Bill Mays

ABOUT BILL MAYS

Jazz artist who collaborated with some of the biggest names in 20th-century music and also recorded dozens of his own albums.

He studied at the Naval School of Music in Washington, D.C., and served as a bandsman in the U.S. Navy.

He became a studio-session musician after moving to Los Angeles, and from 1969 until the early 1980s, he was an accompanist for the likes of Peggy Lee , Frank Sinatra , Sarah Vaughan , and Dionne Warwick .

He was born into a musical family where his father was a minister and his mother was a homemaker.

He first discovered jazz when he attended an Earl "Fatha" Hines concert at the age of 16.