Piano | 1927-1998

Walter Bishop Jr. grew up in Harlem's Sugar Hill neighbourhood, the son of Walter Bishop Sr., a Jamaican-American songwriter who had worked alongside Fats Waller and whose composition "Swing, Brother, Swing" was recorded by Billie Holiday with Count Basie. His teenage friends included Kenny Drew, Sonny Rollins and Art Taylor. After army service during the war, he returned to Manhattan in 1947 and became a regular at Minton's Playhouse, where the bebop scene was coalescing around Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. He played with Parker on the later Verve sessions and on "Bird with Strings," appeared on Miles Davis's seminal 1951 Dig session alongside Jackie McLean, Sonny Rollins and Art Blakey, and worked across the early 1950s with Art Blakey, Stan Getz and Oscar Pettiford. His debut as a leader came in the early 1960s with a Prestige trio session. He began teaching at the University of Hartford in the early 1980s, and performed a solo Carnegie Hall concert in 1983. He died of a heart attack in Manhattan on January 24, 1998, aged 70.