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Bill Hardman was born William Franklin Hardman, Jr. on April 6, 1933 in Cleveland, Ohio. Growing up he worked with local players like Bobby Few and Bob Cunningham and while in high school he appeared with Tadd Dameron. After graduating he joined Tiny Bradshaw’s band.

Hardman’s first recording was with Jackie McLean in 1956, later playing with Charles Mingus, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver, and Lou Donaldson. He led a group with Junior Cook and recorded as a leader: Saying Something on the Savoy label. The album received critical acclaim in jazz circles but was little notoriety with the general public. He had three periods in as many decades with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, though his misfortune was not to be with the Messengers at the time of their popular Blue Note recordings. Blakey occasionally featured him playing several extended choruses unaccompanied.

Though he was a crackling hard bop player with blazing technique, crisp articulations, and a no-frills sound, he never received commercial success like his colleagues Donald Byrd, Freddie Hubbard, and Lee Morgan.

Bill later incorporated into his sound the fuller, more extroverted romantic passion of a Clifford Brown – a direction he would take increasingly throughout the late-1960s and 1970s. As a leader, he recorded six albums, as a sideman he recorded more than three dozen with Dave Bailey, Walter Bishop Jr., Charles Earland, Curtis Fuller, Benny Golson, Eddie Jefferson, Ronnie Mathews, Jimmy McGriff, Hank Mobley, Houston Person, Mickey Tucker, Steve Turre, Mal Waldron, and Reuben Wilson.

Hard bop trumpeter and flugelhornist Bill Hardman passed away on December 5, 1990 in Paris, France.

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