Albert Ammons

Albert Clifton Ammons (March 1, 1907 – December 2, 1949) was an American pianist and player of boogie-woogie, a blues style popular from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s.

Life and career Ammons was born in Chicago, Illinois. His parents were pianists, and he had learned to play by the age of ten. His interest in boogie-woogie is attributed to his close friendship with Meade Lux Lewis and also his father's interest in the style. Both Albert and Meade would practice together on the piano in the Ammons household. From the age of ten, Ammons learned about chords by marking the depressed keys on the family pianola (player piano) with a pencil and repeated the process until he had mastered it. He also played percussion in a drum and bugle corps as a teenager and was soon performing with bands in clubs in Chicago.

In the early to mid-1920s Ammons worked as a cab driver for the Silver Taxicab Company. In 1924 he met up with his boyhood friend Meade Lux Lewis, who was also then a taxi driver. Soon the two players began working as a team, performing at club parties. Ammons started his own band at the Club DeLisa in 1934 and remained at the club for the next two years. During that time he played with a five-piece band that included Guy Kelly, Dalbert Bright, Jimmy Hoskins, and Israel Crosby. Ammons also recorded as Albert Ammons's Rhythm Kings for Decca Records in 1936. The Rhythm Kings' version of "Swanee River Boogie" sold a million copies, and their 1936 recording of "Boogie Woogie Stomp" has been described as "the first 12-bar piano based boogie-woogie, [which] was imitated by many jazz bands."

In 1941, Ammons's boogie-woogie music was accompanied by drawn-on-film animation in the short film Boogie-Doodle, by Norman McLaren. Ammons played himself in the movie Boogie-Woogie Dream (1944), with Lena Horne and Johnson. As a sideman with Sippie Wallace in the 1940s Ammons recorded a session with his son, the tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons.

During his last years, Ammons played mainly at the Beehive Club and the Tailspin Club in Chicago. Four days before he died, he had been at the Yancey apartment listening to Don Ewell and Jimmy Yancey play. Ammons could play only one song, having just regained the use of his hands after a temporary paralysis.

Ammons died of natural causes on December 2, 1949, in Chicago, at the age of 42. Columbia Compilation 1941 8 to the Bar RCA Victor With Pete Johnson 1948 King of Boogie Woogie (1939–1949) Blues Classics 1951 Boogie Woogie Classics Blue Note 1975 King of Blues and Boogie Woogie 1907–1949 Oldie Blues 1982 King of Blues and Boogie Woogie 1907–1949 Vol. 2 Oldie Blues 1992 The First Day Blue Note 2004 The Boogie Woogie Trio, Vols. 1–2 Storyville