johnson’s take: “Yes, it could work under the right circumstances. There’s a vast audience out there, folks who’ve come to Tampa Bay from other parts of the world. You get the best bands — and pay them. You provide quality service and really promote the club. It would be good if there was an education element as well. And there has to be an entertainment piece.”
Johnson and Ross imagine a place where up-and-coming players could be mentored by established musicians. It’s happened before. “There a bunch of cats like Eric Darius and Mike Scaglione, professional musicians out in the world, who got their first taste of performing as teenagers sitting in with us,” Johnson says.
Players passing the music down to the next generation is part and parcel of the jazz tradition. The Bay area has managed to keep that up — through deluges and droughts, with lots of clubs, or no club at all.
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This article appears in Oct 3-10, 2019.