Noted jazz pianist John Alaimo died Dec. 20 at home in Oak Bluffs with his wife and children at his side. He was 81.
He was born in Boston on April 10, 1940 to Suzanne and John Alaimo Sr., a world-traveled musician. As a young boy, he studied piano with Moe Soloman, an inspiring local piano teacher. By 1954, the 14-year-old was playing professionally around the Boston area.
At 18, on John’s first day at a summer job, an industrial accident took four fingers off his right hand. Thinking he would never play piano again, he shifted to the trumpet and arranging and composing music. He studied music at Boston University, Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory, where he also played the cello. The musical arrangements he hand wrote as a student, known as charts, were used by Berklee teachers for more than 20 years.
He moved to Los Angeles to work as a music arranger for big bands. He also taught music theory and counterpoint. While recording at the world-famous The Lighthouse on Pier avenue in Hermosa Beach, he became friends with jazz great Hampton Hawes. Mr. Hawes encouraged John to return to piano with six fingers. Within a matter of months, John was back to mastering his favorite instrument. His knowing which notes are essential and playing from his heart have inspired others with obstacles to follow their dreams.
In Hermosa Beach, he met Holly (Ellen) Shanks, a traveling artist from Philadelphia. Together they set off for San Francisco in the mid-1960s, marrying along the way. The Alaimos soon moved back to the East Coast and started a family: first came Naaron, then Jessamin. Their whirlwind romance lasted over half a century.
John initially worked at Boston’s World Star Productions, arranging music under contract for recordings. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked in the Boston area for the Polaroid corporation during the week and, for 25 years, played weekends with drummer Bunny Smith and Friends at the Cambridge bar The Plough and Stars on Massachusetts avenue and Inman Square’s famed The 1369 Jazz Club. During a Polaroid business trip to the Netherlands, John spent nights and weekends sitting in at jazz clubs with local musicians.
Whenever Bunny Smith and Friends played on Martha’s Vineyard, John realized how much he wanted to move there with Holly after their kids were grown. In the mid-1990s, resettled on the Island, the Alaimos shaped an empty storefront on Duke County avenue across from the old firehouse in Oaks Bluffs into Holly’s Dragonfly Gallery. It soon became a cornerstone of the Oak Bluffs Arts District.
Free to focus on his music vocation full time, John quickly became an integral part of the Island jazz scene. He worked with bandleader/bassist Jimmy Burgoff and attributes his many years of playing solo to the great inspiration of fellow Islander and pianist Jeremy Berlin. His three-concert solo tour in France was triggered by a French national radio broadcast about his personal story as a musician and which featured recordings of his unique style of jazz piano.
The Vineyard-based John Alaimo Trio had a jazz repertoire of more than 300 tunes and numerous CDs that featured John on piano, Mike Tinus on bass and Tauras Biskis on drums. John played his last gig at an event held on Sept. 11 at Farm Neck Golf Club.
In late September he was airlifted to a Boston hospital with a sudden illness. He returned home to Oak Bluffs with Holly on Nov. 20 and was cared for by Hospice & Palliative Care of Martha’s Vineyard.
He is survived by his wife, Holly, children Naaron and Jessamin, and grandchildren Malcolm and Mallory DeFeo, and Andrea and Annalise Alaimo.
A celebration of his life will be held in the spring of 2022.
Donations can be made to Hospice & Palliative Care of Martha’s Vineyard at P.O. Box 1748, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568 or online at https://hospiceofmv.org/donations/.
