Gene Ammons

The son of boogie woogie piano pioneer Albert Ammons, saxophonist Gene Ammons did some pioneering of his own. Taking the lessons he learned from swing and early bebop, he forged a new stylistic vein known as the “Chicago school,” making the tenor sax an ever more personal, expressive instrument. The strong influence of R&B in Ammons's playing also put him in the thick of the soul jazz movement in the late '60s and early '70s, before he succumbed to cancer in 1974.