All About Jazz is celebrating Bill Mays' birthday today!
“I was born in Sacramento, CA" (William Allen Mays) Feb. 5, 1944. “There was always music in our home. My dad, Bill Sr., was a minister, and played the piano, organ, trombone, guitar and harmonica, so gospel music was the first music I heard. My mom, Martha, a homemaker, had a beautiful, very natural, voice and I have vivid memories of him playing the accordion while she sang. Dad's trombone was an old, silver valved one. I loved that sound—it’s probably the reason I took up the baritone horn and trumpet in junior high school. We had a spinet piano, a Baldwin Acrosonic, and I was at it from... Read more.
