Ordered up on Vero Dero Beach and delivered in Cleveland, I started noodling around with guitars and just about anything with strings at the age of 8 but got very serious with guitar at 14 when hormones and girls were injected into the situation. By 16 I was the resident high school Hendrix clone to the point where I forced myself to play left handed, kinda silly, but it did come with a really mean tremolo. By 19, with drummer Vince Broncaccio and Butch Moon, we were the weekend house band at Fitzpatrick's in the Cleveland Flats of the late '70s. After two years we all got itchy feet and needed new
inspiration. So in late '78 I packed up and moved from Cleveland to London, England where my big fro turned into a short purple something.
I spent the next 5 years between playing in London and recording with various British groups as well as promoting my own "le Modern Peasants," shooting early music videos achieving a bit of BBC airplay. Back in Cleveland, as part of the coolest band here – Size 6 – featuring three of the nicest guys on the planet, we were living that rock & roll vampire life, all nights, no sun, and not much food either.... But heap big fun.
Jim Martin
About this time I began working and learning the music biz from friends who owned and/or booked and ran the shows at Peabody's Cafe and Peabody's Downunder in Cleveland. Together they formed Peabody Productions and tagged me as soundman for the early jazz and blues shows, having the privilege working with some of music's greats...Stan Getz, Jaco Pastorius, Willie Dixon, Larry Coryell, Tito Puente and many more.
Burned out on the music business, I settled in the US in '85 with my wife and set my guitar aside for several years and turned to other areas as artistic avenues. Then, at a chance meeting with Bassist Herbert Pruitt in 1995, we immediately clicked and formed the band that would later be Blue Jazz. Two years later we added Norman Crumb, and for us that's when the magic began. This site is a archive of the evolution of a band in the classic sense. Not a concept that is proposed to be high art or one man's statement of the greater grand cosmic muffin..... but just a trio, three guys from varying musical backgrounds merging and growing together to create our sound. At this point we now see of ourselves as siblings and all that it brings...more than just band mates.
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