Leon Abbey

Leon Abbey ( born May 7, 1900 in Minneapolis, † September 15, 1975 in Chicago ) was an American jazz violinist and bandleader who helped in the 1920s and 1930s through his touring for worldwide circulation of jazz.

Life and work

Abbey belonged from 1920 to the orchestra by J. Rosamund Johnson ( to 1925). The beginning of 1925 he accompanied the blues singer Clara Smith in their recordings of You Better Keep the Home Fires Burning and If You Only knowed. At the opening of New York's Savoy Ballroom, he was involved with its Charleston Bearcats, which he then called due to the length of the engagement at the Savoy Savoy Bearcats and with whom he recorded in 1926 for Victor. After the end of the engagement at the Savoy, the group met to continue under his name.

1927 was Abbey with his band to Buenos Aires; he entered a year on in Latin America. With a newly formed band, he played for several years in France, England, Switzerland and the Netherlands (1930 were Cyril Blake and Rudolph Dunbar to his band ). In 1936, he took with musicians like Rudy Jackson, Castor McCord and Emile Christian to engage in India; he played with his nonet was the first in Bombay Swing music. He then toured with his band through Sweden and Norway.

Abbey did not return until after the beginning of World War II back to America, where he served as musical director of the band of Ethel Waters. In 1941 he founded in New York his own trio; He then went to Chicago, where he played in a trio with pianist Barrington Perry and bassist Rail Wilson. In the early 1950s, he was playing electrically amplified violin, even when recordings (1954 Parrot Records ) in the mid 1950s he ran in Chicago has its own nightclub. He worked until 1964 as a musician.