Curtis Edward Amy was born October 11, 1929, in Houston, Texas, and started on clarinet at four before switching to tenor saxophone during his Army service. After his discharge, he pursued formal music training at Kentucky State College, taught school in Tennessee for a couple of years, and landed in Los Angeles around 1955. Between 1960 and 1963, Pacific Jazz Records kept him busy recording six albums as leader or co-leader, sessions notable for containing some of the earliest recorded work by two young vibraphonists, Bobby Hutcherson and Roy Ayers, whose own careers are covered in full in Hutcherson's JazzProfiles.com profile and Ayers's. His standout Pacific Jazz release, 1963's Katanga!, remains the high point of that run.

If you listened to pop radio from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s, you likely heard Amy's tenor, soprano saxophone, or flute even without knowing his name; he backed artists ranging from Carole King to the Doors. For three years in the mid-1960s, he served as musical director of Ray Charles's orchestra, working alongside his wife, singer Merry Clayton, and trumpeter Steve Huffsteter. Despite a genuine reputation as a soulful, warm hard bop tenor player and probing soprano soloist, Amy spent much of his own solo career in relative obscurity.

Curtis Amy died June 5, 2002.

Amy's soulful, blues-rooted hard bop tenor sound, paired with a probing soprano voice ahead of its time in early-1960s jazz, made him a natural mentor figure for younger players like Bobby Hutcherson and Roy Ayers, even as his own session-heavy career kept him from wider individual recognition.