Jimmy Rowles; Jazz Pianist, Recording Artist

Jimmy Rowles, lyrical jazz pianist who accompanied such singers as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan and recorded as a soloist with such musicians as Stan Getz and Red Mitchell, has died. He was 77.

Rowles, sometimes referred to as “a prophet without honor in his own city” of Los Angeles, died Tuesday of cardiac arrest at Thompson Memorial Hospital in Burbank.

The late Times jazz critic Leonard Feather, who often commented that Rowles earned greater praise in New York than in Southern California, wrote of a Rowles performance at Donte’s in 1971:

“A musician’s musician and, even more, a singer’s musician, Rowles is one of the most consistently listenable of pianists, as imaginative in his harmonic concepts as he is selective in his material.”

Rowles sometimes sang during his shows in clubs throughout the San Fernando Valley. But he was at his best at the piano.

Feather praised the pianist’s “great harmonic beauty, unique repertoire and total maturity inherent in his work.”

Born in Spokane, Wash., Rowles attended Gonzaga College there.

Impressed by the piano playing of Teddy Wilson, he taught himself the instrument and in 1940 drifted to Southern California to play with small jazz groups on Los Angeles’ Central Avenue. Later, with time out to serve in the Army during World War II, he worked with the big bands of Woody Herman, Tommy Dorsey, Les Brown, Benny Goodman and Bob Crosby.

A studio musician who often played with Henry Mancini, Rowles remained in demand throughout his career as a pianist for concerts and recording sessions with jazz singers and players alike. In the 1980s, he performed with his daughter, jazz trumpeter Stacy Rowles, and in 1984 recorded “Tell It Like It Is” with her.

Among Rowles’ albums were “Music for Touching” with Holiday in 1955, “The Jimmy Rowles Sextet” in 1958, “Sarah Vaughan and the Jimmy Rowles Quintet” in 1972, “The Special Magic of Jimmy Rowles” in 1974, “The Peacocks” with Getz in 1977, “Red ‘n’ Me” with Mitchell in 1978, “Jimmy Rowles Plays Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn” in 1981, “Remember When” in 1989 and “Trio” in 1991.

After appearing at the Newport Jazz Festival, Rowles moved to New York in 1973 but in recent years had lived in Burbank.

In addition to his daughter, of North Hollywood, he is survived by his wife, Dorothy; another daughter, Stephanie, of Cambria, Calif., and a son, Gary, of Philomath, Ore.