Ronnie Ball

Ronald Ball (December 22, 1927 – October 1984)^[1] was a jazz pianist, composer and arranger, born in Birmingham, England.

Biography

Ball moved to

Ball plays on the Warne Marsh album Jazz of Two Cities (recorded during October 1956 in Los Angeles) with Marsh and Ted Brown (tenor saxophone), Ben Tucker (bass), and Jeff Morton (drums). It was later reissued on Tristano/Marsh Capitol compilation Intuition (Capitol CDP 7243 8 52771 2 2).

During a two-year period (1961-1963), Ball occasionally accompanied American jazz singer Chris Connor and made recordings with her on many occasions. As most of his adult life was spent in New York, he only made a small number of recordings in London and very little recorded material was reissued on CD. Later in the 1960s, Ball worked as part of the house trio at the Studio 51 Club on Great Newport Street in London. He ended his musical career to work completing transcriptions for a music publisher until his death in 1984.^[3]

Death

Ball died in New York City in October 1984, aged 56. His exact date of death is unknown.^[4]

Discography

With Kenny Clarke

• Klook's Clique (Savoy, 1956)

With Teddy Edwards

• Sunset Eyes (Pacific Jazz, 1960)

With Roy Eldridge

• Swingin' on the Town (Verve, 1960)

With Lee Konitz

• Lee Konitz at Storyville (Storyville, 1954)
• Konitz (Storyvile, 1954)
• Lee Konitz in Harvard Square (Storyvile, 1954)

With Warne Marsh

• Jazz of Two Cities (Imperial, 1956)
• Art Pepper with Warne Marsh (Contemporary, 1956 [1986]) with Art Pepper
• Music for Prancing (Mode, 1957)
• Warne Marsh (Atlantic, 1958)

References

Footnotes

Further reading

• Ronnie Ball at
  Allmusic
• Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler, The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. Oxford, 1999, p. 34.