Chicago Jazz Legends Who Shaped the City’s Sound

Ask any of our musicians who they are thinking about when they play, and a few names come up every time. This is not a complete list. It is a starting point.

Louis Armstrong

He arrived in 1922 as a sideman and left as the most important soloist in the music. The Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings, made in Chicago between 1925 and 1928, taught every jazz musician since how to build a solo.

Earl Hines

Hines led the band at the Grand Terrace on the South Side for more than a decade and invented a way of playing piano, the so-called trumpet style, that let the right hand phrase like a horn. Our pianists quote him more than they admit.

Gene Ammons and the tenor tradition

The big-toned Chicago tenor sound runs from Ammons through Johnny Griffin, Von Freeman and Fred Anderson. When a saxophone joins us on the weekend, this is the lineage you are hearing.

The AACM

Founded on the South Side in 1965, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians produced the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton and Henry Threadgill, and proved the city could lead the music’s future as well as its past. You will not hear free jazz on the boat, but you will hear players who learned from it.