Ray Bryant

Ray Bryant could handle bebop with ease, yet his style wove earlier influences—blues, boogie-woogie, gospel, and stride—into a singular, soulful, and propulsive sound; his version of “After Hours” remained unmatched. As the younger brother of bassist Tommy Bryant and uncle to Kevin and Robin Eubanks, whose mother was Bryant’s sister, he launched his professional life alongside Tiny Grimes during the closing years of the 1940s. In 1953 he took the house-pianist chair at The Blue Note in Philadelphia, supporting such jazz luminaries as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Lester Young while forging key professional relationships. Between 1956 and 1957 he toured with Carmen McRae, captured a standout solo with Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival on an electrifying reading of “I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love with Me,” and joined Jo Jones’s trio the following year. Bryant relocated to New York in 1959, worked with Sonny Rollins, Charlie Shavers, and Curtis Fuller, and soon led his own trio. A pair of earthy commercial successes, “Little Susie” and “Cubano Chant,” supplied steady work for years afterward. He documented his music prolifically for Epic, Prestige, Columbia, Sue, Cadet, Atlantic, Pablo, and Emarcy, and even his electric-piano sessions of the 1970s remain satisfying; yet he shone most brightly when rendering the blues alone at the acoustic instrument. Following an extended illness, Ray Bryant passed away in Queens, New York, on June 2, 2011, at the age of seventy-nine.