Mance, Julian Clifford, Jr., “Junior,” 1928-2021, American jazz pianist and composer, b. Evanston, Illinois. Taught to play boogie and stride piano by his father, Mance was already performing locally at the age of 10. While attending college at Roosevelt University, he began playing with saxophonist Gene Ammons, traveling with Ammons’s group to New York in the late ‘40s. He was drafted in 1951, and played with the 36th Army Band at Fort Knox, Kentucky. After service, he worked as an accompanist for Dinah Washington from 1954-56, and as a member of Cannonball Adderley’s and Dizzy Gillespie’s bands through the end of the decade. Mance made his solo recording debut in 1959, achieving his greatest success as a soloist in the mid-‘60s-‘70s, taking a variety of approaches from big band jazz to experimenting with fusion. He taught jazz piano at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music for 23 years (1987-2000), and played a residency at New York’s Café Loup every Sunday night from 2007-2016. He was part of the “100 Gold Fingers” tours from 1990-2009, which featured a rotating lineup of “all-star” pianists. Mance was inducted into the International Jazz Hall of Fame in 1997.
See his How to Play Blues Piano (1967).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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