Francis Dominic Joseph Dallas (October 27, 1931 - July 22, 2007), also known as Frank "Sonny" Dallas, was an American jazz bassist and singer.

Born in Rankin, Pennsylvania

Rankin, Pennsylvania

Rankin is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, south of Pittsburgh on the Monongahela River. Early in the 20th century, Rankin specialized in manufacturing steel and wire goods...

, Dallas studied bass with Herman Clements, principal bassist of the Pittsburgh Symphony, who also taught jazz bassists Ray Brown

Ray Brown (musician)

Raymond Matthews Brown was an American jazz double bassist.-Biography:Ray Brown was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and had piano lessons from the age of eight. After noticing how many pianists attended his high school, he thought of taking up the trombone, but was unable to afford one...

 and Paul Chambers

Paul Chambers

Paul Laurence Dunbar Chambers, Jr. was a jazz bassist. A fixture of rhythm sections during the 1950s and 1960s, his importance in the development of jazz bass can be measured not only by the length and breadth of his work in this short period but also his impeccable time, intonation, and virtuosic...

, and by the mid '50s, was working with bandleaders Charlie Spivak

Charlie Spivak

Charlie Spivak was an American trumpeter and bandleader, best known for his big band in the 1940s.-Biography:...

, Ray Eberle

Ray Eberle

Raymond "Ray" Eberle was a vocalist during the Big Band Era. Eberle sang with the Glenn Miller Orchestra.-Career:...

, and Claude Thornhill

Claude Thornhill

Claude Thornhill was an American pianist, arranger, composer, and bandleader...

.

Moving to New York in 1955, he began performing and recording with the likes of Sal Salvador

Sal Salvador

Sal Salvador was a bebop jazz guitarist and a prominent music educator.He was born in Monson, Massachusetts and began his professional career in New York City. He eventually moved to Stamford, Connecticut. He taught guitar at the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Connecticut as well as at...

, Tony Scott

Tony Scott

Anthony D. L. "Tony" Scott is an English film director. His films include Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II, The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State, Spy Game, Man on Fire, Déjà Vu, The Taking of Pelham 123, and Unstoppable...

, Chet Baker

Chet Baker

Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker, Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and singer.Though his music earned him a large following , Baker's popularity was due in part to his "matinee idol-beauty" and "well-publicized drug habit."He died in 1988 in Amsterdam, the...

 and Buck Clayton

Buck Clayton

Buck Clayton was an American jazz trumpet player who was a leading member of Count Basie’s "Old Testament" orchestra and a leader of mainstream-oriented jam session recordings in the 1950s. His principal influence was Louis Armstrong...

, Lee Konitz

Lee Konitz

Lee Konitz is an American jazz composer and alto saxophonist born in Chicago, Illinois.Generally considered one of the driving forces of Cool Jazz, Konitz has also performed successfully in bebop and avant-garde settings...

, Warne Marsh

Warne Marsh

Warne Marion Marsh was an American tenor saxophonist born in Los Angeles.-Biography:Marsh came from an affluent background: his father was the cinematographer Oliver T. Marsh , and his mother Elizabeth was a violinist...

, Phil Woods

Phil Woods

Philip Wells Woods is an American jazz bebop alto saxophonist, clarinetist, bandleader and composer.-Biography:...

, Gene Quill

Gene Quill

Daniel Eugene Quill was an American alto saxophonist known for his bebop jazz records with Phil Woods. He and Woods recorded as Phil and Quill...

, Zoot Sims

Zoot Sims

John Haley "Zoot" Sims was an American jazz saxophonist, playing mainly tenor and soprano.-Biography:He was born in Inglewood, California, the son of vaudeville performers Kate Haley and John Sims. Growing up in a performing family, Sims learned to play both drums and clarinet at an early age...

, Al Cohn

Al Cohn

Al Cohn was an American jazz saxophonist and arranger and composer.-Biography:Alvin Gilbert Cohn was born in Brooklyn, New York. He was initially known in the 1940s for playing in Woody Herman's Second Herd as one of the Four Brothers, along with Zoot Sims, Stan Getz, and Serge Chaloff...

, Elvin Jones

Elvin Jones

Elvin Ray Jones was a jazz drummer of the post-bop era. He showed interest in drums at a young age, watching the circus bands march by his family's home in Pontiac, Michigan....

, Mary Lou Williams

Mary Lou Williams

Mary Lou Williams was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. Williams wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements, and recorded more than one hundred records...

, Bill Evans

Bill Evans

William John Evans, known as Bill Evans was an American jazz pianist. His use of impressionist harmony, inventive interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines influenced a generation of pianists including: Chick Corea, Herbie...

, George Wallington

George Wallington

George Wallington was a highly regarded American bop pianist and composer....

, Jackie Paris

Jackie Paris

Jackie Paris was an American jazz singer and guitarist.He was born Carlo Jackie Paris in Nutley, New Jersey to his father Carlo, and mother Rose. He had a brother Gene. A vocalist, Paris toured with Charlie Parker. He also tap-danced from his youth and into his years in the US Army, entertaining...

 and Lennie Tristano

Lennie Tristano

Leonard Joseph Tristano was a jazz pianist, composer and teacher of jazz improvisation. He performed in the cool jazz, bebop, post bop and avant-garde jazz genres. He remains a somewhat overlooked figure in jazz history, but his enormous originality and dazzling work as an improviser have long...

, with whom he was most closely associated.

Moving to Long Island in the late '60s, he obtained a Master of Arts degree in music education and began teaching at both Suffolk County Community College and Dowling College

Dowling College

Dowling College is a private co-educational liberal arts college with three campuses spread across Long Island, New York. The college's main campus in Oakdale, NY sits on the site of William K. Vanderbilt's former Idle Hour estate, which is now known as Fortunoff Hall. The Brookhaven Campus in...

.

Down Beat

Down Beat

Down Beat is an American magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond" to indicate its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chicago, Illinois...

listed Sonny Dallas as one of the top ten greatest jazz bassists.

Dallas died in Long Island

Long Island

Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...

, New York. Survived by two daughters, Deborah Marko of North Braddock, Pennsylvania

North Braddock, Pennsylvania

North Braddock is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States. North Braddock was organized from a part of Braddock Township in 1897. North Braddock is a suburb east of Pittsburgh with a 15-minute travel time to the city...

, and Elizabeth Dallas of New York; a son, Robert Dallas of Frederick, Maryland

Frederick, Maryland

Frederick is a city in north-central Maryland. It is the county seat of Frederick County, the largest county by area in the state of Maryland. Frederick is an outlying community of the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is part of a greater...

.