About
Jazz artist, lecturer, and critic whose career was hampered after he was an uncooperative witness for the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Before fame
He was a teaching assistant in the jazz department to pianist Teddy Wilson at the Metropolitan Music School in 1945.
Trivia
He was a honky-tonk saloon player on The Gabby Hayes Show, a TV series from the early 1950s.
Family life
His mother tried to interest him in the violin, but the piano won out.
Associated with
He had a piano composition dedicated to him by Leonard Bernstein in Bernstein's collection Four Anniversaries from 1948.
