Albert Ammons

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Albert Clifton Ammons (March 1, 1907 – December 2, 1949) was an American pianist who helped popularize boogie-woogie, a fast blues piano style.

He was born in Chicago to pianist parents and learned to play by age ten. He and his friend Meade Lux Lewis practiced together, and as a teenager he played in Chicago clubs while also working as a cab driver in the 1920s. In the mid-1930s he formed Albert Ammons's Rhythm Kings for Decca, and their recording of "Swanee River Boogie" sold a million copies. Their version of "Boogie Woogie Stomp" is often called the first 12-bar boogie-woogie. Ammons then moved to New York and teamed up with Pete Johnson. The two played at the Café Society and with other stars, including Benny Goodman.

Ammons and Johnson helped launch the boogie-woogie craze when they performed at Carnegie Hall in 1938 in From Spirituals to Swing. Producer Alfred Lion started Blue Note Records and recorded many of Ammons's solos, including "The Blues" and "Boogie Woogie Stomp." In 1941 the short film Boogie-Doodle used his music, and in 1944 he appeared in Boogie-Woogie Dream with Lena Horne.

He also recorded with Sippie Wallace and, in a session with his son Gene Ammons, the famous tenor saxophonist. In the late 1940s he recorded for Mercury with Israel Crosby and worked as the pianist with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. He even played at President Harry S. Truman's inauguration in 1949.

In his later years Ammons mainly played in Chicago clubs. He suffered a temporary paralysis that limited his playing to one song at a time, and he died of natural causes on December 2, 1949, in Chicago, at age 42. He is buried at Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island, Illinois. Ammons influenced many pianists who followed, including Jerry Lee Lewis, Dr. John, Erroll Garner, and Axel Zwingenberger.