Mike Boone

A native New Yorker and Eastman grad, Boone was fresh off a second tour with Buddy Rich when he landed in Philadelphia in 1986. When he got to Philly, he put down his electric bass and picked up the acoustic; it was the only way to get gigs with the aging titans who still very much ran the Philly scene then. He immersed himself in that scene, playing at the old, beloved Ortlieb’s, educated by professors like saxophonist Bootsie Barnes, organist Shirley Scott, pianist Sid Simmons, and drummer Mickey Roker. Boone has preserved that legacy; no one in the city teaches young musicians how to gig and how to become professionals better or more thoroughly than Boone, who, in addition to furiously gigging himself, also teaches at Temple University and is the always opinionated, low-talking pied piper of Philadelphia’s most legit jazz jam sessions—at Heritage in Northern Liberties and Chris’ Jazz Café— where welcoming up a steady stream of present and former students is de rigueur. A leader on about a half-a-dozen releases—the most recent being 2017’s Beneath the Surface—Boone’s bona fides as a sideman go beyond Buddy Rich to gigs and sessions with Papa and Joey DeFrancesco, Sean Jones, and fellow Ortlieb’s alums like Orrin Evans, Uri Caine, and John Swana. But tracking down an exhaustive list of Boone’s “associated acts” is next to impossible; if you’re a jazz musician and part of the circuit here in Philadelphia, chances are you’ve shared a bandstand with Mike Boone for at least a tune or two, until he calls for new personnel, which is the closest thing to a hockey line change you’ll see at a jazz jam. There are bigger names in jazz to call Philadelphia home, but few on the scene engender the loyalty and respect that’s accorded Boone. Bassist Nicholas Krolak, a rising star based in Philadelphia, calls Boone, “The patriarch of the Philly jazz scene, mentor to all…and the torch-bearer of the Philly jazz tradition.” That encapsulates everything Boone is about. Above his own individual accolades as an instrumentalist, which are numerous and deserved, he’s the consummate steward of this music, in this place—a protector of the realm. Amidst the pandemic, Boone has taken to connecting with audiences through streaming regularly from Chris’ Jazz Café alongside a rotating cast of saxophonists including Dylan Band, Brian Morris, Jr., and Eric Wyatt. Boone’s also been livestreaming a socially distanced jazz jam each Thursday evening via Facebook. The casts are rotating, with a recent iteration featuring trumpeter Eliot Bild, vibraphonist Steve Perry, and Boone’s teenage son Mekhi on drums. And if you haven’t heard of Mekhi, well, it won’t be long now. Mentored by Philly pros like Byron Landham, Anwar Marshall, and Justin Faulkner but largely self (and dad)-taught, Mekhi and the word prodigy are two concepts frequently mentioned in the same sentence. -Matt Silver

Photo Credit: Screenshot courtesy of WRTI