Rod Piazza (born December 18, 1947,

Riverside Riverside may refer to: Places Australia * Riverside, Tasmania, a suburb of Launceston, Tasmania Canada * Riverside (electoral district), in the Yukon * Riverside, Calgary, a neighbourhood in Alberta * Riverside, Manitoba, a former rural m ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

) is an American

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

harmonica The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica inclu ...

player and

singer Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

. He has been playing with his band The Mighty Flyers, which he formed with his pianist wife Honey Piazza, since 1980. Their

boogie Boogie is a repetitive, swung note or shuffle rhythm,Burrows, Terry (1995). ''Play Country Guitar'', p.42. Dorling Kindersley Limited, London. . "groove" or pattern used in blues which was originally played on the piano in boogie-woogie mus ...

sound combines the styles of

jump blues Jump blues is an up-tempo style of blues, usually played by small groups and featuring horn instruments. It was popular in the 1940s and was a precursor of rhythm and blues and rock and roll. Appreciation of jump blues was renewed in the 1990s as ...

West Coast blues West Coast blues is a type of blues music influenced by jazz and jump blues, with strong piano-dominated sounds and jazzy guitar solos, which originated from Texas blues players who relocated to California in the 1940s. West Coast blues also ...

and

Chicago blues Chicago blues is a form of blues music developed in Chicago, Illinois. It is based on earlier blues idioms, such as Delta blues, but performed in an urban style. It developed alongside the Great Migration of the first half of the twentieth cent ...

Biography

Piazza grew up in

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...

, where he studied blues

records A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, ...

and perfected his harmonica work. He originally started on guitar, an instrument he began playing at the age of six or seven. In the mid-1960s, Piazza formed his first band The House of DBS, which later changed its name to the Dirty Blues Band. The band signed with ABC-Bluesway and released two

album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

s in 1967 and 1968. The band broke up in 1968, and Piazza formed Bacon Fat that year. Piazza's idol and mentor,

George "Harmonica" Smith George "Harmonica" Smith (born Allen George Smith, April 22, 1924 – October 2, 1983) was an American electric blues harmonica player. Apart from his solo recordings, Smith is best known for his work backing both Muddy Waters and Big Mama Thornt ...

joined the band and they had a "dual harp" sound. Bacon Fat released two albums the following two years. Piazza left and worked in other bands before going solo in 1974. He formed the Chicago Flying Saucer Band the following year, which later evolved into the Mighty Flyers. The band recorded their first album in 1980. Piazza started touring and recording as Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers Blues Quartet, after the departure of long-time bassist Bill Stuve in the early 2000s. Piazza has recorded twenty-four studio albums between 1967 and 2009, including the live concert DVD ''Big Blues Party'' in 2005 (recorded at the

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. was established in 1979 by homebrewing, homebrewers Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi in Chico, California, United States. The brewery produced in 2010, and as of 2016, Sierra Nevada Brewing is the seventh-largest Brewery, ...

Chico, California Chico ( ; Spanish for "little") is the most populous city in Butte County, California. Located in the Sacramento Valley region of Northern California, the city had a population of 101,475 in the 2020 census, reflecting an increase from 86,18 ...

). In addition, he has appeared as a guest performer on over twenty-one releases since 1968. Between 1995 and 2001,

Rick Holmstrom Rick Holmstrom (born May 30, 1965) is an American electric blues and rhythm and blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. Holmstrom has previously worked with William Clarke, Johnny Dyer, and Rod Piazza. He is currently the bandleader for Mavis ...

played in the Mighty Flyers. Piazza has toured blues clubs, concert venues and

festivals A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival co ...

in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and Spain, among other countries. He and his wife currently live in Riverside, California.

Discography

Pre-Mighty Flyers Era

* 1967 ''The Dirty Blues Band: The Dirty Blues Band'' (ABC-Bluesway) * 1968 ''The Dirty Blues Band: Stone Dirt'' (ABC-Bluesway) * 1970 ''Bacon Fat: Grease One For Me'' (Blue Horizon) * 1971 ''Bacon Fat: Tough Dude'' (Blue Horizon) * 1973 ''Rod Piazza: Blues Man'' (LMI) * 1979 ''The Chicago Flying Saucer Band Featuring Rod Piazza'' (Gangster)

With The Mighty Flyers

* 1981 ''Radioactive Material'' (Right Hemisphere) * 1984 ''File Under Rock'' (Takoma) * 1985 ''From The Start To The Finnish'' (Red Lightnin'; US release in 1986 on Pausa) * 1986 ''Harpburn'' (Murray Brothers; reissued in 1993 on Black Top; Rod Piazza solo album) * 1988 ''Undercover'' (Special Delivery) * 1988 ''So Glad To Have The Blues'' (Murray Brothers; Rod Piazza solo album) * 1991 ''Blues In The Dark'' (Black Top) * 1992 ''Alphabet Blues'' (Black Top) * 1994 ''Live At B.B. King's Blues Club'' (Big Mo) * 1997 ''Tough And Tender'' (Tone-Cool) * 1998 ''Vintage Live: 1975'' (Tone-Cool) * 1999 ''Here And Now'' (Tone-Cool) * 2001 ''Beyond The Source'' (Tone-Cool) * 2004 ''Keepin' It Real'' (Blind Pig) * 2005 ''For The Chosen Who'' (Delta Groove)

D+DVD D, or d, is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''dee'' (pronounced ), plural ''dees''. History The ...

* 2007 ''Thrillville'' (Delta Groove) * 2009 ''Soul Monster'' (Delta Groove) * 2011 ''Almighty Dollar'' (Delta Groove) * 2014 ''Emergency Situation'' (Blind Pig) * 2017 ''Live At Fleetwood's'' (Big Mo) CD- recorded 1993

Selected collections

* 1969 ''Live At Small's Paradise'' (Blue Moon) * 1970 ''How Blue Can We Get?'' (Blue Horizon) * 1991 ''Blues Cocktail Party!'' (Black Top) * 1992 ''Blues Pajama Party'' (Black Top) * 1992 ''The Essential Collection'' (Hightone) - compilation of ''Radioactive Material'', ''File Under Rock'', and ''From The Start To The Finnish''. * 1992 ''Blues Harmonica Spotlight'' (Black Top) * 1995 ''Blues, Mistletoe & Santa's Little Helper'' (Black Top) * 1996 ''Instrumental Blues Dynamite!'' (Black Top) * 1997 ''California Blues'' (Black Top) - compilation of ''Harpburn'', ''Blues In The Dark'' and ''Alphabet Blues''. * 1997 ''Jump & Swing with Black Top'' (Black Top) * 1997 ''Blues Harp Power'' (Easydisc/Rounder) * 1997 ''Blues After Hours'' (Easydisc/Rounder) * 1998 ''Blues Joint'' (Easydisc/Rounder) * 1998 ''Blues Harp Hotshots'' (Easydisc/Rounder) * 2003 ''The Story of Tone-Cool, vol. 1'' (Tone-Cool) CD* 2003 ''Live at the W.C. Handy Blues Awards, vol. 1'' (Tone-Cool) * 2003 ''Modern Master: The Best of Rod Piazza 1968-2003'' (Tone-Cool) CD* 2006 ''Blues Party'' (Tone-Cool) * 2008 ''His Instrumentals'' (Piazza Publishing; reissued in 2018 on Rip Cat Records) CD

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Piazza, Rod 1947 births Living people American blues harmonica players Harmonica blues musicians American blues singers American male singers Musicians from Riverside, California Black Top Records artists West Coast blues musicians Topic Records artists