Mose Allison
Jazz | 2006By the time Mose John Allison, Jr. was in grade school, he was already composing boogie-woogie tunes on the piano. While still in his teens, Mose was sitting in with R&B bands—including one led by another teenage bluesman, B. B. King—on Memphis’s famed Beale Street. In 1956, Mose migrated to New York where the jazz scene was taking off and worked as a sideman for jazz legends, such as Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan. The following year he recorded his first album, Back Country Suite, the first of more than 30 albums he would record. Throughout the 1960s, he developed a loyal following in the United States, but it was in England where he got the attention of many soon-to-be British Invaders—The Yardbirds, The Who, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and others would cover his songs. He received the prestigious National Endowment for the Artists Jazz Masters award in 2013.