Home / Biography / Albert Ammons

Albert Ammons

A significant inspiration to generations of improvising musicians, Albert Ammons is most beneficial remembered as a thrilling pianist who inaugurated the Blue Notice record label by hammering out blues and boogie duets with Meade “Lux” Lewis, so when the daddy of very difficult bop tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons. Given birth to in Chicago on Sept 23, 1907, he discovered the rudiments of piano from his parents and neighbours and started cultivating an capability to play the blues when he was 12 yrs . old. His primary influences had been Jimmy Blythe, Jimmy and Alonzo Yancey, Hersal Thomas, and Clarence “Pinetop” Smith, who individually motivated the aspiring pianist. At age 17 Ammons fulfilled Meade “Lux” Lewis while these were both motorists for Chicago’s Metallic Taxicab Company. Both males honed their abilities by pounding the ivories with an upright in the depot and by gigging publicly after hours, occasionally doubling up for boogie-woogie piano four hands. By 1934 Ammons was leading his personal little group in the Golf club De Lisa around the South Part. A powerhouse stride pianist who experienced stylistic traits in keeping with Fat Waller (both would have produced a formidable duo experienced anyone ever considered to provide them collectively), Ammons became highly identified using the boogie-woogie design after documenting “Boogie Woogie Stomp” and “Swanee River Boogie” for Decca along with his Tempo Kings in 1936. Ammons following decided to consider himself to NY, where he gigged frequently at Café Culture (Downtown and Uptown) with Meade “Lux” Lewis as well as the Kansas Town contingent of Pete Johnson and blues shouter Big Joe Turner. In 1938 the four produced a sensation on the Spirituals to Golf swing concert in Carnegie Hall, building boogie-woogie being a crowd-pleasing craze that produced good money for some of the favorite big rings in the country, including those led by Benny Goodman, who in fact jammed with Ammons, and Tommy Dorsey, who under no circumstances hesitated to benefit from a very important thing. Ammons, who got cut several edges for Vocalion in 1938, documented some solos and duets with Meade “Lux” Lewis on January 6, 1939, today established because the very first game titles within the catalog of Alfred Lion’s recently founded Blue Take note label. Ammons was also the backbone from the Boogie Woogie Trio, a scorching little device that documented a stomp known as “Woo Woo” with trumpeter Harry Adam for the Brunswick record business on Feb 1, 1939. On Apr 7 he documented many blues and boogie improvisations together with guitarist Teddy Bunn, bassist Johnny Williams, and drummer Sidney Catlett because the rhythm portion of a quintet alternately led by trumpeter Frankie Newton and trombonist J.C. Higginbotham, after that with both horns to create a sextet offered by Blue Notice as the Slot of Harlem Jazzmen. Ammons documented a passel of duets with Pete Johnson for Victor in 1941, but ceased performing for some time after unintentionally severing a fingertip while renovating a sandwich. In 1944 Ammons documented for Commodore like a soloist along with a solid small band that experienced a front type of trumpeter Warm Lips Web page, trombonist Vic Dickenson, and tenor saxophonist Don Byas. He also performed a duet with Meade “Lux” Lewis in Boogie Woogie Desire, a film starring Lena Horne. Through the years 1945-1949 he came back to Chicago, kept down a reliable gig in the Bee Hive, and regularly documented for Mercury, support legendary blues female Sippie Wallace, collaborating with guitarists Lonnie Johnson and Ike Perkins, and, on Apr 8, 1946, posting a memorable program with his child Gene Ammons. His last achievements contains Decca recordings with Lionel Hampton and a particular performance in the White colored House in the country’s capital for Harry Truman’s second-term inauguration. Disease pressured Albert Ammons from the scene so when he passed on on Dec 2, 1949, he was just 42 yrs . old. Tragically, Gene Ammons would follow his father’s example by loss of life at age 49, in 1974.

Check Also

Ludwig Göransson

Ludwig Göransson is a Los Angeles-based Swedish musician most widely known for his often playful …

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.