Artist: Percy Heath

Percy Heath was an American jazz bassist, and brother of saxophonist  Jimmy Heath and drummer Albert Heath, with whom he formed the Heath Brothers in 1975. Heath played with the Modern Jazz Quartet throughout their long history, and worked with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Wes Montgomery, Thelonious Monk and Lee Konitz. 

Heath was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, and spent his childhood in Philadelphia. He was drafted into the Army in 1944, trained with the Tuskegee Airmen, graduating as a 2nd Lieutenant pilot. 

Deciding after the war to go into music, he bought a stand-up bass and enrolled in the Granoff School of Music in Philadelphia. Soon he was playing in the city's jazz clubs with leading artists. In Chicago in 1948, he recorded with his brother on a Milt Jackson album, as members of the Howard McGhee Sextet.  After moving to New York in the late 1940s, Percy and Jimmy Heath found work with Dizzy Gillespie's groups. Around this time, he was also a member of Joe Morris's band, together with Johnny Griffin. 

It transpired that other members of the Gillespie big band, pianist John Lewis, drummer Kenny Clarke, Milt Jackson, and bassist Ray Brown, decided to form a permanent group; they were already becoming known for their interludes during Gillespie band performances that gave the rest of the band much-needed set breaks, and that would eventually become known as the Modern Jazz Quartet. When Brown left the group to join his wife Ella Fitzgerald's band, Heath joined and the group was officially begun in 1952, with Connie Kay replacing Clarke, who left in January 1955. The Modern Jazz Quartet played regularly until it disbanded in 1974. It reformed in 1981 and last recorded in 1993.