No sooner had longtime bassist Taddy Mowatt sat down to talk that the tune from nearby speakers preempted the conversation.
“Get up, stand up – stand up for your rights,” he sang softly, his Jamaican upbringing resonating on the notes of the classic Bob Marley anthem.
“We used to do this one,” he said smiling.
Mowatt, a resident of Port St. Lucie, is a self-taught bass player whose professional music career spans seven decades and finds him playing regularly at nearly all of Vero’s private clubs and bars like Cobalt, Bungalow and Osceola Bistro. Even Riverside Theatre’s “Live in the Loop,” and the Vero Beach Museum of Art have caught on to his talent and broad appeal.
Born and raised in Montego Bay, music has always been a part of his life and his own music is infused with his native island country’s culture.
Mowatt’s father played guitar. But it was his brother Enos “Riff” Mowatt who was his biggest inspiration and the first professional musician of the family. Four years older than Taddy, Riff at 16 had instruments all around the house: guitars, basses, trumpets, drums, saxophones and steel pans.
When Riff wasn’t playing them, little brother Taddy was picking them up and slowly teaching himself to play. While nurturing his own natural talent, Mowatt began to share his knowledge and enthusiasm of playing with his young friends at school.
“Well, I wanted to play songs with other people and play music with my friends so I had to teach them – I had no choice,” Mowatt laughs. It was through teaching his friends the different instruments, bass being one of them, that he discovered his own affinity for bass. His early teaching is so etched in his mind that to this day he plays a right-handed bass with his left hand – backwards, in other words, and the way a teacher would coach a student facing him.
Mowatt soon found himself playing trumpet, vibraphone and bass in his brother’s Montego Bay-based group. The Riff Mowatt Band had taken the resident position at the prestigious waterfront hotel The Casablanca. Perched above the turquoise waters of Doctor’s Cove Beach, the hotel was a popular destination for international dignitaries such as King George VI and John F. Kennedy, as well as celebrities like Errol Flynn and Noel Coward. At only 17, Mowatt was playing standards and dance music to a jet-setting crowd.
That was in 1945. His long career as a professional musician would bring him a lifetime of memories on the high seas, introduce him to his wife and best friend, and land him in musical venues around the globe with some of the world’s leading musicians.
From the Casablanca and other gigs around Montego Bay, Mowatt was hired as the resident bassist and arranger for the Jamaican Broadcasting Corporation – the JBC. Creating arrangements with local artists which aired on the network’s live television programs, he himself would accompany visiting international artists on air – a great perk.
“It was great fun,” Mowatt recalls. Taddy got to meet and play with some of the best: singers Carmen McCrae, Sam Cooke, Johnny Mathis and Sammy Davis Jr.; saxophonists Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Simms and Paul Desmond; and the great jazz pianist and fellow Jamaican Monty Alexander.
“I was blessed to be part of this nucleus of musicians in Montego Bay,” Mowatt says.
The demands of his JBC job coupled with his six-night-a-week gig schedule soon took a toll on Mowatt, and he found himself seeking a slower pace. His friendship with calypso and reggae star Alston Bair evolved into a paid position for his group The Taddy Mowatt Trio aboard the cruise ship TSS Starward, which traveled from Jamaica to Miami.
Mowatt also became the musical arranger and director for Bair’s international performances and was provided the opportunity to play venues in Chicago, California, Canada and Puerto Rico. His trio was also getting booked on bigger ships with major cruise lines like Holland America and Norwegian Caribbean, bringing Mowatt’s music to international ports of call.
In 1972, he was aboard the newly launched cruise company Carnival’s very first ship, the TSS Mardi Gras, when Mowatt met his wife, Jaqui, a talented vocalist from Wales who was also on board as a performer.
The couple moved to Port St. Lucie in 1980 and Mowatt, at this time now a seasoned performer with a massive repertoire, was quick to find work as bassist with the Hyatt Hotel’s house band in West Palm. He later played The Colony in Palm Beach and for many years performed with Ray Thompson at Frances Langford’s Outrigger in Jensen Beach (now the Dolphin Bar) and at Indian River Plantation.
Mowatt was honored to have been inducted into Jamaica’s Jazz Hall of Fame and is an active member of the Fort Pierce Jazz and Blues Society. An accomplished arranger and composer, Mowatt also has a degree in piano tuning and repair and has lent his professional services to the St. Lucie County school district for many years. He continues to play regularly around the area and is a member of the Ambassadors of Swing, a big band comprised of the finest jazz musicians.
Mowatt next performs with Ed Shanaphy & Friends (along with this writer) Thursday, Oct. 27, at the Bungalow Bar on Flamevine Lane starting at 6 p.m.