William N. Law Blog: Mike Jones: Pre-Show Piano

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. That includes musicians who land steady gigs at casinos. The dry desert weather is just right and the steady work makes stress vanish. It's a good life. Case in point is pianist Mike Jones. For those rollers not in the know, Mike plays jazz piano (with Penn Jillette on bass) prior to Penn & Teller's magic and comedy extravaganzas at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino.

I last posted about Mike's piano back in 2016 here and before that in 2013 here. Now he has a new album out—The Show Before the Show (Capri), featuring Jillette on bass. Mike is magnificent. There's simply no other way to describe his playing. Think Oscar Peterson meets Milt Buckner. He's a full-keyboard player with an elegant sense of swing, a commanding attack with superb taste in chord voicings, pedal tones and melody lines.

Even the lineup of songs on his new album is just right: Broadway, Corcovado, But Not for Me, Have You Met Miss Jones, There Is No Greater Love, Manha de Carnaval, Tangerine, On the Sunny Side of the Street, Box Viewing Blues and Exactly Like You.

Interestingly, Box Viewing Blues is Mike's own composition and one of the most exciting on the album. It's a two-fisted rollicking blues dense with Buckner-esque block chords.

It's worth buying the album just for Teller's beautifully written liner notes. Teller, of course, is the silent one. According to the mute magician, Penn, a frustrated bass player, dabbled on the electric bass for years. But the electric bass has frets, and in the jazz world the electric model isn't exactly hep. The upright is fret-less, which presented Penn with a challenge. [Photo above of Teller]

In 2000, he bought an acoustic bass and began learning his way around the fingerboard. In 2001, Penn heard through a friend that Mike Jones had come to Vegas for a gig but that his job at the Paris hotel had fallen though. Penn went to hear Mike play.

Penn was blown away and decided to hire Mike to perform an opening set to get Penn & Teller audiences relaxed and feeling hip. Sort of a Matt Dennis thing, but without the vocals. And like all good deeds, Penn had a teenie-weenie motive. The gig gave him someone to play with. And that's how it happened in 2002, when the Mike Jones Duo began warming up the crowd. Quite a trick.

To Penn's credit, he stuck with it, absorbing Mike's greatness, which in turn built his confidence and made him determined to improve. And he did.

But let me correct my opening line. Mike is going to be performing with his trio at Chicago's Green Mill on March 23 and 24. So what happens in Vegas occasionally takes a break from Vegas and winds up in cold weather. Mike tells me he had to look around for a winter coat. If you're in Chicago this weekend, don't miss him.