Joe Mooney

Joe Mooney (March 14, 1911 – May 12, 1975) He went blind when he was around 10 years of age.

Mooney's first job, at age 12, was playing the piano for requests called in to a local radio station. Les Brown, and The Modernaires.

The Joe Mooney Quartet, c. Dec. 1946: Jack Hotop (guitar), Andy Fitzgerald (clarinet), Gaeton (Gate) Frega (bass), and Mooney (accordion). Photograph by William P. Gottlieb.He put together his own quartet in 1943; he sang and played accordion with accompaniment on guitar, bass, and clarinet. This group experienced considerable success in the United States in the last half of the 1940s. In 1946, a newspaper columnist wrote that Mooney's music "has the most cynical hot jazz critics describing it in joyous terms such as 'exciting,' 'new,' 'the best thing since Ellington,' [and] 'as new to jazz as the first Dixieland jazz band was when it first arrived.'" As for Mooney himself, the columnist wrote that he "played in virtuoso fashion ... a fellow who knows not only his instrument, but jazz music, both to just about the ultimate degree."

In the 1950s, Mooney sang with the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, and he played with Johnny Smith in 1953. After moving to Florida in 1954 he concentrated more on organ. He recorded again in 1956.

In 1963, a group of friends formed a company to produce a record, "Joe Mooney and His Friends." He recorded again in the middle of the 1960s.

Joe Mooney died at age 64, on May 12, 1975, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after a stroke.

Discography You Go to My Head (Decca, 1955) On the Rocks (Decca, 1957) Lush Life (Atlantic, 1958) The Greatness of Joe Mooney (Columbia, 1963) The Happiness of Joe Mooney (Columbia, 1965) The Sunshine Boys (Retrieval, 1987)