Jazz Artist of the Week
Bud Powell

Bud Powell's music has often been described as adapting Charlie Parker's bebop style to the piano. Other jazz authorities maintain that Bud was an originator, along with Parker and Gillespie, of the jazz style known as bebop. All agree that Bud is the father of modern jazz piano. Bud was trained in classical music as a child and his classical background plays a role in the harmonic sophistication of his music. He was also intimately familiar with the early jazz piano style known as stride and one can recognize this element, sometimes quite explicitly, in Bud's playing. But the main characteristic of Bud's original piano style is a lightning fast right hand that expresses on the piano what up to Bud's time had only been possible on a horn. 

Bud was also a composer of approximately fifty tunes of great originality. Many of his greatest recordings are of his own compositions like "Tempus Fugit," "Bouncing with Bud," "Dance of the Infidels," "Hullucinations," "Celia," "Oblivion," and many others. 

​"No one could play like Bud; too difficult, too quick, incredible!"
– THELONIOUS MONK 

"If I had to choose a single musician according to his artistic merit and the originality of his creation, but also for the greatness of his work, it would be Bud Powell. Nobody could measure up to him."
– BILL EVANS 

"He was the foundation out of which stemmed the whole edifice of modern jazz piano. Every jazz pianist since Bud either came through him or is deliberately attempting to get away from playing like him."
– HERBIE HANCOCK 

"Bud was the most brilliant that a spirit might be, a unique genius in our culture."
– MAX ROACH 

"Bud is a genius."
– CHARLIE PARKER 

"He laid down the basis of modern jazz piano."
– DIZZY GILLESPIE 

"Bud is a genuine genius."
– DUKE ELLINGTON