Print
Email
Look It Up
AT A GLANCE
Powell, Earl "Bud"
2 articles on Powell, Earl "Bud"
Powell, Earl (“Bud”)
Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 3251924–1966
American jazz pianist, often regarded as the most important bebop pianist of the 1940s. Born in New York, New York, Earl “Bud” Powell began playing at Minton's Playhouse in New York in 1940 and became a student of Thelonius Monk. From 1942 to 1944 he frequently played with his other mentor, Cootie Williams. Under their guidance he developed his distinctive style and made a significant impact on the piano playing of the emerging Bebop movement. Mike Baillie has written of Powell that “his total emotional commitment, at times quite ferocious, with an unrelenting sense of urgency … comes through on every recording he ever made.” Powell, in the trio format, and in other small groups, played with such jazz greats as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Max Roach. Among his better knownHallucinations ...
Read full articlePowell, Bud
Source: African American National Biography
Word Count: 1468 Includes: Further Reading | Discography(27 Sept. 1924–1 Aug. 1966), jazz pianist, was born Earl Powell in New York City, the son of Pearl (maiden name unknown) and William Powell Sr. His father, a building superintendent who spent his evenings as a pianist and bandleader, started teaching Bud to play the piano at age three. Powell began formal lessons at six, studying the classical repertoire with W. F. Rawlins. His father exposed him to jazz, recalling that “by the time he was ten he could play everything he'd heard by Fats Waller and Art Tatum” (Groves and Shipton, 2). Teddy Wilson and Billy Kyle were also early influences. Nevertheless, Powell continued classical instruction into his midteens and started playing the organ at Harlem's St. Charles Catholic Church.Jazz beckoned, however, and by age fourteen Powell was working in a dance ...
Read full article