Larry Vuckovich

Larry Vuckovich was born in Kotor, Yugoslavia, on December 8, 1936. He came to San Francisco in 1951 at the height of the then flourishing bop jazz scene. Classically trained but an ardent jazz fan thanks to Armed Forces Radio, he began hanging out at clubs like the Blackhawk and the Jazz Workshop, where he heard such greats as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bill Evans. At the Blackhawk he met Cal Tjader and Vince Guaraldi. He studied jazz piano as Guaraldi's only piano student. During this period he was also completing his music studies at San Francisco Stat...