Biography

"Boogie-woogie" pianist Albert Ammons was born in 1907 in Chicago, IL. He grew up listening to the blues and "barrelhouse" piano players that inhabited the city's famed jazz scene. He drove a taxi while trying to break into the music business, and one day he ran into fellow driver (and jazz pianist) Meade 'Lux' Lewis. The two hit it off and became close friends, even sharing an apartment for a period. A resident of that apartment building was yet another jazz pianist, Pinetop Smith. The three became close and often played together.

Ammons hit his stride in the Chicago blues scene in the early 1930s and cut his first album in 1936 with his group The Rhythm Kings. He went to New York and played in The Cafe Society, a nightclub that featured "boogie-woogie" musicians, and at one point played in Harry James' and Benny Goodman's bands. He joined Lionel Hampton's band in 1949, but his health--which hadn't been good--began to deteriorate rapidly. He died in Chicago on Dec. 5, 1949.
- IMDb mini biography by: frankfob2@yahoo.com

Albert Ammons was an American pianist and player of boogie-woogie, a bluesy jazz style popular from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s.

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 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 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. After World War I he became interested in the blues, learning by listening to the Chicago pianists Hersal Thomas and the brothers Alonzo and Jimmy Yancey.

Ammons moved from Chicago to New York City, where he teamed up with another pianist, Pete Johnson. The two performed regularly at the Café Society, occasionally joined by Lewis or by other jazz musicians, including Benny Goodman and Harry James. On December 23, 1938, Ammons appeared at Carnegie Hall with Johnson and Lewis in From Spirituals to Swing, a concert produced by John Hammond, which helped launch the boogie-woogie craze. Two weeks later, the record producer Alfred Lion, who had attended the concert, started Blue Note Records, recording nine Ammons solos, including "The Blues" and "Boogie Woogie Stomp", eight by Lewis and two duets in a one-day session in a rented recording studio.
- IMDb mini biography by: Bazza the Beast

American jazz and blues pianist. He played in Chicago clubs in the 1920s while in his teens. He became an influential soloist in the 1930s, a noted pioneer of boogie-woogie. Founded his own orchestra in New York in 1938 and eventually formed a piano duo with band member Pete Johnson, which played at the Cafe Society club in downtown New York for five years. Another famous piano player, Meade 'Lux' Lewis, joined the group on some occasions. Ammons' famous compositions included "Nagasaki", "Boogie Woogie Stomp" and "Suitcase Blues".