Booker Little
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 Brown. His recordings with Roach include Deeds Not Words, We Insist!, Freedom Now Suite and Percussion Bitter Sweet. Little’s originality quickly marked him out, as did his flexibility about non-bop settings, and he collaborated with Eric Dolphy on Far Cry and Live At The Five Spot (reissued as The Great Concert Of Eric Dolphy) and John Coltrane on the Africa/Brass recording. Little’s own recordings featured some outstanding players, including Roach, Dolphy (Out Front), Booker Ervin and the ‘legendary quartet’ of Scott La Faro, Roy Haynes and both Wynton Kelly and Tommy Flanagan taking turns on piano (on Booker Little, reissued as The Legendary Quartet Album on Island Records). He worked too with Donald Byrd (The Third World), Abbey Lincoln (Straight Ahead) and Frank Strozier. By the time of his death, at the age of 23, Little was balancing tonality and dissonance with an insight that suggested his influence on jazz directions in general might have been even more substantial. (Source: www.oldies.com)