Jackson took up the vibraphone when at high school in Detroit, and he wasn't a bad singer, spending some time working in a gospel quartet. But Dizzy Gillespie heard him in Detroit and in 1945 offered him a job, first with his sextet and then with the big band. Jackson's debut on the session which produced Anthropology (1946) showed that he was already fully conversant with bebop and unfazed by playing an instrument which hardly seemed like the most appropriate for the style. He went on to work in small groups with other leaders and with Woody Herman's big band before rejoining Gillespie's sextet in 1950. But it was the first sessions by the Milt Jackson Quartet, for Prestige in 1952, which decided his direction for the next 20 years, since the group evolved into the Modern Jazz Quartet and became a busy and prolific recording and touring ensemble. Jackson fitted into the group as well as he fitted into any band he played with: he was the principal improviser in the band, although improvising was not really the MJQ's forte. Away from it, he continued to make records of his own, and occasionally play with other groups: there was a fine series of albums for both Riverside and Atlantic, and meetings with John Coltrane and Wes Montgomery. When the MJQ went into abeyance in 1974, it was generally thought that this had been due to Jackson's restlessness with his own career, although he was happy to join the re-formed ensemble in the 80s, and stayed until its final 1997 appearances. In the meantime, Norman Granz began recording him for Pablo, and he recorded a whole string of sessions for that label; his final association was with Quincy Jones's Qwest operation. 'Bags' was one of the rare jazz performers whose work was all of a piece, and always interesting. He took the vibes into the hi-fi era by slowing the oscillator on the instrument, giving him a more luxuriant tone. He could swing at any tempo, and his slow playing was rich and eventful without being crowded. Perhaps the key to his consistency and longevity, though, was his mastery of playing blues: his own tunes always seemed to be irreducibly simple blues pieces such as Bags' Groove, and he was quite content to play entire sets of blues, always finding something fresh to say. A neat pencil of a man with lugubrious eyes and a compensating huge smile, he was an indispensable part of jazz for five decades.

Biography from Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia (2005).

Lewis grew up in New Mexico and studied music there before going into the army: while stationed in Europe he formed a close friendship with Kenny Clarke, and on his return to the US he went to New York in 1945 and began working on the bebop scene. In 1946 he joined Clarke in Dizzy Gillespie's big band, besides studying at the Manhattan School Of Music. He is on a few key sideman sessions in this period – such as the Charlie Parker date which produced Parker's Mood (1948) – and he also backs Lester Young on some of the saxophonist's sessions for Verve. But it was his work with Clarke and Milt Jackson in what eventually came to be called (in 1952) the Modern Jazz Quartet which settled the rest of his career, and it is discussed under the entry for that group. Away from the MJQ, though, Lewis pursued a number of related musical interests. He directed the annual School Of Jazz at Music Inn in Lenox, Massachusetts in the later 50s, was MD of the Monterey Jazz Festival during 1958–62 and developed Orchestra U.S.A. as a performing vehicle for his third-stream compositions during 1962–5. He wrote filmscores, a ballet and other works, which were recorded on both Atlantic and RCA, and in the 80s and 90s he did occasional solo work and recording, including Bach duets with his wife Mirjana. Most of this music has fallen into a state of obscurity, which hasn't been assisted by a generally uncomprehending and mystifyingly hostile critical regard for Lewis's work. Stylistically, he was almost a diametric opposite to bop pianists such as Bud Powell: a gentle, filigree player, favouring delicate counterpoint over any kind of aggressive comping (which also set him aside from a fellow 'classicist' such as Dave Brubeck), whose piano playing was regularly accused of a kind of spineless conservatism, a charge which was also levelled at his composing. While he doubtless borrowed from the European antecedents who clearly fascinated him, his music is better heard as a notably individual response to an idiom otherwise crowded with shouting, jittery music. Such records as Original Sin (1961) and European Windows (1958) have been all but forgotten, but remain intriguingly set aside from the jazz mainstream, and the occasional records where his piano took centre stage (such as The John Lewis Piano, 1958) are all worth rediscovering. Even so, his finest writing was reserved for the MJQ, and the best of it is as accomplished and inspiring as anything in jazz after Parker. While the classical tradition absorbed him, he also – as he once told the author – loved blues, and regarded the earliest records by Muddy Waters as some of the finest music of the 20th century. In his last years he recorded a pair of albums for Atlantic, Evolution and Evolution II (1999–2000), which were a beautiful summary of his career.

Biography from Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia (2005).

The eldest of the Heath brothers is a gentle spirit whose great qualities have been modestly cloaked by the circumstances of his career. He didn't take up the bass until 1946, following his air force service, and played with brother Jimmy alongside Howard McGhee; then he worked with Dizzy Gillespie's small group before enlisting with the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1952. This kept him busy for the next 22 years – although he also played on numerous album dates as a sideman, with everyone from Ornette Coleman to Paul Desmond – and during the MJQ's brief retirement he worked with Jimmy once again in The Heath Brothers' Band, a group which has been occasionally revived ever since. Back with the MJQ, he stayed until the last hurrah and is now the sole survivor of the original band. Latterly he has also taken up the cello. Heath's lovely sound and uncomplicated, gregarious swing have raised the collective spirits on scores of record dates. Although he had several features with the MJQ, these mattered less than the beautifully apposite playing he contributed to their every date. In his 80th year, he finally led an album of his own, A Long Song (2002), and it is a charming record.

Biography from Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia (2005).

Born in Pittsburgh, Clarke worked there in local bands before joining the Edgar Hayes orchestra in New York in 1937. Hayes took him to Europe (where Clarke made the first discs under his own name, in Stockholm) and on his return the drummer led the house band at Minton's Playhouse, one of the hippest haunts for musicians and the fabled seedbed of the bebop revolution: Thelonious Monk was also in the band, and Gillespie and Parker were never far away. After his army service, Clarke joined Dizzy Gillespie's band and went with them to Europe in 1948, remaining to savour the Paris scene for a few months before returning to the US. Klook (the nickname came from his style of stroking the snare on an off-beat) liked Europe and spent more time in Paris, Switzerland and Tunis, but he settled on the East Coast for a spell when he became drummer for the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1951. Disliking the way John Lewis was taking the band, he left in 1955. Life had been hectic – he had also worked on many record sessions and as a talent scout for Savoy – and he decided to settle permanently in France a year later. Inevitably, he was first call for visiting Americans and worked regularly with Bud Powell and Oscar Pettiford. In 1961, he began co-leading an all-star big band with Francy Boland: it lasted until 1972, and though not regularly convened, the personnel (Johnny Griffin, Ronnie Scott, Tony Coe, Art Farmer, Benny Bailey and others) remained remarkably constant. All through these many years of playing, Clarke's technique remained stylishly trim and fluent. He was most likely the real architect of bop drumming, sending the rhythmic pulse out from the cymbal rather than the bass drum and interjecting every accompaniment with deftly placed rimshots and snare flicks, but even in bop's heyday his style was almost calm in nature, rather than ladling out the neurotic rhythms which the music's agitated rush seemed to insist on. With the MJQ, in other small groups and especially in his big-band work, he set standards of refinement coupled with dash and swing which always made the band sound good. He continued to visit the US and other parts of Europe, but he was in semi-retirement when he died, spending his last years in a Paris suburb.

Biography from Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia (2005).

Kay's career suggests a capable, slightly indifferent man who was content to have a steady gig and didn't feel he had to worry too much about the sort of music he was playing. He was doing paying gigs already by 1939 and in the 40s and early 50s he played with everybody from Miles Davis and Cat Anderson to The Clovers, Stan Getz and LaVern Baker. In 1955 he took over from Kenny Clarke in the Modern Jazz Quartet, and with that he had found his steady gig: he was with them until the 1974 annulment, and then rejoined when they restarted in 1981. In the interim he was as catholic as ever in his choice of work, even taking on the job of house drummer in the last years of Eddie Condon's club. John Lewis rarely gave him a feature in the MJQ, but only because Kay didn't seem to like them much: Sacha's March was his only regular solo in their later years. Despite suffering a stroke, he played his final gig with the band in the month before he died.

Biography from Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia (2005).