It's Bill Mays' birthday (February 5, 1944). He's a piano player with a distinctive lyrical, tasteful style that never fails to swing.

Clicking this pic of Bill Mays opens to the Bill Mays trio playing, "Dreamin'." (Bill Mays - Piano, Martin Wind - Bass, Matt Wilson - Drums)

Bill Mays is a pianist, composer, bandleader, arranger, and  author. He has won many awards and has performed internationally for over five decades.

From 1969 to the early 1980s Mays worked as a studio session musician in Los Angeles. He's accompanied many great artists - from Frank Sinatra to Sarah Vaughan to Phil Woods and Gerry Mulligan.

Click Bill at the solo piano to hear his moving rendition of Bill Evans' "Your Story/Very Early."

"I started touching the keys of an old spinet in the living room while just a baby. At age five I started piano lessons. In junior high school I took up trumpet and baritone horn. My first exposure to jazz came at 16, my first professional gigs began a year later." - from Bill Mays' website.

Click Bill working on an arrangement to hear his trio playing the Rodgers and Hart tune, "With a Song in My Heart." [Bill Mays (p) Mattias Svensson (b) Joe La Barbera (ds)]

Click Bill with Yoshiaki Masuo to hear them duo on the beautiful Portugese ballad, "Madrugada." 

Bill's book, Stories of the Road, the Studios, Sidemen & Singers - 55 Years in the Music Biz is wonderfully conversational, humorous, and enlightening on what it's like to be a "jazz man."

It is studded with great behind the scenes anecdotes and quips, like,

Pianist to bandleader, on a continuous-music dance gig: 
"We've been up here playing two and a half hours. I gotta take a leak."
Bandleader: "Sorry, man - you've known about this gig for five weeks."


Check out Bill's site https://www.billmays.net/home. It contains some great Bill Mays music.