Sunday, 8/9/2026, 8:30am - Like It Is

Alexander Plackov

The featured guest this week is Larry Vuckovich. Larry was born in Kotor, a small Montenegrin coastal town in the former Yugoslavia, the pianist was classically trained as a child but was also drawn to the jazz he heard on Armed Forces Radio and Voice of America during World War II and the Communist regime that followed. At the conclusion of the war, Tito’s communists conversated his home, including the family piano, and imprisoned his father and brother. Jazz came to symbolize freedom. In 1951, when he was 14, his family was granted political asylum in the United States, arriving in San Francisco. The young pianist began listening to KJAZ radio, hanging out at record shops, and frequenting clubs to hear jazz legends such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bill Evans. He performed with John Handy and Brew Moore, he later began his professional career. At the Black Hawk club, he met Cal Tjader and Vince Guaraldi, who agreed to engage him as his only piano student. Guaraldi featured Vuckovich in a two-piano quintet, Powder Keg, and sent him to substitute as accompanist for vocalists Irene Kral and David Allyn. When Mel Torme came to San Francisco, Vuckovich became his first-call pianist. (more)