20th-century American pianists

Michael Bernard Bloomfield (July 28, 1943 – February 15, 1981) was an American blues guitarist and composer. Born in Chicago, he became one of the first popular music stars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, as he rarely sang before 1969. Respected for his guitar playing, Bloomfield knew and played with many of Chicago's blues musicians before achieving his own fame and was instrumental in popularizing blues music in the mid-1960s. In 1965, he played on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, including the single "Like a Rolling Stone", and performed with Dylan at that year's Newport Folk Festival.
Bloomfield was ranked No. 22 on Rolling Stone's list of "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2003 and No. 42 by the same magazine in 2011. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2012 and, as a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.

Andor Földes (later Andor Foldes; 21 December 1913 – 9 February 1992) was an internationally renowned Hungarian pianist born in Budapest, who later took American citizenship.

Hadda Brooks (October 29, 1916 – November 21, 2002) was an American pianist, vocalist and composer, who was billed as "Queen of the Boogie". She was Inducted in the Rhythm and Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1993.

Mary Louise Boehm (July 25, 1924 – November 29, 2002) was an American pianist and painter.
A descendant of Joseph Boehm, a piano-maker active in Vienna during the early 19th century, Mary Louise Boehm was born in Sumner, Iowa, and soon proved to be a child prodigy. She studied with Louis Crowder at Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa) and subsequently with Robert Casadesus and Walter Gieseking.Boehm's repertoire and recorded output was notable for works by American composers such as Amy Beach and Ernest Schelling, who are far from mainstream, even now. She also performed and made premiere recordings of works by several early romantic composers such as John Field, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Johann Peter Pixis, Ignaz Moscheles and Friedrich Kalkbrenner. Her advocacy introduced a generation of music lovers to these neglected composers. She was also interested in performance on period instruments at a time when this was rare.
From the 1960s she began painting, working in oils, watercolor and inks. While on concert tours in South America she became interested in textiles, which led to her involvement with weaving, textile design and the complicated field of dye and color chemistries. Eventually she chose batik as a painterly textile medium. She studied the traditional Indonesian batik techniques and pioneered modern adaptations, and had major shows in the United States.She married the Dutch violinist Kees Kooper with whom she performed regularly. In 2002 she died in Spain. Her sister Pauline Boehm Haga was also a pianist; the Grand Sonata Op. 112 by Moscheles was recorded by the sisters together.

Merrill Everett Moore (26 September 1923 – 14 June 2000) was an American swing and boogie-woogie pianist and bandleader whose style influenced rockabilly music during the 1950s.
He was born in Algona, Iowa, and learned piano as a child. By the age of 12 he was performing occasionally on a Des Moines radio station. After leaving school he joined the Chuck Hall Band, which played in local ballrooms, before serving in the US Navy during World War II. He then married, and moved with his wife to Tucson, Arizona and then San Diego, where he worked as a clothes salesman and performed in clubs, often with guitarist Arkie Geurin. He became a full-time musician in 1950, and formed his own band, the Saddle, Rock and Rhythm Boys, who played boogie-woogie and Western swing at the Buckaroo Club. He signed with Capitol Records in 1952 and recorded a string of singles, the most successful of which was a version of "The House of Blue Lights" in 1953. Ken Nelson of Capitol Records invited him to take part in a national tour, but Jimmy Kennedy, the owner of the Buckaroo Club, refused to allow Moore to break his contract to take part.According to Steve Huey of Allmusic, Moore's "unique style fused Western swing, boogie-woogie, and early R&B in a melting pot that many critics felt was a distinct influence on rockabilly, especially Jerry Lee Lewis." His music was later highly regarded by rockabilly fans, especially in Europe, although Moore himself said: "We didn't have the idea we were pioneering anything. We were just trying to make a living.... Rock and roll to me was a completely different sound. The rhythm section was incomplete, it was too hard, and it didn't swing...."
Moore continued to record for Capitol in the 1950s, but in 1955 walked out on his contract with Kennedy and moved to Los Angeles. There, he became a regular, along with Tennessee Ernie Ford, on Cliffie Stone's radio program Hometown Jamboree, and also worked as a session pianist for Capitol, appearing on records by Tommy Sands, Johnny Cash, Faron Young, Kay Starr and others. In 1962 he moved back to San Diego, and returned to playing hotels and clubs.He died from cancer in 2000, at the age of 76.

Mirriam Johnson (born May 25, 1943), known professionally as Jessi Colter, is an American country singer who is best known for her collaborations with her husband, country musician Waylon Jennings, and for her 1975 crossover hit "I'm Not Lisa".
Colter was one of the few female artists to emerge from the mid-1970s "outlaw country" movement.
After meeting Jennings, Colter pursued a career in country music, releasing her first studio LP in 1970, A Country Star Is Born. Five years later, Colter signed with Capitol Records and released "I'm Not Lisa", which topped the country charts and reached the top five on the pop charts. In 1976 she was featured on the collaboration LP Wanted: The Outlaws, which became an RIAA-certified Platinum album.

Grete Sultan (born Johanna Margarete Sultan) (June 21, 1906 – June 26, 2005) was a German-American pianist.

Edward Kilenyi Jr. (1910 – 2000) was a classical pianist. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 7, 1910. Kilenyi studied in Hungary with the composer/pianist Ernő Dohnányi at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, earning a diploma in 1930. He later became a Professor of Music at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida in 1953, four years after Dohnanyi began teaching there. He died on January 6, 2000. A collection of recordings of his concerts is located at the International Piano Archives at the University of Maryland (IPAM).
His father, Edward Kilenyi Sr. (1884 – 1968), also a noted musician, arrived in the United States from Hungary in 1908. Kilenyi Sr. taught music to George Gershwin for five years and wrote music for the Sam Fox Publishing Company and over 40 movies from the 1910s-1940s.

Ventura Martínez Alonzo (December 30, 1904 – December 14, 2000) was a Mexican-born American musician. She was known as the "Queen of the Accordion".She was born Ventura Martínez in Matamoros and moved to Brownsville, Texas with her family in 1909. Her father taught her to play the piano. The family lived in Kingsville for several years before moving to Houston in 1917. Alonzo married a man named Gallegos. Together, they had 3 sons. The couple later divorced and she married Frank Alonzo in 1931. The couple formed a group known as Alonzo y Sus Rancheros; she played accordion and piano and was lead vocalist. They recorded for Falcon Records and a number of other record labels. After World War II, the group changed its name to Alonzo y su Orquesta; they performed throughout Texas. In 1956, the couple opened the La Terraza ballroom in Houston, catering to customers of Mexican descent. They retired from performing in 1969.In 2002, she was inducted into the Tejano R.O.O.T.S. Hall of Fame.

Howard Robert Hammer (March 3, 1930 – December 26, 2021) was an American jazz pianist, composer and arranger.