George Allen Russell (born June 23, 1923) is an American jazz pianist, composer and theorist. He is considered one of the first jazz musicians to contribute to general music theory with a theory of harmony based on Jazz rather than European music, in his 1953 book, The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization. [1]
Russell was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the adopted only child of a nurse and a chef on the B & O Railroad, Bessie and Joseph Russell. Young Russell sang in the choir of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and listened to the Kentucky Riverboat music of Fate Marable.[2] He made his stage debut at age seven, singing "Moon Over Miami" with Fats Waller.
Surrounded by the music of the black church and the big bands which played on the Ohio Riverboats, and with a father who was a music educator at Oberlin College, he started playing drums with the Boy Scouts, receiving a scholarship to Wilberforce University, where he joined the Collegians, a band noted as a breeding ground for great jazz musicians including Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, and Benny Carter. Russell served in that band at the same time as another noted jazz composer, Ernie.