Junior Mance

Junior Mance
Junior Mance in 1980
Background information
Birth name	Julian Clifford Mance, Jr.
Born	(1928-10-10) October 10, 1928 (age 88) Evanston, Illinois, U.S.
Genres	Hard bop
Occupation(s)	Musician, composer
Instruments	Piano
Years active	1947–present
Labels	Riverside, Capitol, Atlantic

Julian Clifford Mance, Jr. (known as Junior Mance, born October 10, 1928) is an American jazz pianist and composer.

Mance was born in Evanston, Illinois. When he was five years old, Mance started playing piano on an upright in his family's home in Evanston. His father, Julian, taught Mance to play stride piano and boogie-woogie. With his father's permission, Mance had his first professional gig in Chicago at the age of ten when his upstairs neighbor, a saxophone player, needed a replacement for a pianist who was ill. Mance was known to his family as "Junior" (to differentiate him from his father), and the nickname stuck with him throughout his professional career.

Mance's mother encouraged him to study medicine at nearby Northwestern University in Evanston, but agreed to let him attend Roosevelt College in Chicago instead. Despite urging him to enroll in pre-med classes, Mance signed up for music classes, though he found that jazz was forbidden by the faculty, and did not finish out the year.

Mance first played with Gene Ammons in Chicago in 1947 while he was enrolled at Roosevelt. He made his recording debut with Ammons on September 23 of that year for Aladdin Records, and they worked in New York City during a week when Mance was suspended from school (having been caught playing jazz in a practice room). While on tour, Lester Young came to see Ammons play at the Congo Lounge in Chicago in 1949. Young's piano player, Bud Powell, had missed his flight to Chicago, and Young asked Mance to replace him, thinking Mance was a fill-in rather than Ammons' regular pianist. Having just been offered Stan Getz's chair in the Woody Herman band, Ammons was "delighted" to let Mance go. Mance recorded with Young for Savoy Records that year, and reunited with Ammons to record with Sonny Stitt for Prestige Records in 1950.