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ASCAP Jazz Living Legend Award
Hank Jones, pianist/composer, has enjoyed a six decade career, rich with artistic milestones and memorable collaborations. He is the eldest son of a Pontiac, Michigan family that also produced drummer Elvin Jones and the late trumpeter/ bandleader Thad Jones. In his youth, Hank received valuable jazz experience playing piano in and around Detroit, and served in a number of local "territory" bands. By 1943, he was living in New York and playing and recording with the Hot Lips Page Combo. Other bandleaders he worked with in the Forties inclided Andy Kirk, Billy Eckstine, John Kirby, Coleman Hawkins and Howard McGhee. As a member of Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic touring ensemble, Jones also worked as accompanist to Ella Fitzgerald. The Fifties saw Hank performing and recording with Johnny Hodges, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker and Lester Young, and beginning to make albums as a leader, himself. While never leaving the jazz world, Jones also began making important musical contributions to television as a network staff musician, and to Broadway as part of the Ain't Misbehavin' troupe. The Seventies also found him as part of a group of shifting but major players known as the Great Jazz Trio.
Hank's versatility has been more in evidence with the passage of time. In recent years, he has collaborated on recordings of Afro-pop with an ensemble from Mali and on a beautiful album of spirituals, hymns and folksongs with Charlie Haden called Steal Away. A true Living Legend of Jazz, Hank Jones continues to inspire countless musicians and jazz fans.
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