Roy Porter (drummer)

Roy Porter ( born July 30, 1923 in Walsenburg, Colorado; † January 25, 1998 in Los Angeles ) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader, the 1946 is mainly due to its California session with Charlie Parker in memory.

Life and work

Porter comes from the coal mining region of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and grew up in Colorado Springs. He attended Wiley College in Texas, the trumpeter Kenny Dorham also visited at this time. Influenced by Gene Krupa and Chick Webb, he played as a teenager in rhythm and blues bands. At age 19, he played in New York's Apollo Theatre in the Milt Larkin Orchestra and T -Bone Walker. In 1944, he moved to Los Angeles, where he played in Teddy Bunn Spirits of Rhythm Band, before he became a member of the Howard McGhee Quintet in 1945. In California he worked from mid-1940s with recordings by Dexter Gordon, Sonny Criss, Wardell Gray, Teddy Edwards and Charlie Parker; Porter appeared on March 28, 1946 at the Dial- session, with the title as A Night in Tunesia, Yardbird Suite, Ornithology or Moose The Mooche emerged. He played among others with Benny Carter, Little Richard, Joe Liggins Honey Drippers; He also led 1948/49, the 17-member Big Band Roy Porter's Seventeen Beboppers, in the Chet Baker, Teddy Edwards, Herb Geller, Harold Land, Eric Dolphy, Jimmy Knepper, Eddie Preston and Art Farmer played. In 1949, under his own name on the label Rex the single Do not Blame Me, coupled with The Story Of Love the Charles Mingus Big Band, who also played in Porter.

In the 1950s he worked for a while in the jazz scene of San Francisco with Hampton Hawes and Sonny Criss, then with Earl Bostic, Louis Jordan and Perez Prado. In the 1960s he worked as a session musician and occasionally employed as a songwriter; besides, he had a jazz band in the short also played Joe Sample. 1971 and 1975 published two more albums on small labels; In 1978, he retired for health reasons from the music business, but still taught at workshops, conducted for a time a music publishing and presented an autobiography There And Back.