Dorothy Ashby

Considered one of the most unjustly underrated jazz greats of the 1950s, and certainly the most accomplished modern jazz harpist ever, Dorothy Ashby (1932-1986) was the first to establish the instrument an improvising jazz instrument - in fact, well ahead of the instrument's better known practitioner Alice Coltrane, who would have undoubtedly been influenced by Ashby. Until then the instrument was viewed as something of a novelty, used mainly as in an accompanying sound within string orchestras, the 1950 'Charlie Parker with Strings' album, for example. Ashby proved the harp could play bebop as adeptly as any other instrument.