Neil Bridge seeded Colorado’s jazz scene, and his musical proteges are carrying his legacy

Neil Bridge hasn’t skipped a beat, even in death.

The Denver jazz musician, who died at age 94 on Dec. 7, 2023, taught hundreds of students and played thousands of gigs over his seven-decade career. Sporting a goatee and understated grin, he traveled the length of the Western Hemisphere, minting and mentoring notables such as Grammy- and Tony-winning Denver natives Don Cheadle and Ron Miles.

But his final gig — at Dazzle Jazz on Oct. 6, 2023, just two days before he entered the ICU — will not be the last chance to hear his music live.

“I’m still signing every card and email as ‘Neil in Heaven, Karen on Earth,’ ” said Karen Lee Bridge, the vocalist in Neil’s bands and his wife of 31 years. “(At) this show on May 16 at the Denver Press Club, I know he’ll be with us, keeping his legacy alive.”

The planned performance follows Neil’s funeral services on Jan. 19 at Fort Logan National Cemetery, where the Air Force presented a tri-folded American flag to Karen. It sits on the couch in the condo home Neil and Karen shared in south Denver, surrounded by neat stacks of music notation, black-and-white photographs, flyers, awards and programs tracing Neil’s cultivation of Colorado’s jazz scene.

“It’s crazy to go down the list of all the people who went through his combo,” said Andrew Hudson, a former student of Neil’s who played bass on 20 or so gigs with him over the past decade. “Back in the days when Denver Public Schools actually funded music education, he led the Citywide High School Jazz Combo (starting in 1978). They toured all over the country and produced some of the best jazz musicians and educators in the entire country.”

About 250 people showed up to pay their respects at Neil’s lively funeral, and Karen organized musical tribute to her husband at Horan and McConaty funeral home featuring former students and jazz heavies Nelson Rangell, David Pearl and Greg Carroll — among many others. The program reads like a set list.

“He hand-wrote every chart with his beloved Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil,” Karen said of the dozen-plus, foot-high piles of sheet-music crowding her living room and kitchen table, with more upstairs. “He played to the talents of everyone in his band and wrote just for them.”

Neil couched his piano-playing in generous amounts of horns, strings, percussion and vocals, from salsa to swing. He would practice while sitting at his grand piano upstairs; Karen would do her vocal work at the downstairs baby grand, both of them plinking and rehearsing late into the night. A video of Neil playing at Dazzle at 92 years old shows him pointing to members for solos, hitting precision chords and scatting joyfully behind the keys.

About a year later, he would become one of the oldest jazz musicians in the country — at age 93 — to ever release an album of newly recorded material, “In the Key of Music.” Its liner notes are also generous, thanking dozens of other musicians, including his nine bandmates.

Neil’s career spawned many others’, despite not yet being recognized by the Colorado Music Hall of Fame. Denver Mayor Michael Hancock carved out June 16 for Neil Bridge Day each year, the plaque for which still hangs in the Bridge’s cozy, overstuffed basement. So does his official recognition from the Five Points Jazz Fest, which noted his history with jazz greats and his years as an educator (there’s even a room named after him at Denver School of the Arts).

It sits alongside other honors for the Bridge’s shared volunteer and education efforts — and many pictures of Neil beaming with his students — as well as orange-and-blue memorabilia marking his time with the Denver Broncos Band. That includes a trip to London in 1987, in the early stages of the John Elway years.

Neil was born on Aug. 18, 1929, in Kutztown, Penn., where he grew up during the Great Depression. He moved to New York City after high school and dove into the legendary jazz scene on 52nd Street in Greenwich Village, getting an informal music education by watching Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz and others on stage.

He then moved to Roswell, N.M., for the Air Force and won a GI Bill scholarship. There he honed his chops in their jazz band and, eventually, at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, all while gigging five or six nights per week. He moved to Colorado in 1958 to teach at Sheridan Union High.

“When I first moved to Denver (from Boston) there were three or four piano players in town, and we were all friendly,” Bridge told The Denver Post in 2011. “But then every place had a piano. Even the crummiest joint had one. …”

And yet, there were few opportunities for up-and-coming jazz lovers in town. Soon Bridge was teaching music at Denver Public Schools, and quickly became “a pioneer and shining light in the world of music education” amid his busy professional career, Karen said. He also racked up impressive gigs accompanying Cab Calloway, Nancy Wilson, Mel Torme, Toots Thielemans and other beloved jazz artists.

That’s after spending three decades backing up Johnny Smith, the jazz-guitar virtuoso who wrote the song “Walk, Don’t Run” in 1954; it went on to become an enduring instrumental-rock hit after being recorded by The Ventures in 1960.

Karen plans to keep his flame burning. She’s going to continue performing his voluminous, hand-written arrangements, including at a planned, May 4 gig at Sedalia’s Cherokee Ranch & Castle, and is looking at other ways to keep his name on the scene. Johnny Smith recordings (he too was a Coloradan) that feature Neil Bridge Trio are also getting re-released in the coming months, having recently been discovered, said Craig and Mark Patterson, the sons of Dick Patterson, Neil’s bass player.

“He always said, ‘Never try to outdo the audience,’ ” Karen said, noting that she and Neil first fell in love after he invited her to a show at late Denver jazz hangout El Chapultepec. ” ‘If they’re drinking and partying, you try to sing soft. If it’s the opposite, do the opposite. Don’t ever try to overwhelm them. Just let them just carry on while you do. That’s how you get them.’ “