Description
Earl "Bud" Powell is the supreme pianist of modern jazz, dominating the piano as Charlie Parker did the saxophone. Bebop, and ensuing modern music, would be incomplete without his driven melodies, without his chiaroscuro vision and without the recordings – those of his trios and the ones with Parker, Fats Navarro, Dexter Gordon, Jay Jay Johnson, Sonny Stitt. Born in New York City, September 27, 1924, of a musical family, he was ready at age 15 to leave school to work as a musician, taking what local gigs he could. The incubation of bebop made a natural alliance with his personal music, drew him to hawk his wares on the bustling 52nd Street market of the '40s, and then on to the recordings that made him the most influential pianist of the past two decades.
