There are few things that Bob Boss didn’t do extremely well as a musician in the more than four decades that he lived in Oceanside.
The versatile guitarist, who could play multiple styles with equal skill and passion, shined equally on stage and off as a performer, recording artist and music educator who taught at UC San Diego, San Diego State University, Palomar College, Mesa College, MiraCosta College and the Young Lions Jazz Conservatory.
Boss died suddenly on Feb. 18, following a concert the night before at the Idyllwild Arts Academy with bass great Marshall Hawkins’ Seahawk Modern Jazz Orchestra Boss was 71. No cause of death has been determined as yet for the eclectic six-string ace.
“Bob’s ability to play different genres was epic — classical, jazz, country, rock, the blues — he could play it all,” said Hawkins, who rose to prominence performing with Miles Davis and Roberta Flack. “And the joy that Bob brought to people was also epic.”
Those sentiments are shared by top San Diego jazz flutist Holly Hofmann, who also teaches at the Young Lions Jazz Conservatory and shared many a bandstand with Boss over the years.
“I played my first gig in San Diego with Bob after I moved here in 1985,” she recalled. “He was one of the very few jazz musicians whose pure enjoyment from playing music was exuded at every performance.
“Bob delighted both audiences and the people on stage with him because he made it such an uplifting experience. The joy of playing was inherent in everything he did.”
Where some musicians can be temperamental or unpredictable, Boss was not. He demonstrated a calm, steady demeanor even when dealing with the sudden curve balls that are a reality of life at many live-music performances.
“Improvisation is the heart and soul of jazz and being able to adjust to new faces, new settings, balky sound systems, they’re all a part of what we do for a living,” Boss said in a 2010 interview with the Temecula newspaper The Californian. “It’s something you have to be able to deal with or you’re in the wrong business.”
A native of Killeen, Texas, where his father served in the U.S. Air Force, Robert Frederick Boss was born July 24, 1952. He grew up there and in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area. His mother, Trudy, played violin, while his father, Frederick, was a former drummer.
Bob Boss’ love affair with music began when his parents gave him a Danelectro guitar when he was 11. Almost entirely self-taught, he started playing in bands when he was in junior high school. In between his first and second years as a student at California State University Chico, Boss studied with San Francisco jazz guitar great Jerry Hahn. He later credited Hahn for elevating his musicianship.
“I took about eight lessons from Jerry, and that really helped,” Boss said in a 2023 interview with San Diego Troubadour. “He had me learning scales and an approach to improvisation. He was very encouraging. So, when I returned to college, everyone said: ‘Wow, what happened to you?’ That’s because I was a completely different guitar player.”
After earning his master’s degree in humanities with a dual major in American literature and philosophy, Boss became a full-time guitarist in San Francisco in 1977. Over the next six years, he also spent time in New Mexico accompanying such jazz luminaries as saxophonist Eddie Harris and trumpeter Red Rodney.
Boss moved to Oceanside in 1983 and went on to collaborate with such top area musicians as Hofmann, pianists Mike Wofford and Harry Pickens, guitarist Ray Crawford and Jimmy and Jeannie Cheatham, the co-leaders of The Sweet Baby Blues Band. Boss also was a key member in the 1990s of the band led by San Diego singer and pianist AJ Croce, with whom Boss performed on “The Tonight Show” and on concert bills with Ray Charles, B.B. King and other legends.
“Dad was always so happy playing music,” said Lucille Boss, one of his two daughters. “We have a photo on our fridge from before I was born. Dad and Mom were camping. You can see the corner of the tent and my dad almost jumping for joy as he was playing his guitar. He didn’t have to have an audience — he was just happy, all the time, playing.”
Lucille Boss and Hawkins fondly noted that Boss’ collection of books was as extensive and diverse as his record collection. Both describe him as a loving father who doted on his two daughters.
“He was sort of a surrogate dad to a lot of people,” said Lucille Boss, a Santa Barbara resident. “He’d play us lullabies before we went to sleep. In the mornings, whatever musician had crashed on our couch in the living room would play for us.”
“Bob loved to laugh and was a great teaser, but he was very sensitive to other people’s feelings,” said Hawkins, the longtime head of the Idyllwild Arts Academy jazz department. “Bob was selfless. He was all about the music.”
Besides his daughter Lucille, Boss is survived by his wife of 44 years, Victoria; Lucille’s sister, Portland resident Suzie Boss; her husband, Bruce Ruben; and their sons Dan and Shay.
Boss was cremated after his death. Some of his ashes will be sprinkled on the campus of the Idyllwild Arts Academy, where part of the summer 2024 edition of the annual Jazz in the Pines festival will be held in his honor. Lucille Boss is chartering a bus for abut two-dozen people to attend Sunday’s concert honoring her father at San Diego’s Tio Leo’s Mexican Restaurant in Bay Park, where a turn-away crowd is expected.