Joe Albany

Joe Albany was born Joseph Albani with Atlantic City (New Jersey, the United States), the January 24th 1924 and died in New York (the United States), the January 12th 1988.

Biography

His/her father, Italian emigrant, initiate it with the Accordéon; his/her sisters give him the example of traditional musicians, but the vicinity of a cabaret where Sophie Tucker officiates (the involuntary heroin of “the Nausea” of Jean-Paul Sartre), switch it towards the Jazz.

He learns the traditional technique from the Piano. He listens to his first discs of Jazz, accompanies by the strippers in a cabaret of this kind of Las Vegas version East Coast.

In 1941, the family migrates to Los Angeles; it earns its living in the night clubs there, accompanies some high-speed motorboats by the Jazz without recording until February 1946 when a tape recorder engraves its first notes recorded with the “Finale Club”, in company of Charlie Parker some month before the detoxification therapy of this last.

Installed with New York the same year, it records finally officially with Georgia Auld and Lester Young. Night-bird, one usually finds it on the 52° Rue where he attends Parker and the dealers, in a utter destitution. Here it is doped, and, of surcroït, alcoholic.

Henceforth, its life will be a counterpoint of active periods and imprisonments for consumption of Drogue S (evoked in film “ Joe Albany… has Jazz Life )”, in an alternation of periods of disappearance and a permanent nomadism between California, New York, Northern Europe, France and Italy of its ancestors, accompanying all that the planet counts of beboppers expatriates, but recording primarily in solo or with rhythmic European. It becomes one of these beings that the mediums of the Jazz call (delicate euphemism!) a “alive legend” in prey with the “personal problems”, one of the representatives of this other “lost generation” of the Jazz.

Of return to New York in 1977, its career continues in the darkness. An heart attack carries it…

Music

Style

It is one of the first bopppers, but which mingles with this style with the various elements, cultivating at the beginning of its career one phrased hesitant, but of the fulgurances to the Art Tatum or the Bud Powell, on a minimal accompaniment of the left hand (one of these pianists manchots" , one said at the time), but which will be packed with the passing of years…

Discography

It recorded about fifteen discs under its name (“ The right combination ” in 1957, “ Joe Albany At home ” in 1971, “ Proto-bopper ”, “ The Church off Truth ”, “ Birdtown Birds ”, “ Two' S company ”, “ Joe Albany + Joe Venuti ”, “ The Legendary Joe Albany ”, “ Joe and Joe ”, “ This is for my friends ”, “ Joe Albany plays George Gershwin & Bruce Lane ”, “ The Legendary Joe Albany Live in Paris ”, “ The Albany touch ”, “ Bird lives! ”, “ Portrait off year artist ”), and very little with other leaders.

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