Percy Heath grew up in Philadelphia in a musical family, and after studying the
violin during his school years, enrolled at the Granoff School of Music. He made
his musical debut in New York, with his saxophonist brother Jimmy, in trumpeter
Howard McGhee's band in the late '40s. For several years, he regularly
accompanied jazz musicians of the Be bop generation, including trumpeters Miles
Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro and Clifford Brown, trombonist Jay Jay
Johnson, alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianists Thelonious Monk and Horace
Silver, and others. In 1951, he replaced...