Artist: Hank Jones

Henry Jones Jr. was an American jazz pianist, bandleader, arranger, and composer.

Critics and musicians described Jones as eloquent, lyrical, and impeccable. In 1989, The National Endowment for the Arts honored him with the NEA Jazz Masters Award. He was also honored in 2003 with the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) Jazz Living Legend Award.[4] In 2008, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. On April 13, 2009, the University of Hartford  presented Jones with an honorary Doctorate of Music for his musical accomplishments. 

Jones recorded more than 60 albums under his own name, and countless others as a sideman,  including on Cannonball Adderley's celebrated album Somethin' Else. On May 19, 1962, he played piano as actress Marilyn Monroe sang her famous "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" song to then U.S. president John F. Kennedy. 

His is two younger brothers—Thad, a trumpeter, and Elvin, a drummer—also became prominent jazz musicians. He studied piano at an early age and came under the influence of Earl Hines, Fats Waller,  Teddy Wilson, and Art Tatum. By age13, Jones was performing locally in Michigan and Ohio. While playing with territory bands in Grand Rapids  and Lansing in 1944, he met Lucky Thompson, who invited Jones to work in New York City at the Onyx Club with Hot Lips Page. 

In New York City, Jones regularly listened to leading bop musicians, and was inspired to master the new style. While practicing and studying music he worked with John Kirby,  Howard McGhee, Coleman Hawkins, Andy Kirk, and Billy Eckstine. In autumn 1947, he began touring in Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic package, and from 1948 to 1953 he was accompanist for Ella Fitzgerald, and while accompanying her in England in the fall of 1948,  developed a harmonic facility of extraordinary taste and sophistication. During this period, he also made several historically important recordings with Charlie Parker, which included "The Song Is You", from the  Now's the Time album, recorded in December 1952, with Teddy Kotick on bass and Max Roach on drums. 

Engagements with Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman  followed, and recordings with artists such as Lester Young, Cannonball Adderley, and Wes Montgomery, in addition to being for a time, "house pianist" on the Savoy label. From 1959 through 1975 Jones was staff pianist for CBS studios. This included backing guests such as Frank Sinatra on The Ed Sullivan Show. By the late 1970s, his involvement as pianist and conductor with the Broadway musical  Ain't Misbehavin' (based on the music of Fats Waller) had informed a wider audience of his unique qualities as a musician. 

During the late 1970s and the 1980s, Jones continued to record prolifically, as an unaccompanied soloist, in duos with other pianists (including John Lewis and Tommy Flanagan), and with various small ensembles, most notably the Great Jazz Trio.