Gene Ammons

Gene Ammons
Background information
Birth name Eugene Ammons
Also known as "Jug" Ammons
Born (1925-04-14)April 14, 1925
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Died July 23, 1974(1974-07-23) (aged 49)
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Genres Jazz
Occupation(s) Musician
Instruments Tenor saxophone
Years active 1943–1974

Eugene "Jug" Ammons (April 14, 1925 – July 23, 1974),[1] also known as "The Boss", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist.[2] The son of boogie-woogie pianist Albert Ammons,[1][3] Gene Ammons is remembered for his accessible music, steeped in soul and R&B, but his career was hampered by two incarcerations on drugs charges.

Biography

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Ammons studied music with instructor Walter Dyett at DuSable High School.[4] Ammons began to gain recognition while still at high school when in 1943, at the age of 18, he went on the road with trumpeter King Kolax's band. In 1944 he joined the band of Billy Eckstine (who bestowed on him the nickname "Jug" when straw hats ordered for the band did not fit), playing alongside Charlie Parker and later Dexter Gordon. Notable performances from this period include "Blowin' the Blues Away," featuring a saxophone duel between Ammons and Gordon. After 1947, when Eckstine became a solo performer, Ammons then led a group, including Miles Davis and Sonny Stitt, that performed at Chicago's Jumptown Club. In 1949 Ammons replaced Stan Getz as a member of Woody Herman's Second Herd,[1] and then in 1950 formed a duet with Sonny Stitt.

The 1950s were a prolific period for Ammons and produced some acclaimed recordings such as "The Happy Blues" (1955). Musicians who played in his groups, apart from Stitt, included Donald Byrd, Jackie McLean, John Coltrane, Kenny Burrell, Mal Waldron, Art Farmer, and Duke Jordan.

His later career was interrupted by two prison sentences for narcotics possession, the first from 1958 to 1960, the second from 1962 to 1969. He recorded as a leader for Mercury (1947–1949), Aristocrat (1948–1950), Chess (1950–1951), Prestige (1950–1952), Decca (1952), and United (1952–1953). For the rest of his career, he was affiliated with Prestige. After his release from prison in 1969, having served a seven-year sentence at Joliet penitentiary, he signed the largest contract ever offered at that time by Prestige's Bob Weinstock.[4]

Ammons died in Chicago in 1974, at the age of 49, from cancer.[5]

Playing style

Ammons and Von Freeman were the founders of the Chicago school of tenor saxophone. Ammons's style of playing showed influences from Lester Young as well as Ben Webster. These artists had helped develop the sound of the tenor saxophone to higher levels of expressiveness. Ammons, together with Dexter Gordon and Sonny Stitt, helped integrate their developments with the emerging "vernacular" of the bebop movement, and the chromaticism and rhythmic variety of Charlie Parker is evident in his playing.

While adept at the technical aspects of bebop, in particular its love of harmonic substitutions, Ammons more than Young, Webster or Parker, stayed in touch with the commercial blues and R&B of his day. For example, in 1950 the saxophonist's recording of "My Foolish Heart" made Billboard Magazine's black pop charts.[3] The soul jazz movement of the mid-1960s, often using the combination of tenor saxophone and Hammond B3 electric organ, counts him as a founder. With a thicker, warmer tone than Stitt or Gordon, Ammons could at will exploit a vast range of textures on the instrument, vocalizing it in ways that look forward to later artists like Stanley Turrentine, Houston Person, and even Archie Shepp. Ammons showed little interest, however, in the modal jazz of John Coltrane, Joe Henderson or Wayne Shorter that was emerging at the same time.

Some ballad performances in his oeuvre are testament to an exceptional sense of intonation and melodic symmetry, powerful lyrical expressiveness, and mastery both of the blues and the bebop vernacular that can now be described as, in its own way, "classical".

Instruments

Early in his career Ammons played a Conn model 10M Bb tenor saxophone eventually switching to a Selmer Mark VI. He is often pictured playing a Brilhart Ebolin mouthpiece.

Legacy

King Pleasure recorded his vocalese take on Ammons' composition "Hittin' the Jug" under the title "Swan Blues".

Ammons is considered a major influence on the style of popular jazz tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman.[5]

Discography

As leader

As sideman

With Richard "Groove" Holmes

With Charles Mingus

With Sonny Stitt

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Doc Rock. "The 1970s". The Dead Rock Stars Club. Retrieved 2015-03-07.
  2. ↑ Cook, Richard (2005). Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia. London: Penguin Books. p. 12. ISBN 0-141-00646-3.
  3. 1 2 Rosenthal, David, H. Hard Bop: Jazz and Black Music 1955-1965. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505869-0.
  4. 1 2 "Gene Ammons Biography". Musicianguide.com. Retrieved 2015-03-07.
  5. 1 2 Scott Yanow. "Gene Ammons | Biography". AllMusic. Retrieved 2015-03-07.

External links

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