Bud Powell

Bud Powell (born September 27, 1924, Harlem, Manhattan, New York, U.S.—died July 31, 1966, Brooklyn, New York) was a jazz pianist and composer who emerged in the mid-1940s as the first to play intricate, improvised solos in response to lines originally conceived by bebop saxophonists and trumpeters.

Powell had played with trumpeter Cootie Williams’s band (1942–44) and, earlier, had had opportunities to appear in jam sessions at various Harlem clubs, such as Uptown House and Minton’s Playhouse. Crafting a style from earlier pianists Art Tatum and Billy Kyle and in thrall to the ideas of Thelonious Monk, Powell then fell under the sway of Charlie Parker, soon becoming the most influential pianist of the era.

In his soloing, Powell did away with most pianists’ accepted functions of the left hand: he reduced it to playing brief, often syncopated, jabs of two- or three-note chords that supported long single lines by the right hand. This became the accepted approach for modern keyboard performers—and has remained so.

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In his prime, Powell had the digital speed and dexterity to almost keep up with Parker in his soloing. Not even repeated psychiatric hospitalizations—he was, also intermittently, deemed incompetent, a legal determination—could staunch his flow of startling ideas. While his facility had begun to deteriorate by the mid-1950s, he was still capable of turning out creative piano improvisations into the 1960s.

Powell’s legacy as a composer is based on such pieces as “Hallucinations (Budo),” “Tempus Fugue-It,” “Wail,” “Un Poco Loco,” and the unique, four-part “Dance of the Infidels.” His legacy as a nightclub performer is of a thrillingly tireless one, of whom his one-time bassist said, “Something within him made it work, when everything was conspiring against him.”