Jimmy Maxwell (trumpeter)

James Kendrick "Jimmy" Maxwell ( born January 9, 1917 in Stockton, California, † July 20, 2002 in Great Neck, New York) was an American trumpeter of swing. The Jazz Rough Guide According he was " a gifted soloist with a great stage presence " and " a world-renowned authority on trumpet " whose advice was sought by renowned musicians.

Life

Maxwell, who came from a family of musicians, played first cornet and studied the early 1930s with Herbert L. Clarke and Benny Baker. He began his career in 1933/34, with Gil Evans, then played with Jimmy Dorsey (1936 ), Maxine Sullivan and Skinnay Ennis before he joined the band of Benny Goodman, where he remained from 1939 to 1943. With Goodman, he worked also in later years; as he was in 1962 during its tour of the Soviet Union there. From 1943 he worked as a studio musician, initially worked for the radio station CBS, then NBC; he played in the shows of Perry Como ( 1945-63 ), Patti Page, Pat Boone and The Tonight Show ( 1963-73 ). Maxwell played the trumpet solo in the theme song of the Coppola film The Godfather. Be the first trumpet of the NBC Orchestra he can be heard on hundreds of recordings and jingles that arose between 1950 and 1980.

From 1950 he worked as a music educator. Under his own name he played in 1977 an album for a Circle Records. As a sideman, he also worked with Woody Herman (1958), Count Basie, Duke Ellington (1973 ), Oliver Nelson, Gerry Mulligan, Maynard Ferguson, Quincy Jones ( 1964), the New York Jazz Repertory Company, Chuck Israels National Jazz Ensemble and David Bergers experimental Orchestra. Furthermore, he played 1958-1964 at the New York street parade for St. Patrick 's Day bagpipes and is on this instrument even on albums by John Lennon and Patti Smith ( Easter ) to hear. In his later years Maxwell also played in Dixieland and swing ensembles such as Dick Sudhalters New California Ramblers. Then he retired from the stage, published in the early 1980s, a textbook on The First Trumpeter and taught until 2001.