Avery Parrish was a jazz pianist, composer, and arranger best known for his work with the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra from the mid-1930s to the early 1940s. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1917, his enduring legacy rests on "After Hours," a blues-inflected composition he wrote and recorded in 1940 that became a jazz standard, covered by artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, and Ray Bryant. His career was cut short by a 1943 injury, though he continued to perform intermittently until his death in 1959.
