Steve Allen

For someone of Steve Allen's versatility and staggering capacity for work, jazz occupied a small yet significant portion of his biography. Yet despite his crowded agenda, Allen could still spin out facile, competent, bop-and-cocktail-flavored piano in fast jazz company -- nothing particularly original but always pleasurable to hear. He started to play the piano while a child -- his parents were traveling vaudeville performers -- but the keyboard soon had to take a back seat to his media career, first on radio and then on television. Best known as a comedian and the first host ...