Paul Nero: A Musician Ahead of His Time

When one thinks "West Coast Jazz",  it's the big names like Chet Baker, Furgeson, Getz and other horn players that are credited as its dominant force. Be-bop artists from the East Coast visited and left their mark but  to many, West Coast Jazz was devalued as lacking in be-bop's sophisticated edge. Strings didn't get the recognition they deserved  despite their major presence and Paul Nero was a major player. Unlike improvising artists Venuti and Grappelli, Nero was  prolific composer, conductor and arranger who campaigned vigorously to highlight string performers and  the string jazz genre as the West Coast Jazz sound. Nero argued that a violin had a greater capacity to adapt to and reshape modern jazz than status quo critics and many musicians allowed. He proved his case by inserting jazz violin in both be bop and classical genres, developed and taught jazz technique for string players and pushed the musical envelope with his own recording of a jazz violin orchestra: Paul Nero and his Hi Fiddles.

Paul Nero was among the first violinists of his time to fuse classical technique with jazz rhythms and be-bop frameworks while keeping his rich melodic persona. Although highly-regarded among his peer musicians, Nero never got the recognition he and others believed he deserved.

Why is Nero virtually unknown to the general public? One explanation for this could be that he was at least ten years ahead of his time, and since he left us too soon, he couldn't ride the wave of popular music's breakout. The music market of his time was not interested in new art forms for violin. Had Nero lived as long as his contemporaries (i.e. Venuti, Grappelli, Stuff Smith), his name wold have joined these artists who were "rediscovered" in the l970's jazz fiddle revival.

Another reason for Nero's low profile is that, until now, no one has provided an organized presentation of his life and works to musicians and music lovers.

Paul Nero, born Kurt Joachim Polnariow (Polnarioff) in Hamburg on April 29, 1917, was the youngest of three children. His father, Albert Abraham Icko Polnariow (Polnarioff), was a Ukranian violinist performer and composer who travelled extensively throughout northern Europe as kappelmeister.  His older sister, Rosa, a violin prodigy at 14, had already left for America with her father,  on an artist visa to perform with the Philadelphia orchestra.  Young Kurt stayed behind with his mother and middle sister initially but when he turned six they too sailed to New York  to rejoin the family for a new life in America. Like many Jewish immigrants, Nero grew up in a tight knit old world Russian-German community in the Bronx.  He became rapidly "Americanized" in the city’s public school system but at home he was trained  to become a classical violinist in the Russian tradition.

In Paul Nero's own violin playing, the old Russian classical technique of his early training and homeland culture permeates his musical expression. Instead of muting these influences in obedience to jazz idiom, he embraces them.

At Curtis Institute, young Kurt Polnarioff studied with Alexander Hilsburg in classical violin and composition, and after graduating in l937, he began his orchestra career with the Pittsburgh Symphony string section under Fritz Reiner's baton.

But it was jazz violin that Nero chose as his future path even  in the rigorous Curtis Institute. As his fellow students, Bernstein and Barber were excelling in the traditional classical  traditions, young Polnarioff formed the first Jazz Orchestra for Curtis students.

Polnarioff Americanized his name to Paul Nero and enlisted for military service right after the Pearl Harbor. He served in the US Navy in 1942 and was stationed in Washington D.C. as musical director of the US Navy Dance Band.

After the war's end and his honorable discharge, Nero returned to New York where he worked briefly in New York City, with Gene Krupa's Band as featured soloist, along with Anita O'Day,  then  at NBC  radio and  the Jan Savitt Jazz Orchestra  and also  teaching briefly at Juilliard.  Nero concertized on stage with Andre Previn at Town Hall and introduced his "hot fiddle" sound to receptive New York audiences.  He was elected to ASCAP in l946 and soon left the East Coast permanently for the Los Angeles emerging jazz scene.

Nero was able to find work as a free-lance session musician and his career quickly took off. In Los Angeles, hiring talent was coordinated by contractors who worked for radio producers. Nero was soon held in great demand; performing with such luminaries as, Paul Weston and Johnny Mercer's Capitol Records for Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee. Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Jo Stafford, and other L.A. based recording stars in the famed Capitol Studio. Nero soon started to go on his own and  recorded  for the Capitol, Decca and Sunset Records. His compositions blended old world memories with Californian cool sound  in the key of  optimism for America's postwar l950's. Paul Nero died of a heart attack on April 2, 1958 at the age of 41, in Los Angeles. *paulneroshotfiddles.com*

Paul Nero and His Hi Fiddles

Play The Music Of 

Shorty Rogers • Marty Paich

Jimmy Giuffre • David Raksin

Frank Comstock • Bob Cooper

Jack Montrose • Ruby Raksin

& Paul Nero

"It's about time someone did some real jazz with strings", said the Prez of Sunset Records. I agreed. "Go", said the Prez. And that's ALL he said. There were no (pardon the pun) strings attached.

This was to be my album. I a choice of tunes, arrangers, and composers. For more than twenty years I had been working toward this moment. Everybody said you couldn't play jazz on a fiddle. I said you could. 

This is not a typical album. Neither are these typical program notes. They could easily have been written in the third person. But this is no time to be coy and I'm as egotistical over my musical background as I am over my ability to breathe. The comments in the program have been written by the men who composed and arranged the music. Who is better qualified to explain the intent of the work than they?

As to the musicians... again I was very lucky. Gerald Vinci, Stan Harris and Paul Bergstrom are not typical string players. Combined with their excellent facility and background on their instruments, which speaks for itself, are the years of listening to good jazz and that rare quality of following the tone color, phrasing, and mood of the lead instrument, no matter what it did, yet never losing their individualities as performers. The fabulous sound and pulse of Rolly Bundock's bass; the imaginative solos and harmonic colors of Bobby Gibbons' guitar; the almost unbelievably restrained forcefulness of the two drummers — Milt Holland, who was in for eight sides — and Irv Cottler for four, made a septet out of what could very easily have become a string group with  a rhythm section backing it up. 

That's my story. I said fiddles can play jazz. I hope you are in agreement. *Paul Nero (liner notes)*

Paul Nero and His Hi Fiddles tries ambitiously to elicit jazz from a string quartet plus rhythm section. The various tracks are successful, however, only in direct ratio to the ability of the various composers and arrangers to feel fiddles and write for them.

Nero's own jazz background is not nearly as extensive as some of the other writers', yet his composition, "Scherzo-Phrenia", turns out to be the best side here. It swings, something most of the others fail to do, and it feels right — there is no self-consciousness or hokum evidente.

Nero also wrote "Vibrato, "Lullaby, and "Bridie", but with les over-all impact. Most successful of the other writers were Shorty Rogers, whose "Minuet" is a rather charming outing for the two violins, cello, viola, and rhythm (Rolly Bundock, bass; Bobby Gibbons, guitar, and Milt Holland and Irv Cottler splitting drums chores); Ruby Raskin, who neatly achieves his stated goal of "bop Dixieland" on "That's A Plenty", and Jack Montrose, who turns "Midnight Sun" into a hauntingly Bartokian excercise. Jack, who is steadily developing into a writer of real stature, faces a great future.

Jim Giuffre's "Waterfront" has moments of real merit, but it is the rhythm section that provides them, not the strings. Marty Paich makes "Street of Dreams" sound too much like Muzak, and Bob Cooper's "Flew" is dull and unimaginative.

This is a courageous try by Nero to explore the jazz possibilities of the string quartet, however, and succeeding albums would seem to be in order.

Suggestion: for the next LP, retain two or three of the writers from this one and ask other men like Russo, Mulligan, Lewis, Ellington, Burns, etc., to submit Works. Strings represent a challenging médium to the jazz composer, and precios few have ever shown they can work well in it.

*Jack Tracy (Down Beat, May 16, 1956)*

Side 1

1 - Scherzo-Phrenia

(Paul Nero)

2 - Street Of Dreams

(V. Young, S. Lewis)

3 - Just A Minuet

(Shorty Rogers)

4 - I Cover The Waterfront

(Green, Heyman)

5 - That's A Plenty

(Lew Pollack)

6 - Flew The Coop

(Bob Cooper)

Side 2

7 - Yes, We Have No Vibrato

(Paul Nero)

8 - Love Is For The Very Young

(David Raskin)

9 - Lullaby Of The Leaves

(Petkere, J. Young)

10 - Midnight Sun

(L. Hampton, F. J. Burke)

11 - A Foggy Day

(George and Ira Gershwin)

12 - Birdie Murphy, Won't You Please Come Home

(Paul Nero)

Paul Nero, Gerald Vinci (violins); Stan Harris (viola); Paul Bergstrom (cello);

Bobby Gibbons (guitar); Rolly Bundock (bass); Milt Holland, Irv Cottler (drums and percussion).

Recorded in Hollywood, California, March, 1956