Percy Heath (, Jr.)
(Wilmington, NC, 30 April 1923)
Double bass player
He grew up in Philadelphia
in a musical family. After playing violin in junior high school he took up
double bass in 1946 when he enrolled at the Granoff School of Music. Within
months he was performing in local bands, and the following year he and his
brother (2) Jimmy Heath moved to New York
with Howard McGhee's sextet. During the next few years he played with many
important bop musicians, including Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, J. J. Johnson,
Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Clifford Brown, and Horace
Silver. In 1951 he replaced Ray Brown in Milt Jackson's quartet, and remained
with it when, in 1952, it was renamed the Modern Jazz Quartet. In 1975, shortly
after this group disbanded temporarily, he, Jimmy, and (3) Albert
"Tootie" Heath formed a quartet, the Heath Brothers, with Stanley
Cowell; at that time he began playing piccolo bass. He has continued to work
with the Modern Jazz Quartet and the Heath Brothers into the mid-1980s, and has
also participated in various short-term projects.
Heath is one of the finest ensemble players of his
generation and produces well-crafted solos; some of the best of these may be
heard on albums by the Heath Brothers and include The Watergate Blues on the
album Marchin' on (1975, Strata-East 19766) and Yardbird Suite on Passing thru
(1978, Columbia JC35573), both played on piccolo bass. His principal
contributions in many contexts are the solid, flowing bass lines upon which
others improvise.
Thomas Owens
The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, © Macmillan Reference Ltd
1988