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Giuseppe (Joe) Venuti (September 16, 1903 – August 14, 1978) was a U.S. jazz musician and violinist. Venuti claimed to have been born aboard a ship as his parents emigrated from Italy, though many believe he was simply born in Philadelphia. Considered the father of jazz violin, he pioneered the use of string instruments in jazz along with the guitarist Eddie Lang, a childhood friend of his. Through the 1920s and early 1930s, Venuti produced many recordings. He worked with Benny Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers, Bing Crosby, the Boswell Sisters and most of the other important white jazz and semi-jazz figures of the late 1920s and early 1930s. However, following Lang's early death in 1933, he began to slip off the radar, though he continued performing through the 1930s. He was also a strong early influence on western swing players like Jesse Ashlock. After a period of relative obscurity in the 1940s and 1950s, he was 'rediscovered' in the late 1960s and established a musical relationship with tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims, that was almost as fruitful as his previous collaboration with Lang. Venuti and Sims produced a number of very exciting recordings in 1974/75: an appropriate coda to the great violinist's career.

In the mid-1970s, Venuti performed and recorded, again in the limelight: good examples of his latter-day recordings are the Chiaroscuro CD's Joe Venuti and Zoot Sims (CR(D) 142) and Joe & Zoot & More (CR(D)126). He also recorded an entire album with country-jazz musicians including mandolinist Jethro Burns (of Homer & Jethro), pedal steel guitarist Curly Chalker and former Bob Wills sideman and guitarist Eldon Shamblin. Venuti died in Seattle, Washington.

Venuti was also a legendary practical joker. According to one source, every Christmas he sent Wingy Manone, a one-armed trumpet player, the same gift--one cufflink. He is said to have chewed up a violin he borrowed from bandleader Paul Whiteman, when still on stage after his own performance with Whiteman's band had finished. ^[1]

1. ^ Crow, Bill (1990). Jazz Anecdotes. New York: Oxford University Press. 

• Sudhalter, Richard M. Lost Chords: White Musicians and their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945. Oxford, 1999. ISBN 0-19-514838-X
• Baxter, James. The Blue Violin - privately published 1953 biography of Joe Venuti (acquired by AB Fable Archive in March 2001).
• “Violin Rhythm, a School of Modern Rhythmic Violin Playing” by Joe Venuti, edited by the Dutch composer Eddy Noordijk, published by Robbins Music Corp, 1937.

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