John Pizzarelli

John Paul Pizzarelli Jr., born April 6, 1960, in Paterson, New Jersey, is an American jazz guitarist, vocalist, and Broadway performer. The son of swing guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, he began playing guitar at age six and also played trumpet through his college years. He attended Don Bosco Preparatory High School, an all-boys Catholic school, and later studied at the University of Tampa and William Paterson University. Pizzarelli has credited his father as his most important teacher, citing the decade from 1980 to 1990 as formative to his development. As a teenager, he performed alongside Benny Goodman, Les Paul, Zoot Sims, Slam Stewart, and Clark Terry.

Pizzarelli released his debut solo album, I'm Hip (Please Don't Tell My Father), on the Stash label in 1983, and spent the following decade establishing himself as both a guitarist and vocalist. During the 1990s, he performed in a trio with Ray Kennedy and his younger brother, bassist Martin Pizzarelli. In the summer of 1993, he served as the opening act for Frank Sinatra. Four years later, in 1997, Pizzarelli made his Broadway debut starring in Dream, a show built around the music of Johnny Mercer. Nat King Cole has been a defining influence on his career, an admiration he documented on the albums Dear Mr. Cole (Novus, 1994) and P.S. Mr. Cole (RCA, 1999). He has also recorded tribute albums dedicated to Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Richard Rodgers, and Paul McCartney.

Over the course of his recording career, Pizzarelli has released more than twenty solo albums and appeared on more than forty albums by other artists. Among those recordings are sessions with Paul McCartney, James Taylor, Rosemary Clooney, and his father. He and Bucky Pizzarelli accompanied Annie Ross on her album To Lady with Love (Red Anchor, 2014), a tribute to Billie Holiday that Ross recorded at age eighty-four. Pizzarelli served as a co-producer of James Taylor's album American Standard, which won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album on November 24, 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he recorded Better Days Ahead: Solo Guitar Takes on Pat Metheny, released on the Ghostlight label in 2021. In 1999, he sang the big-band jingle for Foxwoods Resort Casino titled "The Wonder of It All."

Pizzarelli has collaborated with a wide range of musicians throughout his career, including George Shearing, Johnny Frigo, Buddy DeFranco, Jack Gibbons, the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, the Boston Pops Orchestra, and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. He and his wife, singer and actress Jessica Molaskey, co-host the syndicated national radio program Radio Deluxe with John Pizzarelli, which they frequently record from their vacation cabin overlooking Barrett Pond in Carmel, New York. Molaskey also appears on several of his recordings. Pizzarelli's father died on April 1, 2020, from complications related to COVID-19, and his mother died one week later, on April 8, 2020.