The son of boogie woogie piano pioneer Albert Ammons, saxophonist Gene Ammons did some pioneering of his own. Taking the lessons he learned from swing and early bebop, he forged a new stylistic vein known as the “Chicago school,” making the tenor sax an ever more personal, expressive instrument. The strong influence of R&B in Ammons's playing also put him in the thick of the soul jazz movement in the late '60s and early '70s, before he succumbed to cancer in 1974.