Nick Jerret in the 1940s
The clarinetist Nicholas Bertocci, better known to the jazz world as Nick Jerret, was born in Somerville, Mass, on July 29, 1921. He played music growing up, and even though he enrolled at Boston University in 1939, all he wanted to do was play. He quit school at age 19, borrowed a saxophone, and spent months in the woodshed.
The music bug also bit Nick’s older sister, Chiarina Francesca. Frances, a singer with a sense of drama who loved opera as well as pop, sang with Larry Cooper’s dance band in Boston clubs. She adopted the stage name Frances Wayne, and in 1940 sang with Sam Donahue’s big band.
Nick, then playing clarinet, formed a sextet fashioned after John Kirby’s, with Frances singing. They landed a job at the Mayfair, a nightspot in Bay Village. Their pianist was a New England Conservatory dropout who roomed in the Bertocci home, Ralph Burns. Around this time Nick assumed his professional name, Nick Jerret (accent on the second syllable). It was 1940, and Wayne was 21, Jerret 19, and Burns 18. They went to New York.
Later that year they auditioned at Kelly’s Stables on 52nd Street, and were hired as the relief band. They stayed for over a year. When Jerret shifted to the Famous Door, Burns and Wayne left to join Charlie Barnet’s orchestra. Among the new faces in Jerret’s band was guitarist and singer Jackie Paris. Jerret played with all the jazz royalty on 52nd Street, including Billie Holiday, Art Tatum, and King Cole, and toured as far south as South Carolina. By early 1943, Jerret was at the Onyx Club and working in a quartet with pianist Shelly Soreff, bassist Bob Costa, and drummer Saul Wiseman. Later that year, Jerret returned to Boston.
Jerret returned to Boston for about two years, working at the Silver Dollar Bar (with Nat Pierce), the Savoy, and the Ken Club. He apparently returned to New York when the war ended. He played tenor saxophone on a few Charlie Ventura recordings in 1946, but I don’t have any other details of these New York years. Jerret stayed in New York until 1948, when he moved back to Boston, his home for the rest of his life.
From 1948 through the 1950s, Jerret led a vagabond’s life, playing in every room in Boston that featured jazz: the 5 O’Clock Club, the Jewel Room in the Bostonian Hotel, the Saxony, Stuart Manor, Storyville, and a host of others. He also mentored young musicians. During his time at the Bostonian, he featured Teddi King, Charlie Mariano, Herb Pomeroy, and Ray Santisi. Al Vega and Joey Masters played piano in his trio, but eventually Jerret settled in with his old 52nd Street running mates, Shelly Soreff and Bob Costa.
Meanwhile, Jerret was completing the coursework to become a teacher at the New England Conservatory of Music. He started teaching in the Cambridge, Mass school system in about 1959. He broke up his trio and stepped away from performing at about the same time. Jerret remained with the Cambridge schools for 30 years.
Years after he retired from performing and teaching, in 2006, Nick Jerret assembled a CD of private recordings, music taped in his 52nd Street days, during the recording ban. They show a clarinetist acutely aware of the bop being played uptown. A 1942 Billboard review noted that “Jerret’s clarinet solos are of a sensational nature, involving a fresh style, excellent technique and a wonderful feel for jazz.” He certainly had all of that. Nick Jerret died January 30, 2009, at age 90.