Jimmie Lunceford Biography
James Melvin Lunceford, 6 June 1902, Fulton, Mississippi, USA, d. 12 July 1947, Seaside, Oregon, USA. At school in Denver, Colorado, Lunceford studied under Wilberforce Whiteman, father of Paul Whiteman. He later read for a degree in music at Fisk University, where his studies included composition, orchestration and musical theory and he also developed his precocious ability as a performer on many instruments although he preferred alto saxophone. After leaving Fisk, he worked briefly in New York in bands led by Elmer Snowden and others before taking up a teaching post at Manassas High School in Memphis, Tennessee. He formed a band at the school which included Moses Allen (bass) and Jimmy Crawford (drums). Later, Willie Smith and pianist Eddie Wilcox were added before Lunceford took the band on tour. They became very popular and after several such tours Lunceford decided in 1929 to make the band his full-time activity. For the next few years, with the same nucleus of musicians, he toured and broadcast throughout the mid-west. In 1933, the band reached New York and quickly established a reputation. More broadcasts, national tours and, eventually, some successful records made Lunceford's one of the most popular black bands of the swing era. The band's arrangers were originally Wilcox and Smith but later additions were Eddie Durham and Sy Oliver. It was the arrival of Oliver that set the seal on Lunceford's greatest period. Thanks to excellent charts, brilliantly performed by a meticulously rehearsed reed section (credit due largely to Smith), biting brass and a powerful rhythm section sparked by Crawford, the band became one of the best of the period. In addition to the band's sound they also looked good on stage. The Lunceford band was chiefly responsible for the showmanship which crept into many subsequent big band performances, but although many copied, none ever equalled the é of Lunceford's band, especially the members of the trumpet section who would toss their horns high into the air, catching them on the beat. Apart from Smith, the band had good soloists in tenor saxophonist Joe Thomas and trombonist Trummy Young who gave the band a hit recording with his own composition, "Tain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It)". Oliver's departure in mid-summer 1939 to join Tommy Dorsey was a blow but the band continued to use his arrangements. How long this state of affairs could have continued is debatable because the band's days were numbered. Lunceford's personal behaviour was distressing many of his long-serving sidemen. Their dismay at the manner in which he spent money (on buying aeroplanes for example), while refusing to meet what they saw as reasonable pay demands led, in 1942, to a mass walkout. The band continued with replacements but the flair and excitement had gone. Although recordings over the next few years show a new promise any further improvement was forestalled when Lunceford died suddenly in July 1947. Although often overlooked in surveys of swing era big bands, during its glory days Lunceford's was one of the best. In its precision playing of superbly professional arrangements, it had no betters and very few equals.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
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