Eddie Durham
Eddie Durham ( born August 19, 1906 in San Marcos, Texas, † March 6, 1987, New York ) was an American jazz guitarist, trombonist, composer and one of the major arrangers of the swing.
Life and work
Durham came from a musical family (his father played the violin at the Square Dance, his brother played the cello and let him participate in distance learning courses on music theory ), and first played banjo, then guitar and trombone. He toured initially from the age of 10 years in minstrel shows with the band of his family (Durham Brothers Band, his brother and two cousins) and played until 1926 in a circus band, with whom he to performances at Yankee Stadium in New York moved. Then he played in various territory bands like Jimmy Joy, Edgar Battle 's Dixie Ramblers and as a trombonist, guitarist and arranger for the Blue Devils by Walter Page. From 1929, he joined the Bennie Moten orchestra, which he by his arrangements a successful new musical direction was in the early 1930s, which eventually brought the band to the same level as the then leading big bands of Fletcher Henderson, Chick Webb and Don Redman. At the same time he reinforced his guitar as an accompanying instrument with a resonator. Since, as was customary went over the rights to his compositions and arrangements to the orchestra of Moten, is not exactly determine which pieces of it are. This concerns for example the pieces Moten Swing ( with its early use of riffs in the recordings from 1932 ) and later One O 'Clock Jump with Basie. Durham is one of the originators of the use of riffs in the big band arrangements that made the Kansas City style famous. The arrangements often went on into the later Count Basie Big Band Moten of these " inherited ", which led to a temporary discord between Durham and Basie.
Durham worked for his arrangements with Eddie Barefield and not just as noticeable extent with Bill "Count" Basie - Basie later reported that they developed Moten Swing together on the piano, as if to arrange You drivin me crazy for the Moten orchestra. Other blowers at Moten as Buster Smith and Hot Lips Page was involved in the drafting of the arrangements. Durham is co-author of the piece Topsy ( with Edgar Battle), which was later recorded by Count Basie and many others, also author of Swing classics such as Lafayette and Prince of Wales. After his departure from Moten 1933, he played in the band of Willie Bryant and Jimmy Lunceford. In 1934 he moved to New York. In 1936, he rejoined Basie 's band at (1937 replaced by Freddie Green ) for which he for a year, among other things Time out, Sent for you yesterday, John 's Idea, Every Tub, Swinging the Blues, Jumpin ' at the Woodside, Out the window, Blue and Sentimental composed or arranged. After that he worked as a freelancer and arranged among others Glenn Miller (including In the Mood ), Andy Kirk, Artie Shaw, Harry James, Cab Calloway, Ina Ray Hutton, Billie Holiday, and the all-female jazz band International Sweethearts of Rhythm, whose music director he was from 1941 to 1943. He also led in the 1940s his own band, played in the other Kansas City musicians from Texas as Buster Smith and Hot Lips Page. After the departure of the Sweethearts (partly because his exploitation of the musicians did not like ) he founded in 1942 a private all-girl band ( Eddie Durham's All Star Girl Orchestra ) with musicians, some of which he took from the Sweethearts, the successfully, for example, at the Apollo Theatre occurred and with whom he toured in the south. He arranged further up in the 1960s and also took in 1974 and 1981 in England as a guitarist on. In the 1980s he toured Europe with the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band.
In his musical career, his contribution to the development of the modern swing style in the Bennie Moten Orchestra distinguishes it in particular. Its share in the shaping of the swing in Kansas City can hardly be overstated.
Durham is also known to have experimented with one of the first electric guitar. He took with it in 1938 with the Kansas City Five, and it was mentor of Charlie Christian and Floyd Smith. With it, some of the earliest recordings were made with electric guitar, so with Lunceford 1935 ( Hittin the bottle ) and with the Kansas City Five in 1938, a group of members of the Basie band ( Buck Clayton, Jo Jones, Walter Page, Freddie Green, in the Kansas City Six supplemented by Lester Young) without Count Basie ( whose part on the piano just Durham took over with his electric guitar).
He appears in the documentary The Last of the Blue Devils by Bruce Ricker 1980, in which he also plays solo trombone.