Manty Ellis, Midwest Jazz Master
Manty Ellis is certainly what you call a treasure. His perspective on life and music is what we all hope to attain as musicians. He has recently formed a new project - The Milwaukee Jazz Foundation - as a means to invigorate the Milwaukee Jazz scene. Manty is a master musician, and a master story teller.
By Aaron Cohen 1997 Midwest Jazz Masters Journal volume 4, number 3 - Fall 1997, page 29
"Personally, I just like the city," Ellis said recently. "And I have a little more of an attachment. Most people in any city were born in hospitals. I never made it. I was born in a house right here in Milwaukee on North 5th Street. And I can go back there every day of my life and I can sit in front of that front window where I was born. That house has all kinds of memories when I go back over there." These memories include the first musician Ellis heard: his father, Grover Edwin Ellis, a pianist with a strong interest in Louis Armstrong. "I started going to the piano as soon as I could to emulate what he was doing." Ellis said. "He saw this and started directing me a little bit. Pretty soon he started teaching. I knew more about music than the ABC's for some time because that's how I was taught. Just basic theories of how scales are constructed, I learned that before I started school." Under his father's tutelage, Ellis became accomplished enough - at age 9, no less - to be a sideman in bands around Milwaukee.
