Bobby Broom

Bobby Broom was born in Harlem, New York, on January 18, 1961, and raised on Manhattan’s

Upper West Side. He began studying the guitar at age 12, concentrating on jazz under the aegis of

Harlem-based guitar instructor Jimmy Carter. A 16-year-old prodigy at the High School of Music and Art (now known as the LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts), he played in the jazz ensemble and was awarded for Outstanding Jazz Improvisation during his senior year.

Chaperoned by Weldon Irvine (an early mentor of his, composer for Freddie Hubbard and Horace Silver, bandleader for Nina Simone, and lyricist of “To Be Young, Gifted and Black”), the 16-year-old Broom found himself in an East Side NYC jazz club for the purpose of being taught to sit in. That lesson became a reality for Broom when Al Haig, pianist for Charlie Parker, invited him to join in for a couple of tunes. Impressed by the youngster’s playing, Haig offered him the chance to play with him at Gregory’s on the Upper East Side whenever he wanted. Broom ended up playing two or three times a week there, and also got to play, with great awe, with another notable Bird keyboardist, Walter Bishop, Jr.

Broom was soon pursued by an even greater jazz legend, Sonny Rollins, whose guitarist at the time, Aurell Ray, saw Broom play in Irvine’s musical, Young, Gifted and Broke, in Brooklyn, and arranged to have him meet Rollins. After playing with the tenor colossus at a rehearsal, Broom was asked to go on the road with him. Still in high school, Broom (and his parents) declined.

But in 1977, Rollins invited Broom to perform with him at a Carnegie Hall concert, initiating a long musical relationship between them. Four years later, Broom began a six-year stint as a member of Rollins’s band, to which he would return in later years, appearing on Rollins albums including No Problem; Reel Life; Sonny, Please, and three volumes of the live Road Shows series. “Bobby is one of my favorite musicians,” says Rollins. “He explains why I like the guitar. He’s got a strong musical sixth sense. That makes a lot of explanations and directions unnecessary.”

Broom’s first two albums were Clean Sweep (1981) and Livin’ for the Beat (1984), pre-smooth jazz efforts that transcended the limitations (and sometimes harsh criticism) of that category. In 1984, for personal reasons, he uprooted himself from New York and moved to the Windy City.

There, while maintaining ties with New York groups including Kenny Burrell’s Jazz Guitar Band, followed by a jaunt with Miles Davis’s group, then enjoying a rewarding six-year stint with Dr. John (“For me, that was a lesson in the origins of rock and roll”), and hooking up with Windy City-based artists such as Charles Earland, Ron Blake, and Eric Alexander, he set out to establish himself as an important artist in his own right.

“I had agents tell me that I wasn’t a leader, to basically just accept the role of a sideman,” says Broom. Determined to prove them wrong, he recorded two strong mainstream albums under his name for Criss Cross, No Hype Blues (1995, his last album to feature a pianist, perennially underrecognized Ron Perillo) and Waitin’ and Waitin’ (1997, with Ron Blake).

Beginning with Stand! (2001), he brought a serious improvisational jazz sensibility to pop classics such as Sly and the Family Stone’s “Stand!,” the Mamas and the Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman.” “I wanted to connect with a more mainstream, non-musician audience, without dumbing down my presentation,” he says. Modern Man, a blowing session with Dr. Lonnie Smith and Ronnie Cuber released at around the same time, included inspired interpretations of Derek and the Dominos’ “Layla” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.”

On the live The Way I Play, a set of classic jazz standards from 2008, Broom documented his weekly gig with his trio at the now-legendary Pete Miller’s steakhouse, which ran for more than a dozen years. He then spun his creative wheel again, and again, and again—first “connecting with my musical heritage” with Bobby Broom Plays for Monk, an acclaimed collection of songs by and associated with Thelonious Monk featuring “small gems of musical discovery” (Downbeat); then creating “an ode to where I’m from” on Upper West Side Story, his first collection of originals, and then returning to standards on the lovely My Shining Hour.

Parallel to Broom’s achievements with his trio was his success with the collective Deep Blue Organ Trio, featuring organist Chris Foreman—who, along with Dr. John, put him back in touch with the blues roots of jazz that he feels he had neglected early in his career. “I kind of dismissed the blues after I became a ‘jazz student,’ thinking that it was somehow beneath jazz intellectually,” he says. “I know now that the intellect can operate within different formats and that the vocabulary of the blues is as rich and deep as a person is willing to make it.”

Before disbanding, the Deep Blue Organ Trio recorded four albums, going out in a big way in 2001 with the Stevie Wonder salute, Wonderful!. The success of that album got them an offer to open concerts for Steely Dan. Subsequently, Broom’s own Bobby Broom Organi-Sation featuring organist Ben Paterson, which released Soul Fingers in 2018, toured with the beloved pop group.

Of all his achievements, Broom is prouder of none more than his appointment as Associate Professor of Jazz Guitar and Jazz Studies at Northern Illinois University. Awarded a B.A. in music from Columbia College and an M.A. in jazz pedagogy from Northwestern University, he has long been involved in music education, previously teaching at the University of Hartford’s Hartt School of Music, DePaul University, Roosevelt University, and the American Conservatory of Music. He also has instructed music students in public high schools throughout Chicago as part of a jazz mentoring program sponsored by the Ravinia Festival Organization and has been an instructor and mentor with the Herbie Hancock Institute.

As for Broom’s distinctive syle: “Every modern jazz guitarist in Chicago is indebted to Bobby Broom,” says Jeff Parker, one of today’s sui generis stars, now based in Los Angeles. “He opened up the doors of perception for us all—he is a master jazz stylist and a musical visionary."

Awards

DownBeat Magazine 2008 Critics' Poll, "Talent Deserving Wider Recognition" among guitarists jazz.com 50 Best Jazz CDs of 2008 - for "The Way I Play", Bobby Broom Trio Chicago Music Award, 2008 Best Jazz CD - for "Folk Music", the Deep Blue Organ Trio

DownBeat Critics' Poll, Jazz Guitar category: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 DownBeat Readers' Poll, Jazz Guitar category: 2015, 2020

Down Beat Magazine, Best Jazz Recordings List, 2013
Critics’ pick for best among CDs of 2007 (“Song and Dance”) Jazz Times Magazine
Critics’ pick for best among CDs of 2001 (“Stand!”) by: Jazz Times Magazine, WBEZ NPR Radio Chicago, Chicago Sun Times, WDET NPR Radio Detroit

Gear

Bobby Broom plays the Koentopp "Chicagoan" model guitar, Henriksen Forté Amp, Blue Chip picks, and DR Legend strings.

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Ron Blake: Mistaken Identity

Read "Mistaken Identity" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
November 3, 2023

Once hailed as a promising young lion, Puerto Rico-born saxophonist Ron Blake is more a crafty old fox these days, bringing his wealth of experience and undeniable talent to bear on Mistaken Identity, his first album as leader in fifteen years. To assure a broad comfort zone, Blake invited guitarist Bobby Broom, a longtime friend and music partner, to join him alongside drummer Kobie Watkins and bassists Nat Reeves (five numbers) and Reuben Rogers (four). Among the ...

Album Review

Bobby Broom: Keyed Up

by Jack Bowers
November 3, 2022

On his latest album, Keyed Up, the well-traveled and well-respected guitarist Bobby Broom pays tribute to pianists “who have been an important part of [his] musical life." As he writes, ..."many great pianists who didn't need to include my six-string version of what they could already do harmonically and melodically saw fit to include me. Perhaps, among other things, this is my way of saying 'thank you' to them." Another way to thank them may have been ...

Multiple Reviews

Bobby Broom And Bobby Watson: Tried And True

by Doug Collette
October 23, 2022

The conventions of traditional jazz can provide a refreshing simplicity. If proffered with sufficient panache and ingenuity, the music transcends its superficial stylistic principles and tenders what amounts to a reboot of the psyche. So it is with Bobby Broom's Keyed Up and Bobby Watson's Back Home In Kansas City; with both of these albums, the artists draw on their own history and by extension, that of jazz at large, using their cumulative knowledge and technical expertise to formulate long-players ...

Radio & Podcasts

Bobby Broom, Adi Meyerson & More

by Joe Dimino
December 3, 2018

The great New York-born, Chicago-based jazz guitarist Bobby Broom starts this week's episode of Neon Jazz with a tasty cut off his new CD Soul Fingers. As the hour moves forward, we focus on a musician that has played a great influence on Bobby, Walter Bishop Jr., and music from modern bassist Alexander Claffy. There is plenty more as this hour moves forward. We take a look into the world of Adi Meyerson on the bass and ...

Album Review

Bobby Broom: Soul Fingers

Read "Soul Fingers" reviewed by Jim Trageser

by Jim Trageser
November 26, 2018

A thematic sequel to his 2007 release, Song and Dance, Bobby Broom's Soul Fingers is a deep-pile take on late 1960s--early 1970s pop, with Broom in his best Wes Montgomery vein, giving new soul-jazz life to one-time chart hits. And yet, it's also a break from Song and Dance because Broom has changed his backing combo since then and now fronts a guitar-organ-drum trio. The deep soul-jazz groove and Ben Paterson's Hammond B-3 mean that there is a ...

Catching Up With

Bobby Broom: Classic Compositions from Yesterday to Today

by Corey Hall
October 26, 2018

What would your sensibilities say if an established jazz guitarist, supported by organ and drums, reinterpreted Seals and Crofts' “Summer Breeze," the Beatles' “Come Together," and Steely Dan's “Do It Again"? Perhaps you have heard this guitarist before with Sonny Rollins or Stanley Turrentine; maybe you heard the album where his guitar-acoustic bass-drums trio performed all Monk tunes. And now you see him leading the Organi-Sation, featuring organist Ben Paterson and drummer Kobie Watkins This ensemble's debut recording, ...

Album Review

Bobby Broom: My Shining Hour

Read "My Shining Hour" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 14, 2014

Chicago-based guitarist Bobby Broom's Shining Hour encompasses nearly an hour of “Sweet and Lovely" trio jazz, showcasing seven memorable tunes from the Great American Songbook complemented by pair of three-steps, Fats Waller's “Jitterbug Waltz" and the Patti Page evergreen, “Tennessee Waltz." Besides the songs mentioned above, Broom's working trio (bassist Dennis Carroll, drummer Makaya McCraven) wend their way through “My Ideal," “Just One of Those Things," “Sweet Georgia Brown," “Oh, Lady Be Good" and “The Heather on ...

Recording

Guitarist Bobby Broom Serves Up A Platter Of Spicy Organ Jazz With 'Jamalot,' Set For May 24 Release By Steele Records

Source: Terri Hinte Publicity
March 27, 2024

Acclaimed guitarist Bobby Broom makes a welcome return to one of his longtime favorite formats—the jazz organ trio—with Jamalot,a live albumand the second by his Organi-Sation,to be released May 24 on Steele Records. While the trio (which also features organist Ben Paterson and drummer Kobie Watkins) debuted on record with 2018’s Soul Fingers, they have been a working band for much longer; the new release features performances going back 10 years. Actually, Broom’s infatuation with the Hammond organ goes back ...
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Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Bobby Broom

Source: Michael Ricci
January 18, 2023

All About Jazz is celebrating Bobby Broom's birthday today!

Bobby Broom was born in Harlem, New York, on January 18, 1961, and raised on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He began studying the guitar at age 12, concentrating on jazz under the aegis of Harlem-based guitar instructor Jimmy Carter. A 16-year-old prodigy at the High School of Music and Art (now known as the LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts), he played in the jazz ensemble and was awarded for Outstanding ...
read more

Recording

Guitarist Bobby Broom Celebrates The Jazz Piano Greats With 'Keyed Up,' Set For September 23 Release on Steele Records

Source: Terri Hinte Publicity
August 10, 2022

Master jazz guitarist Bobby Broom casts his ear on the masters of another instrument—the piano—with the September 23 release of Keyed Up (Steele Records). An exploration of compositions by (or associated with) great jazz pianists, the album is also Broom’s first in almost 30 years to itself feature an acoustic pianist. Justin Dillard, a youngish, fast-rising keyboardist from Broom’s home base of jny: Chicago, joins his working trio with bassist Dennis Carroll and drummer Kobie Watkins. In fact, it was ...
read more

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Bobby Broom

Source: Michael Ricci
January 18, 2021

All About Jazz is celebrating Bobby Broom's birthday today!

Guitarist Bobby Broom’s love of jazz has never blocked out his affection for the pop music which he grew up with. It’s been a frequent wellspring throughout his career. “It’s a lot of what I do,” he acknowledges. “Material is material, and I’m just trying to do things that are interesting to me and that I feel might be interesting to people.” Soul Fingers, his joyful 2018 release with his organ ...
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Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Bobby Broom

Source: Michael Ricci
January 18, 2020

All About Jazz is celebrating Bobby Broom's birthday today!

Education

Guitarist Bobby Broom Joins Faculty At Northern Illinois University School Of Music, Plans Live Recording With His Group The Organi-sation

Source: Terri Hinte Publicity
May 19, 2019

Renowned jazz guitarist Bobby Broom has been appointed assistant professor of music in the Northern Illinois University School of Music. He will teach jazz guitar and improvisation in the school’s nationally recognized Jazz Studies Program. “I’m thrilled and honored to assume this position at Northern Illinois University,” Broom said. “I’m looking forward to sharing with my students, colleagues, and the community all that I’ve gleaned throughout my life and career of making music with many of the 20th century’s jazz ...
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Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Bobby Broom

Source: Michael Ricci
January 18, 2019

All About Jazz is celebrating Bobby Broom's birthday today!

Recording

Guitarist Bobby Broom Introduces His New Group The Organi-Sation With Their Debut Recording "Soul Fingers," Due October 12

Source: Terri Hinte Publicity
September 20, 2018

Virtuoso Chicago-based guitarist Bobby Broom has always embraced the rhythm and blues core of jazz music. On Soul Fingers, his 12th album as a leader and first with his new trio Organi-Sation, Broom mines the rich repository of ’60s and ’70s pop music, offering inspired versions of hits by the Beatles, Procol Harum, Steely Dan, and Seals & Crofts, among others. Set for October 12 release by MRI Entertainment, the recording was produced by legendary drummer Steve Jordan. Broom, a ...
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Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Bobby Broom

Source: Michael Ricci
January 18, 2018

All About Jazz is celebrating Bobby Broom's birthday today!

Most musicians would be happy to experience one artistic breakthrough. Thirty-two years into his distinguished, wide-ranging career in jazz, guitarist Bobby Broom seems to have an endless supply of them. His 2009 album Bobby Broom Plays for Monk hit an artistic high-water mark with its “daring arrangements” (JazzTimes) and “small gems of musical discovery” (DownBeat). Featuring his long-standing Chicago trio... Read more.

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Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Bobby Broom

Source: Michael Ricci
January 18, 2017

All About Jazz is celebrating Bobby Broom's birthday today!

Place our Musician of the Day widget on your ...
read more

“Broom is the full monty: Ultra-refined timing and tone, continuous flow of ideas, a touch of grease, a treat for the connoisseur" - John Corbett, DownBeat, 2014 "... one of the most musical guitarists of our times" - Ted Gioia, Jazz.com (Jun 16, 2009) "Bobby Broom's trio can be compared with Sonny Rollins' and the classic John Coltrane Quartet." - Owen Cordle, JazzTimes "The mighty fire of Broom’s playing…seems to have grown hotter and deeper in recent seasons." - Joe Woodard, Jazziz

Primary Instrument

Guitar

Location

Chicago

Willing to teach

Intermediate to advanced

Credentials/Background

Tenured Associate Professor of Jazz Guitar/Jazz Studies, Northern Illinois University, 2019 to present

Past Teaching Positions: North Park University 2011 to 2018, DePaul University - 2002 to 2008 Chicago Musical College, Roosevelt University (formerly the American Conservatory of Music) - 1987 to 1992 Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford - 1982 to 1984 Ravinia Music In the Schools, Jazz Mentor 2000 to present The Thelonious Monk Institute in 1989 and presently