Piano | 1924-1982

Al Haig arrived in New York after Coast Guard service in 1944 and was inside bebop's foundational sessions within a year: the Dizzy Gillespie quintet's 1945 Guild Records 78s, now regarded as the first recordings to document the mature bebop style in full. He was Charlie Parker's pianist from 1948 to 1950 at the Three Deuces on 52nd Street, appeared on Miles Davis's "Birth of the Cool" nonet sessions in 1949, and worked alongside Stan Getz from 1949 to 1951. His playing was described by critic Max Harrison as "a definite influence on Hank Jones and, through him, on other men, such as Tommy Flanagan," locating him at the start of a bebop piano lineage that runs through to the present. A combination of personal difficulties and changing fashion pushed him to the margins of the jazz world through the 1950s and 1960s, during which he played primarily in non-jazz contexts. His rediscovery began in 1974 when Spotlite Records owner Tony Williams invited him to tour Europe; the resulting "Invitation" album with Kenny Clarke on drums reintroduced him to a European and Japanese audience, and he spent the following eight years recording prolifically for Spotlite, East Wind and several other labels before dying of a heart attack in Manhattan on 16 November 1982.