Isham Jones

Isham Jones ( born January 31, 1894 in Coalton, Ohio, † October 19, 1956 in Hollywood, Florida ) was an American big band leader, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter - composer of dance music in the 1920s and 1930s.

Life and work

Jones grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, where he lived as a boy in coal mines mules, to playing violin at age 18 and led his first band. He also played saxophone (from about 1918) and piano. 1915 to 1924 he was in Chicago, where he played after military service in 1918 in a dance band, he soon took it. In Chicago he played among others in the Rainbow Gardens and in the Sherman Hotel College Inn ( 1922-1925 ). After a UK tour in 1924, he settled in New York, where he played in 1921 in a Ziegfeld show. Isham had one of the most popular dance bands in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. He took this time for Brunswick on (1920-1932), starting in 1932 for RCA Victor; From 1934 he was one of the first artists who took up for the newly founded Decca label. Among the singers of the bands included the violinist Eddie Stone, Frank Sylvano, Joe Martin and the young Bing Crosby. From his band of pianist Roy Bargy, the cornetist Louis Panico, Woody Herman went inter alia Joe Bishop, ( the band Isham Jones Juniors in 1936 took over, when Jones retired in order to compose more) and Benny Goodman forth ( the only very briefly was in the band though). Bix Beiderbecke played several times as a student in the orchestra.

Isham Jones wrote over a hundred compositions, many of which have become one of standards such as "Spain" (1923 ), "On the Alamo ", " I'll See You In My Dreams " (1924 ), " It Had to Be You " (1925 ), "Swinging down the Lane " and " There Is No Greater Love " (1936). After a final commitment in Memphis (Tennessee ), he was sidelined for health reasons shortly; a few months later, he appeared in New York with a new band, with which he appeared in the Lincoln Hotel. During this time it came to the musical contest with Woody Herman, who played with former Jones musicians in New York. In the 1940s and 1950s, he was no longer in the music business, but also launched a store in Colorado before moving to Florida in 1955, where he died of cancer a year later.

One of him with the songwriter Ole Olsen 1917 written song is one of the first with the word jazz in the title (That's Jaz ). Jones himself described his music later as " American Dance Music" (rather than jazz).

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