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A major inspiration to generations of improvising musicians, Albert Ammons is best remembered as an exciting pianist who inaugurated the Blue Note record label by hammering out blues and boogie duets with Meade "Lux" Lewis, and as the father of hard bop tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons. Born in Chicago on September 23, 1907, he learned the rudiments of piano from his parents and neighbors and began cultivating an ability to play the blues when he was 12 years old. His main influences were Jimmy Blythe, Jimmy and Alonzo Yancey, Hersal Thomas, and Clarence "Pinetop" Smith, who personally encouraged the aspiring pianist. At the age of 17 Ammons met Meade "Lux" Lewis while they were both drivers for Chicago's Silver Taxicab Company. The two men honed their skills by pounding the ivories on an upright at the depot and by gigging publicly after hours, sometimes doubling up for boogie-woogie piano four hands. By 1934 Ammons was leading his own little group at the Club De Lisa on the South Side....