Bill Potts, 76; Innovative Jazz Arranger Scored a Vibrant ‘Porgy and Bess’

Bill Potts, a jazz pianist, composer and arranger who scored “The Jazz Soul of Porgy and Bess,” a vibrant version of the Gershwin folk opera, died of cardiac arrest Feb. 16 at a hospital in Plantation, Fla. He was 76.

Largely a self-taught musician, Potts developed an arranging style that was bold, brassy and swinging. In many ways, his “Jazz Soul” album, written when he was 30, was a precocious interpretation of Gershwin standards. Tunes such as “Summertime” had typically been recorded as slow ballads with a vocal interlude.

In contrast, the 1959 “Jazz Soul” album became a large-scale and boisterous project featuring such jazz heavyweights as Harry Edison, Zoot Sims, Charlie Shavers and Bill Evans.

Potts wrote his arrangements while recuperating from a car accident that left him in a body cast for months.

Under the leadership of producer Jack Lewis, Potts studied the original score and listened to a stack of “Porgy and Bess” versions.

“I wasn’t familiar with [the opera] at all,” Potts told an interviewer. “So I really studied that score. I wore out the records. I listened and studied for six weeks before I wrote the first note.”

Down Beat magazine gave the record five stars, its highest praise, and called it a “beautiful, beautiful album.” But the release was largely overshadowed by the quieter, reflective Miles Davis-Gil Evans “Porgy and Bess” album that was issued the previous year.

Potts continued with a productive but far more anonymous career. He collaborated with Paul Anka, Ella Fitzgerald, Woody Herman, Quincy Jones, Buddy Rich and Bobby Vinton.

William Orie Potts was born April 3, 1928, in Arlington, Va. Given a Hawaiian guitar by his father, Potts soon switched to accordion and won a talent contest at the age of 15 for playing “Twilight Time.”

He said his musical awakening came the moment he heard pianist Count Basie on the radio. By the early 1950s, he had been on the road as a professional musician and began serious study of composition while transcribing musical arrangements for the Army band in Washington.

He also became part of THE Orchestra, a boastfully named big band consisting of veteran musicians and heavily promoted by Willis Conover of the Voice of America. THE Orchestra was noted for its surprise guest artists, including the bebop stars Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

Potts’ two marriages ended in divorce.

Survivors include a daughter from the first marriage, Christi Desky of Davie, Fla.; a brother, Robert Potts of Reston, Va.; sisters Virginia Stafford of Alexandria, Va., and Janet Potter of Daytona Beach, Fla.; and two granddaughters.