Joe Albany (born Joseph Albani; January 24, 1924 – January 12, 1988) was an American modern

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

pianist who played

bebop Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumen ...

with

Charlie Parker Charles Parker Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird", was an American jazz saxophonist, band leader and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form ...

as well as being a leader on his own recordings.

Life and career

Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Albany studied piano as a child and, by 1943, was working on the West Coast in

Benny Carter Bennett Lester Carter (August 8, 1907 – July 12, 2003) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. With Johnny Hodges, he was a pioneer on the alto saxophone. From the beginning of his career ...

's orchestra.Feather, Leonard & Gitler, Ira (2007). ''The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz''. Oxford University Press, p. 9. In 1946,

Lester Young Lester Willis Young (August 27, 1909 – March 15, 1959), nicknamed "Pres" or "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and occasional clarinetist. Coming to prominence while a member of Count Basie's orchestra, Young was one of the most ...

recorded with Albany as his pianist, for Aladdin Records. Also that year, he played at least once with Parker and then 20-year-old

Miles Davis Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musi ...

. He continued for a few years afterward, and in 1957 recorded an album for Riverside with an unusual trio line-up with saxophonist

Warne Marsh Warne Marion Marsh (October 26, 1927 – December 18, 1987) was an American tenor saxophonist. Born in Los Angeles, his playing first came to prominence in the 1950s as a protégé of pianist Lennie Tristano and earned attention in the 1970s as ...

and Bob Whitlock on bass, omitting a drummer. Despite that, most of the 1950s and 1960s saw him battling a heroin addiction, or living in seclusion in Europe. He also had several unsuccessful marriages in this period. He returned to jazz in the 1970s and played on more than ten albums. He died of respiratory failure and cardiac arrest in New York City at the age of 63. Albany was the focus of a 1980 documentary titled, ''Joe Albany... A Jazz Life''. His daughter Amy-Jo wrote a memoir about her father called ''Low Down: Junk, Jazz, and Other Fairy Tales from Childhood''. The book was adapted for the screen and released in 2014 as the biopic '' Low Down''. Joe was also the biological father to Benjamin David Goldberg, who was adopted by another family shortly after being born. Benjamin David was also a musician, who studied percussion at Juilliard, played for Broadway shows and was in the US Army Band.

Discography

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Albany, Joe 1924 births Bebop pianists Musicians from Atlantic City, New Jersey American jazz pianists American male pianists 1988 deaths SteepleChase Records artists Enja Records artists Elektra Records artists Riverside Records artists 20th-century American pianists 20th-century American male musicians American male jazz musicians

Life and career

Discography

References

Further reading

External links