Booker Little

Genres:	Jazz
Descriptive "tags":	jazz • trumpet • hard bop
Decades Active:	1950s • 1960s • 1980s • 1990s • 2000s
Artist Compilations:	Donald Byrd & Booker Little

Biography

2 April 1938, Memphis, Tennessee, USA, d. 5 October 1961, New York City, New York, USA. One of the most promising of all trumpeters in the second bebop wave of the 50s, Booker Little was equipped with a superb technique, crystal clarity of intonation and rhythmic originality. His imagination extended beyond the strict harmonic disciplines of bop however, and hinted at the vision of Ornette Coleman or Miles Davis, but an early death from uraemia consigned such promise to the realm of speculation. Little was born into a musical family, and played clarinet before taking up the trumpet at the age of 12. He was involved in Memphis jam sessions with local pianist Phineas Newborn Jnr. in his teens, but moved to Chicago in 1957 to enrol at the city’s Conservatory.

During this period Little worked with Johnny Griffin’s band, but his most significant engagement of the period was with Max Roach, replacing another gifted trumpeter, Clifford...

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