Ike Abrams Quebec was born on August 17, 1918, in Newark, New Jersey. In the late 1930s he danced with a touring revue called Harlem on Parade, and he was an able pianist; he later said that hearing Teddy Wilson persuaded him to put his energy into the tenor saxophone instead. His playing career began in 1940 with the Newark band the Barons of Rhythm, which broke up in 1941 when the United States entered World War II and never made a record.

In New York he spent time at Minton's Playhouse, where he became friendly with Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and drummer Kenny Clarke. Through the early 1940s he worked with trumpeters Frankie Newton and Roy Eldridge, with Benny Carter, and in an orchestra backing Ella Fitzgerald directed by Eddie Barefield; his first recording date, in November 1943, was with Eldridge. In 1944 he joined Cab Calloway's orchestra as a leading tenor soloist, and he stayed with the band on and off until 1951. That same year, 1944, he made his first session as a leader for Blue Note with bassist Milt Hinton, drummer J.C. Heard, guitarist Tiny Grimes and pianist Ram Ramirez. It produced his slow blues "Blue Harlem," a jukebox favorite, and over the next two years he led swingtet and Swing Seven dates for Blue Note and Savoy, including a hit version of "If I Had You." For a time he was the label's biggest jukebox seller.

Quebec also worked for Blue Note off the bandstand. In the late 1940s he acted as an informal talent scout, urging Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff to record the new bebop generation, among them Monk, Powell and Tadd Dameron, and his fast sight-reading made him a source of uncredited arranging help on sessions. Monk's first date as a leader, in 1947, included Quebec's cousin Danny Quebec West on alto saxophone.

Heroin addiction kept Quebec from steady work for most of the 1950s. He served two short sentences at Rikers Island, recorded only sporadically, and is reported to have driven a cab in Manhattan, though he still played in clubs, including an appearance at the Café Bohemia in 1955. By the end of the decade he was back at Blue Note as an A&R man, supervising dates for Dexter Gordon and Jackie McLean and recommending the baritone saxophonist Leo Parker and the organist Freddie Roach, who made his recording debut on Quebec's own 1961 sessions.

His comeback as an artist began in July 1959 with a long run of short tracks made for the jukebox market, which continued until early 1962 and was later gathered as The Complete Blue Note 45 Sessions. The first of them, on July 1, 1959, was the last session held at Rudy Van Gelder's original studio in Hackensack, New Jersey. In 1960 he was a guest on organist Jimmy Smith's Open House and Plain Talk. Between November 1961 and October 1962 he then made the albums on which his reputation now rests: Heavy Soul (recorded November 26, 1961, with Roach, Hinton and drummer Al Harewood), It Might as Well Be Spring (December 9, 1961, same group), Blue & Sentimental (December 1961, with guitarist Grant Green), a sextet session with trombonist Bennie Green and saxophonist Stanley Turrentine that was shelved until the 1980s and became Congo Lament and Easy Living, and Bossa Nova Soul Samba, cut on October 5, 1962, with guitarist Kenny Burrell.

Quebec passed away on January 16, 1963, in New York City, of lung cancer, at the age of 44, about three and a half months after his last session. Some of what he recorded in 1961 and 1962 reached the public only later: It Might as Well Be Spring was issued in 1964, and the sextet session and a set of ballads did not appear until 1980 to 1987. He is buried at Woodland Cemetery in Newark, where in 1992 Blue Note paid for a headstone for his grave.

Quebec belonged to the big-toned school of Coleman Hawkins among tenor players, with Ben Webster's breathy warmth in his ballads and a trace of Illinois Jacquet's drive when the tempo rose. The critic Alex Henderson called him no innovator but a distinctive and instantly recognizable voice, equally convincing on down-home blues, slow romantic ballads and up-tempo swing. He put sound ahead of ideas, a conviction he voiced himself, and his slow readings of standards such as "Blue and Sentimental," "Lover Man" and "Willow Weep for Me" show why. A former pianist, he occasionally played piano on his own dates, as behind Green's solos on Blue & Sentimental. Though he came out of swing, his early-1960s records lean on the organ-trio and soul jazz idiom of the day and, at the very end, on bossa nova, a wave Stan Getz had set off. AllMusic's Steve Huey called Blue & Sentimental a quiet, sorely underrated masterpiece, and Richard Cook wrote in 2004 that it might be Quebec's best record. Writing in Jazz Journal, Gordon Jack placed him in a line of big-sounding tenors running from Hawkins and Webster toward Gene Ammons. Mosaic gathered his complete Blue Note 45s in a 1988 box set.