Allen Tinney

Piano

Born: May 28, 1921 in Ansonia, Connecticut

Died: December 11, 2002 in Buffalo, New York

Pianist was forerunner of bebop

Copyright © 2003 

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Al Tinney led the house band at Monroe's Uptown House in Harlem in the from 1939-1943. He is credited with helping create the style which became bebop, and many of the better known figures of that development either played with or heard him in that period, including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell.

He had performed as a child in the original production of Porgy and Bess in New York in 1935. The endemic drug addiction which plagued the bebop scene led to his disengagement with jazz from the mid-40s.

He became director of a music scheme at State Detention Centre in New York, and later settled in Buffalo in 1968, where he taught at the University of New York in Buffalo. He accompanied visiting jazz musicians in the city, and recorded an album with singer Peggy Farrell in 2000.


JJA members are invited to submit a full obituary or appreciation.