Jazz Night time in America celebrates the centennial of influential pianist Elmo Hope. Hear choices from his uncommon discography, pictured above.

Collage by NPR

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Collage by NPR

Jazz Night time in America celebrates the centennial of influential pianist Elmo Hope. Hear choices from his uncommon discography, pictured above.

Collage by NPR

Elmo Hope is likely to be the most important, most influential jazz pianist you have by no means heard of. He was born 100 years in the past this June, in the course of the Harlem Renaissance. Hope was a baby prodigy in classical piano. As an adolescent, he pushed his greatest buddies Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk into wildly inventive dimensions.

“Elmo was Bud’s affect, and Monk,” the drummer Philly Joe Jones says. “Monk and Bud cherished Elmo a lot. He was an actual genius.”

However whereas Monk and Bud entered the pantheon, Hope by no means got here near their stage of superstar. He confronted a collection of non-public and artistic setbacks in his life, together with a heroin habit which stunted his capacity to play. It additionally led to the revoking of his Cabaret Card — a crucial lifeline for artists like himself who relied on New York Metropolis’s membership scene to get observed and discover work.

Regardless of all these challenges, Elmo Hope has left an indelible mark on the story of jazz piano. He’s revered as a refined and mental participant who merged his huge information of concord along with his command of the blues. And his drive to create one thing new.

Elmo Hope died in 1967 at 43 years previous. In his transient profession, he launched greater than a dozen unique albums and performed with the most important names in jazz, together with John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Clifford Brown. He’s nonetheless praised amongst jazz pianists together with Vijay Iyer and Eric Reed as an artist who helped redefine the style.

“He is without doubt one of the nice composers,” Reed says. “We’ve lots of good composers in jazz music, however there aren’t dozens of nice ones. There’s one Monk, there’s one Duke Ellington, there’s one Billy Strayhorn. And there is one Elmo.”

Set Record:

(All songs written by Elmo Hope besides as indicated)

• Elmo Hope Trio, “Mo Is On”
• Clifford Brown, “De-Dah”
• Elmo Hope, “Tranquility”
• Elmo Hope, ” So Good”
• Elmo and Bertha Hope, “Yesterdays” (Jerome Kern)
• Elmo Hope Ensemble, “Monique”
• Elmo Hope, “Minor Bertha”
• Elmo Hope Trio, “Joyful Hour”

Credit:

Christopher Johnson, author and producer; Katie Simon, consulting editor; Sarah Geledi, producer; Trevor Smith, producer; Ron Scalzo, episode combine; Suraya Mohamed, challenge supervisor; Keith Jenkins, vice chairman of visuals and technique at NPR Music; Anya Grundmann, govt producer; Christian McBride, host.