Son of Albert – they worked together for a time in the 40s – Gene was old enough to be a first-generation bopper, yet took more of his style from an even earlier mould: it's possible to hear much of both Hawkins and Young in his playing. He worked for both Billy Eckstine and Woody Herman before going out on his own, and enjoyed jousting with Sonny Stitt in a small group convened at the start of the 50s, an association which continued to the end of Ammons's life. He was an early signing to the Prestige label and as the 50s progressed they recorded him at a bewildering pace – in jam sessions and tenor-and-rhythm sets alike. They were still recording him in the 70s, and by the end of his life he had made dozens of albums for the company. He might have made even more had his career not been disastrously interrupted by drugs problems, which led to two separate periods in jail (1958–60 and 1962–9) – hence the title of The Boss Is Back! (1970). 'Jug' Ammons (the epithet was bequeathed by Billy Eckstine, a comment on Gene's hat-size) was a hard man who played tough, yet he found that many admirers liked him best when he played pretty, on such dates as the one listed below. He was utterly reliable as a licks-man in the many jamming situations he played in, and the basic simplicity of his approach was a building-block in the soul-jazz idiom and, perhaps, pointed the way towards the smoother delivery of the 70s, as picked up by younger men such as Stanley Turrentine and Grover Washington. Like his father, Jug died young, although he left a voluminous legacy on record.

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

If you'd like more information, check out The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (2002) or The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz (2007), both of which are still in print.