Jack Grassel and Jill Jensen at Villa Terrace in Milwaukee, on Aug. 16, their first public concert since Jack’s stroke in January of 2025, Photo by Stuart Hoffman

I’s been a hard season for Milwaukee jazz musicians. To paraphrase a jazz standard, “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.” A good friend, the incomparable jazz guitarist Jack Grassel, once told me the song referenced was one of his all-time favorites.

Substitute “summer” in the seasonal analogy.

The seasons have caught up with Grassel. He died on Wednesday, Aug. 26 in a head-on car crash. Another person also died in the collision.

His musical partner and spouse, Jill Jensen, says the medical examiner reported that Grassel “was not conscious at the time and suffered a fatal medical event leading to it. He never felt any pain. I am thankful beyond words for that.”

Since his stroke, “He radiated more tender love and appreciation to all he knew than ever before,” Jensen said. “It’s as if he knew he had to get it out in time.”

Prolific Performer

Grassel, 77, was an amazingly prolific performer and educator over a long professional career during which he did over 13,000 performances. He stopped teaching in 2004 for health reasons but was planning on returning to part-time teaching. He was one of the most rigorous practitioners of his craft I know of. He practiced daily for 60 years and, although undone for a long while by his stroke, continued his regimen until his death.

“He just strove to get better in music,” Jensen said. “He never stopped learning. That’s the way it is with music. He never stopped. It’s like the cellist Pablo Casals who still practiced at 98. It’s the same attitude.”

Yet Grassel also dealt with extraordinary tragedy, as a father. His two sons died within a year of each other in 2022.

“I would say that might have contributed to his stroke because it was a tremendous stress on him,” said Jensen, who dealt with her own serious heart problems in recent years. “He did an incredible amount of therapy which they said could take ten years. He did it every day.”

Jack Grassel and Jill Jensen,

He coped with his affliction, “inch by inch, day by day,” she said. “No matter how awful it sounded or felt. He was also proud, which helped him to go forward. He had a great need to get out and do this concert (at Villa Terrace.). Jack at his worst was an incredible musician. There was something in his senses, like muscle memory.”

He also wrote 70 musical compositions, recorded 18 CDs as leader, and wrote 16 music instruction books. Among the best-known of his many collaborators was jazz guitarist Tal Farlow, with whom he recorded a duo album, Two Guys with Guitars, shortly before Farlow low died. In a handful of amiable standards, you hear Grassel’s often breathtaking fast flurries striving to find pace with Farlow’s buoyantly lyrical rhythmic and harmonic flow.

Among the numerous renowned artists Grassel performed live with were Luciano Pavarotti, Bob Hope, Rosemary Clooney, Jay Leno, Nancy Wilson, Cab Calloway, Tom Jones, Doc Severinson, and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, from 1969 to 2003.

He also won six Jazz Artist of the Year WAMI awards.

He was certainly one of the most creative persons I’ve known in more than four decades of covering the arts. He was a lead performer in What on Earth, a highly inventive Milwaukee jazz group in the 1980s.

Grassel’s death follows closely after those of Milwaukee jazz guitar legend Manty Ellis and Milwaukee bassist Mitch Covic who co-founded the celebrated Milwaukee Jazz Gallery. Those two also died in August. Covic was a longtime musical collaborator of Grassel’s and co-founded the What on Earth group.

Extraordinary Teacher

Grassel’s creative qualities also applied to his teaching.

“Jack has never taught in an ordinary manner and is always looking for new teaching strategies so that his students have opportunities to learn by hearing, practicing, and performing,” said Hannah Pickett, dean of liberal arts at Milwaukee Area Technical College, where Grassel was music department chairman, coordinator of instruction, creator of the Music Occupations degree and other MATC programs from to 1983-2004. He was also a co-creator of the award-winning jazz degree program at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music from 1971 to 1984.

Grassel’s teaching subjects ranged widely: composition, arranging, improvisation, ear training, jazz-rock-blues-classical music history, music business and appreciation, combos and instrumental technique.

He was also an inventor which reflected his musical restlessness. He created several types of guitars including perhaps most notably a three-neck guitar hybrid he dubbed “The Trident.”

It combined necks for bass guitar, six-string guitar and mandolin. He typically played all three in a performance. He was also a multi-instrumentalist who played keyboards and harmonica. His keyboard skills reflected his history as a state champion accordion player in his youth. Following his stroke he also began developing his singing voice. This reflected his desire to perform any kind of music he wanted to, not limited to genre.

He was also a vegetarian and health enthusiast, which may have helped him recover his skills after his stroke.

There will be a celebration of his life on October 18 in Racine.

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