Bob Degen Jr is an American jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 pianist. Much of his work has been in the trio format.

Degen attended Berklee College of Music

Berklee College of Music

Berklee College of Music, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known primarily as a school for jazz, rock and popular music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including hip...

 in the 1960s and played locally in Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

 while there. In the mid-1960s he played in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 with Dexter Gordon

Dexter Gordon

Dexter Gordon was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and an Academy Award-nominated actor . He is regarded as one of the first and most important musicians to adapt the bebop musical language of people like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell to the tenor saxophone...

, Art Farmer

Art Farmer

Arthur Stewart "Art" Farmer was an American jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player. He also played flumpet, a trumpet/flugelhorn combination designed for him by David Monette. His identical twin brother, Addison Farmer Arthur Stewart "Art" Farmer (August 21, 1928, Council Bluffs, Iowa –...

, Carmell Jones

Carmell Jones

Carmell Jones was an American jazz trumpet player.Jones was born in Kansas City, Kansas. He is best known for his work with Horace Silver, appearing in the album Song for My Father....

, and Albert Mangelsdorff

Albert Mangelsdorff

Albert Mangelsdorff was one of the most accredited and innovative trombonists of modern jazz who became famous for his distinctive technique of playing multiphonics.-Biography:...

, and recorded an album as a leader in 1968. At the end of the decade he played with Paul Motian

Paul Motian

Stephen Paul Motian was an American jazz drummer, percussionist and composer of Armenian extraction.He first came to prominence in the late 1950s in the piano trio of Bill Evans, and later led several groups...

, as well as with Gary Peacock

Gary Peacock

Gary Peacock is an American jazz double-bassist.-Biography:After military service in Germany, in the early sixties he worked on the west coast with Barney Kessel, Bud Shank, Paul Bley and Art Pepper, then moved to New York. He worked there with Bley, the Bill Evans trio , and Albert Ayler's trio...

 and Buddy DeFranco

Buddy DeFranco

Boniface Ferdinand Leonard "Buddy" DeFranco is an American jazz clarinet player.-Biography:DeFranco began his professional career just as swing music and big bands — many of which were led by clarinetists like Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman and Woody Herman — were fading in popularity...

 in the early 1970s.

In 1974 he moved to Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, where he played often with Heinz Sauer. Since then, he has played with Makaya Ntshoko

Makaya Ntshoko

Makaya or Makhaya Ntshoko is a South African drummer.Ntshoko played with Dollar Brand's trio in 1958, and recorded in a sextet with Hugh Masekela and John Mehegan in 1959. Ntshoko plays on the Jazz Epistles album Jazz Epistle: Verse 1, one of the most prominent examples of South African hard bop...

, Frankfurter Jazz Ensemble, Adelhard Roidinger, Joki Freund, Leszek Zadlo, Günter Lenz

Günter Lenz

Günter Lenz is a German jazz bassist and composer.- Activities :First he learned, assisted by Carlo Bohländer, playing guitar and since the mid-1950s, he played jazz in the clubs of the U.S. Army. During the 1959/1960 national service, he switched to the bass...

, and Uli Beckerhoff

Uli Beckerhoff

Ulrich Beckerhoff is a German jazz composer, trumpeter, and academic.He led the Uli Beckerhoff Trio with Jasper van 't Hof and John Stanley Marshall as the other two members....

.

Discography

• Celebrations (Calig Records, 1968)
• Hidden Track (Trion Records, 1980)
• Blues after Sunrise (L+R Rec., 1980) with Heinz Sauer, Carey Bell
  Carey Bell
  Carey Bell was an American blues musician, who played the harmonica in the Chicago blues style. Bell played harmonica and bass for other blues musicians during the late 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s before embarking on a solo career...
  
  
• Chartreuse (Enja Records
  Enja Records
  Enja Records is a German jazz record label based in Munich, Germany. It was founded by jazz enthusiasts Matthias Winckelmann and Horst Weber in 1971....
  
  , 1982)
• Children of the Night (Enja, 1982)
• Sequoia Song (Enja, 1982)
• Joy (Dr. Jazz, 1994)
• Catability (Enja, 1998)