Albert Ammons

A major inspiration to generations of improvising musicians, Albert Ammons is best remembered as an exciting pianist who inaugurated the Blue Note record label by hammering out blues and boogie duets with Meade "Lux" Lewis, and as the father of hard bop tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons. Born in Chicago on September 23, 1907, he learned the rudiments of piano from his parents and neighbors and began cultivating an ability to play the blues when he was 12 years old. His main influences were Jimmy Blythe, Jimmy and Alonzo Yancey, Hersal Thomas, and Clarence "Pinetop" Smith, who personally encouraged the aspiring pianist. At the age of 17 Ammons met Meade "Lux" Lewis while they were both drivers for Chicago's Silver Taxicab Company. The two men honed their skills by pounding the ivories on an upright at the depot and by gigging publicly after hours, sometimes doubling up for boogie-woogie piano four hands. By 1934 Ammons was leading his own little group at the Club De Lisa on the South Side. A powerhouse stride pianist who had stylistic traits in common with Fats Waller (the two would have made a formidable duo had anyone ever thought to bring them together), Ammons became strongly identified with the boogie-woogie style after recording "Boogie Woogie Stomp" and "Swanee River Boogie" for Decca with his Rhythm Kings in 1936. Ammons next decided to take himself to New York, where he gigged regularly at Café Society (Downtown and Uptown) with Meade "Lux" Lewis and the Kansas City contingent of Pete Johnson and blues shouter Big Joe Turner. In 1938 the four created a sensation at the Spirituals to Swing concert in Carnegie Hall, establishing boogie-woogie as a crowd-pleasing trend that made good money for most of the popular big bands in the nation, including those led by Benny...