Stuff Smith

Stuff Smith ( born August 14, 1909 in Portsmouth, Ohio as Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith, † September 25, 1967 in Munich) was an American jazz musician and violinist, band leader and singer. He is next to Joe Venuti and Stephane Grappelli as the most important violinist in the swing era.

Life

Smith learned to play the violin from six years of his father, a violinist, and played in the family band ( the mother was a pianist ). From 1924, he attended Johnson C. Smith University, originally to study classical music, but getting to know the music of Louis Armstrong caused a turn for the Jazz. In the 1920s he played in the band of Alphonse Trent in Texas ( briefly also with Jelly Roll Morton ), with whom he went to Buffalo, where he founded his own band in the 1930s. Famous are his shots from the Onyx Club in New York, where he and his quintet Stuff Smith and his Onyx Club Boys in 1935 occurred regularly (recordings 1936-1937 ). Here were the drummer Cozy Cole and trumpeter Jonah Jones, with whom he also toured and also sang. Like his idol ( as his own words ) Louis Armstrong he was doing comical vocal deposits ( about You's Yiper, I'se a Muggin ').

In March 1936 Smith had his only hit in the Billboard charts; the rehearsed for Vocalion song " I'se a Muggin ' " reached No. 19 Cooperation with Jonah Jones ended when he went to Hollywood in 1938. He also played with Coleman Hawkins, and with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, although he faced the Bebop critical. He is considered the first musician to his electrically amplified violin (in his Onyx Club time). In the 1950s he was back in California, occurred more frequently as a soloist, took for Verve on (including with Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and Violins no end with Oscar Peterson and Stephane Grappelli ) and also participated in Nat King Cole's After Midnight Sessions participate in Capitol. In 1965, he moved to Copenhagen, where he toured a lot in Europe (including on the MPS- LP Violin Summit with Grappelli, Svend Asmussen, Kenny Drew, Niels -Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Jean -Luc Ponty ). But this time he was already seriously ill.

The Onyx Club was situated on the corner of 35th and West 52nd Street. He began in 1927 as a speakeasy and was created in 1949.

Disco Graphical Notes

• Stuff Smith & His Onyx Club Boys 1936-1939 ( Classics )
• Stuff Smith 1939-1944 ( Classics )
• The Stuff Smith Trio ( Progressive, 1943) with Jimmy Jones, John Levy
• Stuff Smith 1944-1946 ( Classics )
• Stuff Smith / Dizzy Gillespie / Oscar Peterson ( Verve, 1957) with Wynton Kelly, Red Callender, JC Heard
• Violins No End - Stéphane Grappelli, Stuff Smith ( Pablo Records, 1984)
• Call On A Hot Fiddle ( Verve, 1959)
• Late Woman Blues ( Storyville, 1965)

Collections

• The Complete Verve Stuff Smith Sessions - 1956/1959 - ( Mosaic - 1999) 4 CDs with Jimmy Jones, Red Callender, Carl Perkins, Curtis Counce, Frank Butler, Oscar Peterson, Barney Kessel, Ray Brown, Alvin Stoller, Dizzy Gillespie, Wynton Kelly, Paul West, JC Heard, Shirley Horn, Paul Smith Red Mitchell, Ray Nance, Kenny Burrell, Milt Hinton, Osie Johnson