A towering influence on countless improvising pianists, Albert Ammons endures in memory chiefly for his explosive keyboard work that launched the Blue Note catalog through vigorous blues-and-boogie four-hand collaborations with Meade "Lux" Lewis, as well as for fathering hard bop tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons. Chicago-born on September 23, 1907, he absorbed basic piano technique from family members and local residents, then started sharpening his blues approach at age twelve. The principal models shaping his style were Jimmy Blythe, Jimmy and Alonzo Yancey, Hersal Thomas, and Clarence "Pinetop" Smith, the last of whom offered the young player direct encouragement.
At seventeen Ammons encountered Meade "Lux" Lewis during their mutual employment as drivers for Chicago's Silver Taxicab Company. Together they refined their technique by hammering an upright piano stationed at the garage and by performing after-hours jobs, occasionally joining forces on boogie-woogie piano duets. By 1934 Ammons fronted his own small ensemble at the South Side's Club De Lisa. A commanding stride pianist whose approach overlapped with that of Fats Waller (a pairing that would have proved explosive had anyone arranged it), Ammons became indelibly linked to the boogie-woogie idiom once he cut "Boogie Woogie Stomp" and "Swanee River Boogie" for Decca with his Rhythm Kings in 1936. He next relocated to New York and maintained steady engagements at both Café Society locations alongside Meade "Lux" Lewis, Pete Johnson, and blues shouter Big Joe Turner.
The quartet ignited the 1938 Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall, sparking a nationwide vogue for boogie-woogie that lucrative big bands quickly exploited, among them Benny Goodman's orchestra, which sat in with Ammons, and Tommy Dorsey's, which readily adopted the trend. After cutting several Vocalion sides in 1938, Ammons entered the studio on January 6, 1939, for a sequence of solo and duet performances with Meade "Lux" Lewis that became the inaugural releases on Alfred Lion's freshly established Blue Note label. He also anchored the Boogie Woogie Trio, which waxed the stomping "Woo Woo" with trumpeter Harry James for Brunswick on February 1, 1939. On April 7 he joined guitarist Teddy Bunn, bassist Johnny Williams, and drummer Sidney Catlett to accompany a quintet co-led by trumpeter Frankie Newton and trombonist J.C. Higginbotham, later expanding into the sextet Blue Note issued under the name Port of Harlem Jazzmen.
Further duets with Pete Johnson appeared on Victor in 1941, after which Ammons withdrew from performing upon accidentally losing a fingertip while preparing a sandwich. In 1944 he recorded for Commodore both unaccompanied and with a compact ensemble featuring trumpeter Hot Lips Page, trombonist Vic Dickenson, and tenor saxophonist Don Byas. He also shared a piano duet with Meade "Lux" Lewis in the film Boogie Woogie Dream, which starred Lena Horne. Returning to Chicago for the period 1945-1949, he held a regular post at the Bee Hive and made periodic Mercury dates that included support for blues singer Sippie Wallace, partnerships with guitarists Lonnie Johnson and Ike Perkins, and, on April 8, 1946, a notable session alongside his son Gene Ammons. His last notable work comprised Decca recordings with Lionel Hampton and a command performance at the White House during Harry Truman's second inauguration. Health problems ended Albert Ammons's career, and he died on December 2, 1949, at only forty-two. Tragically, Gene Ammons would mirror his father's fate by dying at age forty-nine in 1974.
