Artist: Booker Little

Booker Little was an American jazz trumpeter and composer.

Booker Little Jr. was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and developed his talent with contemporaries such as  Phineas Newborn Jr., George Coleman, Frank Strozier, and his cousin Louis Smith. 

He attended the Chicago Conservatory in 1954, where he studied trumpet, composition, theory, and orchestration, with a minor in piano. He would later on graduate with a bachelor's degree in trumpet. 

While attending a recording session with Sonny Rollins in New York in 1955, Little met drummer Max Roach.  Following the death of Clifford Brown the next year, Little became Roach's trumpet player in his band Max Roach Four, and remained with them until 1960

Little freelanced around New York and played with musicians such as John Coltrane,  Slide Hampton, and Teddy Charles. He was present on two of the four tracks of a reunion album with his old friends Coleman, Strozier, Smith, Phineas Newborn Jr., Calvin Newborn, George Joyner, and Charles Crosby titled Down Home Reunion, credited as by Young Men From Memphis, where the group displayed their interests in blues music. Through the course of the end of 1959 and early 1960, Little featured and worked on albums such as Slide!, and Bill Henderson Sings.