Red Allen

James Henry "Red" Allen ( born January 7, 1908 in New Orleans, Louisiana, † April 17, 1967 in New York City, New York) was an American jazz trumpeter. In the 1920s, he was considered " one of the best and brightest trumpet players." He received in 1929 a recording contract with Victor, because the label wanted him to build up "in response to Louis Armstrong ".

Life and work

The son of the bandleader Henry Allen senior (1877-1952), who led a famous brass band in Algiers (against New Orleans on the other side of the river ), studied trumpet with Peter Bocage and Manuel Manetta. First Red Allen played in the brass band of his father, then in the Excelsior Brass Band and the dance bands of Sam Morgan, George Lewis (1923 ), John Casimir and Captain John Handy (1925 ). Then he worked on the steamers at Sidney Desvigne. With the Dixie Syncopators King Oliver in 1927 he went to Chicago and then to New York, where he also worked with Clarence Williams, with whom he can also be heard on the first recordings. He returned once to Mississippi to play with Fate Marable. In 1929 he received a recording contract and moved to New York where he performed with the band of Luis Russell. Starting in 1933, Allen was a member of the bands of Fletcher Henderson and Lucky Millinder and the Mills Blue Rhythm Band before 1937 by Luis Russell band returned, then the companion of Louis Armstrong.

In addition to recordings with various bands all recorded under his own name. He also accompanied famous musicians and singers like Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, Coleman Hawkins, Ida Cox, Lionel Hampton, Victoria Spivey and Billie Holiday.

Since the 1940s, Allen led his own band, with whom he went on tour across the U.S. until the late 1950s,. In 1957, the legendary TV show " The Sound of Jazz" recorded in which he, inter alia, occurred alongside Billie Holiday and Count Basie. In 1959 he joined the band of Kid Ory, with whom he also appeared in Europe in the same year. His album Feelin 'Good (1966 ) provoked Don Ellis to remark that Allen " the most avant-garde trumpeter of New York " was. He was, until his death in 1967, active as a musician and in 1964, 1966 and 1967 traveling in Europe.