Snub Mosley

Lawrence Leo " Snub " Mosley ( born December 29, 1905 in Little Rock, Arkansas; † 21 July 1981 in Harlem, New York City ) was an American jazz trombonist and bandleader. He developed the so-called slide saxophone. The instrument features a saxophone mouthpiece, but has no flaps, but a slider with which the pitch can be " regulated ".

Life and work

Mosley has already played at the high school trombone and was instrumental training at the Cutaire Music School in Cincinnati. He began his career in the Territory band of Alphonse Trent, where he remained from 1926 to 1933. In the following years he played in the Jeter - Pillars Orchestra (1934 ), Claude Hopkins (1934 /35), with Louis Armstrong at the Luis Russell Orchestra (1936 /37) and Fats Waller (1937 ). From 1938 he played with his own formations, which belonged to musicians such as Tommy Benford, Bernard Addison Skeets Tolbert or. During the Second World War, he led a military band, which was used in the South Pacific and Alberta Hunter accompanied. Then he settled in New York City, where he mainly worked at the local level until his death. In 1952, he was on tour in Europe. Mosley played most of his career trombone, but in addition also the slide saxophone, which he did obtain a certain popularity and has been used approximately in its recording of The Man with the Funny Little Horn ( 1940).

Under his own name he took 1940-42 for Decca, later on for the label Sonora in 1946, Penguin 1949, Columbia in 1959 and Pizza 1978.

Lexigraphic entries

• Carlo Bohländer, Karlheinz Holler: Reclams jazz leader. Reclam, Stuttgart, 1970 ( Universal-Bibliothek 10185/10196 ).