Lellis, Tom (actually, Thomas Richard)
Lellis, Tom (actually, Thomas Richard)
Lellis, Tom (actually, Thomas Richard), pop-jazz singer, pianist; b. Cleveland, Ohio, April 8, 1946. He began singing professionally at age 15 in Cleveland. At the age of 20, he went on the road, and a year later he became house singer at the Three Rivers Inn (Syracuse, N.Y.), working with a big band on bills with Ray Charles, Gregory Hines, Buddy Greco, and the Four Freshmen. He also led small house bands in clubs across the U.S., including the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. He began intensive piano instruction in 1970, studying and performing with Bill Dobbins and theorist Phil Rizzo. Three years later he was opening for Dizzy Gillespie, Bill Evans, and Jimmy Smith. In 1973 he moved to N.Y. He has performed in a variety of venues in and around the U.S. and Europe. He has set lyrics to works by McCoy Tyner, Keith Jarrett, Wayne Shorter, and has been engaged as a lyricist by Chick Corea, Dave Brubeck, and others. His first album became a fixture in London’s jazz discos in the early 1980s. He was voted to Down Beat’s’International Critics Poll” in 1994 and performed in 1995 and 1998 at the International Association of Jazz Educators Convention. He performed and recorded his works with the Netherlands Metropole Orch. in 1999.
Discography
TL. (1979); And in This Corner (1979; w. Eddie Gomez, Jack Dejohnette, Jeremy Steig); Double Entendre (1991; w. Gomez, Dejohnette); Taken to Heart (1992).
—Lewis Porter