Phil Napoleon (born Filippo Napoli; September 2, 1901 – October 1, 1990) was an early jazz trumpeter and bandleader born in Boston, Massachusetts. Ron Wynn observed that Napoleon "was a competent, though unimaginative trumpeter whose greatest value was the many recording sessions he led that helped increase jazz's popularity in the mid-1920s." Richard Cook and Brian Morton, writing for The Penguin Guide to Jazz, refer to Napoleon as "a genuine pioneer" whose playing was "profoundly influential on men such as Red Nichols and Bix Beiderbecke."
Napoleon began with classical training, and was performing publicly by age five. In the 1910s, he was one of the first musicians in the northeastern United States to embrace the new "jass" style brought to that part of the country by musicians from New Orleans, Louisiana.
