Oliver Edward Nelson (June 4, 1932 – October 28, 1975) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, arranger, composer, and bandleader.^[1]His 1961 Impulse! album The Blues and the Abstract Truth (1961) is regarded as one of the most significant recordings of its era. The centerpiece of the album is the definitive version of Nelson’s composition, “Stolen Moments“. Other important recordings from the early 1960s are More Blues and the Abstract Truth and Sound Pieces, both also on Impulse!.

Oliver Nelson was born into a musical family in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. His brother was a saxophonist who played with Cootie Williams in the 1940s, and his sister sang and played piano. Nelson began learning to play the piano when he was six and started on the saxophone at eleven. Beginning in 1947 he played in “territory” bands in and around Saint Louis before joining the Louis Jordan band where he stayed from 1950 to 1951, playing alto saxophone and arranging charts for Jordan’s band.

In 1952, Nelson underwent military service in the United States Marines Corps playing woodwinds in the 3rd Marine Division band in Japan and Korea. It was in Japan that Nelson attended a concert by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and heard Maurice Ravel‘s Ma mere l’Oye and Paul Hindemith‘s Symphony in E Flat. Nelson later recalled that this “‘was the first time that I had heard really modern music for back in St. Louis I hadn’t even known that Negroes were allowed to go to concerts. I realized everything didn’t have to sound like Beethoven or Brahms … . It was then that I decided to become a composer'”.