Jazz artist who contributed to hundreds of recordings and toured as a sideman with such artists as Max Roach.
He started performing with Roach, Freddie Hubbard, and Roy Haynes in his twenties.
His contributions to jazz over the decades were largely unrecognized, but those who did notice him often placed him in the same ranks as Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and McCoy Tyner.
His family raised him in the Brooklyn neighborhood of New York.
He performed with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers around the same time as another great but unheralded jazz pianist, Mulgrew Miller.
