William J. Tennyson Jr.
American jazz musician, songwriter
William "Bill" J. Tennyson Jr. (1923–1959) was a notable American jazz musician.
Career
A Louisiana Creole, Tennyson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and his father was born in Donaldsonville, Louisiana. After his mother died when Tennyson was aged three, he and his two younger siblings moved to live with their grandmother, Mathilda, who had formerly owned a sugar cane plantation near the Bayous of Louisiana.
"Bill" was a major part of Jazz and the Harlem Renaissance period. He attended a university in Louisiana at age 13, was a self-taught musician and, aged 16, was one of the first of color to attend the world-renowned Juilliard School of Music. He was an ASCAP member from 1950.
During the latter part of his career, he partnered with Fay Tishman to found what would have been one of the few black music publishing companies (Tishman went on to become president of ASCAP's New York branch).
In addition he wrote and composed for artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Johnny Mathis and The Orioles, Cab Calloway, and wrote and composed soundtracks for several Louis Jordan films, one of history’s first breaking black moviemakers.
Selected compositions
Death
Tennyson died, aged 36, in a car crash in New York soon after completing a hit record Centerpiece with John Coltrane.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q8013349. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923, 1959 and 1950.
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This entry incorporates text from “William J. Tennyson Jr.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.