Ralph Raymond Peña (February 24, 1927,

Jarbidge, Nevada Jarbidge is an unincorporated community in Elko County, Nevada, United States. Located at the bottom of the Jarbidge River's canyon near the north end of the Jarbidge Mountains, it lies within the Jarbidge Ranger District of the Humboldt-Toi ...

- May 20, 1969, Mexico City) was an American

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

double bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...

ist and

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

. Peña learned to play low brass instruments as a child and began playing professionally in the early 1940s, becoming known as a jazz double bassist. In this capacity, in the early 1950s he worked with

Charlie Barnet Charles Daly Barnet (October 26, 1913 – September 4, 1991) was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. His major recordings were "Skyliner", "Cherokee", "The Wrong Idea", "Scotch and Soda", "In a Mizz", and "Southland Shuffle ...

Stan Getz Stanley Getz (February 2, 1927 – June 6, 1991) was an American jazz saxophonist. Playing primarily the tenor saxophone, Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, with his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre of ...

Barney Kessel Barney Kessel (October 17, 1923 – May 6, 2004) was an American jazz guitarist born in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Known in particular for his knowledge of chords and inversions and chord-based melodies, he was a member of many prominent jazz groups a ...

Billy May Edward William May Jr. (November 10, 1916 – January 22, 2004) was an American composer, arranger and trumpeter. He composed film and television music for ''The Green Hornet'' (1966), ''The Mod Squad'' (1968), ''Batman'' (with '' Batgirl'' them ...

Jack Montrose Jack Montrose (December 30, 1928 – February 7, 2006) was a jazz tenor saxophonist and arranger. After attending college in Los Angeles, he worked with Jerry Gray and then Art Pepper. Montrose also did arrangements for Clifford Brown. He became k ...

Vido Musso Vido William Musso (January 16, 1913 – January 9, 1982) was an American jazz saxophonist. Biography Musso moved with his family from Sicily to the U.S. in July 1920, having arrived at the Port of New York on the Italian steamship ''Patria''. T ...

Art Pepper Arthur Edward Pepper Jr. (September 1, 1925 – June 15, 1982) was an American alto saxophonist and very occasional tenor saxophonist and clarinetist. Active in West Coast jazz, Pepper came to prominence in Stan Kenton's big band. He was known ...

Duane Tatro Duane Tatro (May 18, 1927 – August 9, 2020) was an American composer. Born in Los Angeles, he served in the United States Navy during World War II and he graduated from the University of Southern California. He became a composer for many televis ...

, and

Cal Tjader Callen Radcliffe Tjader Jr. ( ; July 16, 1925 – May 5, 1982) was an American Latin Jazz musician, known as the most successful non-Latino Latin musician. He explored other jazz idioms, even as he continued to perform music of Afro-Jazz, ...

. He recorded with

Shorty Rogers Milton "Shorty" Rogers (born Milton Rajonsky; April 14, 1924 – November 7, 1994) was an American jazz musician, one of the principal creators of West Coast jazz. He played trumpet and flugelhorn and was in demand for his skills as an arran ...

from 1955 to 1958, appearing with Rogers in the film ''

The Man with the Golden Arm ''The Man with the Golden Arm'' is a 1955 American drama film with elements of film noir directed by Otto Preminger, based on the novel of the same name by Nelson Algren. Starring Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold Stang and Darre ...

'' in 1955, and also played with

Jimmy Giuffre James Peter Giuffre (, ; April 26, 1921 – April 24, 2008) was an American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, composer, and arranger. He is known for developing forms of jazz which allowed for free interplay between the musicians, anticipating f ...

in 1955 and 1956 and

Buddy DeFranco Boniface Ferdinand Leonard "Buddy" DeFranco (February 17, 1923 – December 24, 2014) was an Italian-American jazz clarinetist. In addition to his work as a bandleader, DeFranco led the Glenn Miller Orchestra for almost a decade in the 1960s and ...

in the late 1950s. He played in a duo with

Pete Jolly Pete Jolly (born Peter A. Ceragioli Jr., June 5, 1932 – November 6, 2004) was a two-time Grammy-nominated American West Coast jazz pianist and accordionist. He is known for his performance of television themes and movie soundtracks. Biogr ...

from 1958 to 1962 and occasionally recorded with Jolly, Giuffre, and Rogers together. In the early 1960s he worked with

Ben Webster Benjamin Francis Webster (March 27, 1909 – September 20, 1973) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Career Early life and career A native of Kansas City, Missouri, he studied violin, learned how to play blues on the piano from ...

Frank Sinatra Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Chairman of the Board" and later called "Ol' Blue Eyes", Sinatra was one of the most popular ...

George Shearing Sir George Albert Shearing, (13 August 1919 14 February 2011) was a British jazz pianist who for many years led a popular jazz group that recorded for Discovery Records, MGM Records and Capitol Records. Shearing was the composer of over 300 t ...

Joe Pass Joe Pass (born Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalaqua; January 13, 1929 – May 23, 1994) was an American jazz guitarist. Pass is well known for his work stemming from numerous collaborations with pianist Oscar Peterson and vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, an ...

Bud Shank Clifford Everett "Bud" Shank Jr. (May 27, 1926 – April 2, 2009) was an American alto saxophonist and flautist. He rose to prominence in the early 1950s playing lead alto and flute in Stan Kenton's Innovations in Modern Music Orchestra and thro ...

Dick Grove Richard Dean Grove (1927 – December 26, 1998) was an American musician, composer, arranger, and educator. He is best known as the founder of the Dick Grove School of Music. Its students include Michael Jackson, Linda Ronstadt, and Barry Manilow ...

Anita O'Day Anita Belle Colton (October 18, 1919 – November 23, 2006), known professionally as Anita O'Day, was an American jazz singer and self proclaimed “song stylist” widely admired for her sense of rhythm and dynamics, and her early big band appe ...

Ella Fitzgerald Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella". She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, in ...

, and Nancy Wilson. Late in the 1960s he worked on film soundtracks. In 1969, in Mexico City, where he had been working on a score, Peña was killed as a pedestrian in an automobile accident.Lawrence Koch, "Ralph Peña". '' The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz''. 2nd edition, ed.

Barry Kernfeld Barry Dean Kernfeld (born August 11, 1950) is an American musicologist and jazz saxophonist who has researched and published extensively about the history of jazz and the biographies of its musicians. Education In 1968, Kernfeld enrolled at U ...

, 2004.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pena, Ralph American jazz double-bassists Male double-bassists Musicians from Nevada 1927 births 1969 deaths Road incident deaths in Mexico 20th-century double-bassists 20th-century American male musicians American male jazz musicians