John Young (jazz pianist)


John Merritt Young was an American jazz pianist. Young played with Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Dexter Gordon, and many others. He recorded with his own trio in the 1950s and 1960s, and was a sideman for Von Freeman, Gene Ammons and others. He remained active in the Chicago jazz scene until a few years before his death.

Biography

Young was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and his family relocated to Chicago when he was a toddler. He first toured in the 1940s with the popular big band Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy. After Young left Kirk's band and returned to Chicago, he performed with the Dick Davis combo until 1950, when he formed his own combo with Eldridge Freeman on drums and Leroy Jackson on bass. In 1957, he signed with Argo Records and recorded his first LP, Opus de Funk.
He was active in the Chicago jazz scene, regularly playing popular clubs with artists such as Dexter Gordon, Big Joe Turner, Von Freeman and others. He made more than a dozen appearances at the Chicago Jazz Festival, often as a sideman for tenor saxophonist Eddie Johnson. He retired in 2005 due to sciatic nerve inflammation. He died from multiple myleoma on April 16, 2008.
Dan Morgenstern, in Living with Jazz, called Young "one of Chicago's several unsung piano originals." Allmusic.com called Young "criminally underappreciated outside of ."

Discography (with ''The John Young Trio'')

With Lorez Alexandria
With Gene Ammons and Dexter Gordon
With Bobby Bryant
With George Freeman
With Von Freeman
With Al Grey
With Sonny Stitt and Zoot Sims
With T-Bone Walker