SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
WINTER, 2020
VOLUME EIGHT NUMBER TWO
HERBIE HANCOCK
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
RICHARD DAVIS
(February 22-28)
JAKI BYARD
(February 29-March 6)
CHARLES LLOYD
(March 7-13)
CHICO HAMILTON
(March 14-20)
JOHNNY HODGES
(March 21-27)
LEADBELLY
(March 28-April 3)
SIDNEY BECHET
(April 4-April 10)
DON BYAS
(April 11-17)
FLETCHER HENDERSON
(April 18-24)
JIMMY LUNCEFORD
(April 25-May 1)
KING OLIVER
(May 2-8)
WAR
(May 9-15)
Jimmie Lunceford
(1902-1947)
Artist Biography by Scott Yanow
The Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra has always been a bit difficult to evaluate. Contemporary observers rated Lunceford's big band at the top with Duke Ellington and Count Basie
but, when judging the music solely on their records (and not taking
into account their visual show, appearance, and showmanship), Lunceford's ensemble has to be placed on the second tier. His orchestra lacked any really classic soloists (altoist Willie Smith and trombonist Trummy Young came the closest), and a large portion of the band's repertoire either featured the dated vocals of Dan Grissom,
or were pleasant novelties. And yet, the well-rehearsed ensembles were
very impressive, some of the arrangements (particularly those of Sy Oliver) were quite original, and the use of glee-club vocalists and short, concise solos were pleasing and often memorable. Plus Lunceford's was the first orchestra to feature high-note trumpeters (starting with Tommy Stevenson in 1934) and had a strong influence on the early Stan Kenton Orchestra.
Although he was trained on several instruments and was featured on flute on "Liza" in the 1940s, Jimmie Lunceford was much more significant as a bandleader than as a musician. While teaching music at Manassa High School in Memphis in 1927, Lunceford organized a student band called the Chickasaw Syncopators, recording two songs that year and a pair in 1930. After leaving Memphis, the band (known by then as the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra) played in Cleveland and Buffalo and cut two songs in 1933 that were not issued until decades later. 1934 was the breakthrough year. The orchestra made a strong impression playing at New York's Cotton Club, waxed a few notable songs for Victor, and then started recording regularly for Decca. Their tight ensembles and colorful shows made them a major attraction throughout the remainder of the swing era. Among their many hits were "Rhythm Is Our Business," "Four or Five Times," "Swanee River," "Charmaine," "My Blue Heaven," "Organ Grinder's Swing," "Ain't She Sweet," "For Dancers Only," "'Tain't What You Do, It's the Way That Cha Do It," "Uptown Blues," and "Lunceford Special." The stars of the band included arranger Sy Oliver (on trumpet and vocals), Willie Smith, Trummy Young (who had a hit with "Margie"), and tenor saxophonist Joe Thomas.
In 1939, it was a major blow when Tommy Dorsey lured Sy Oliver away (although trumpeters Gerald Wilson and Snooky Young were important new additions). Unfortunately, Lunceford underpaid most of his sidemen, not thinking to reward them for their loyalty in the lean years. In 1942 Willie Smith was one of several key players who left for better-paying jobs elsewhere, and the orchestra gradually declined. Jimmie Lunceford was still a popular bandleader in 1947 when he suddenly collapsed; rumors have persisted that he was poisoned by a racist restaurant owner who was very reluctant about feeding his band. After Lunceford's death, pianist/arranger Ed Wilcox and Joe Thomas tried to keep the orchestra together, but in 1949 the band permanently broke up.
https://www.press.umich.edu/741039/rhythm_is_our_business
Although he was trained on several instruments and was featured on flute on "Liza" in the 1940s, Jimmie Lunceford was much more significant as a bandleader than as a musician. While teaching music at Manassa High School in Memphis in 1927, Lunceford organized a student band called the Chickasaw Syncopators, recording two songs that year and a pair in 1930. After leaving Memphis, the band (known by then as the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra) played in Cleveland and Buffalo and cut two songs in 1933 that were not issued until decades later. 1934 was the breakthrough year. The orchestra made a strong impression playing at New York's Cotton Club, waxed a few notable songs for Victor, and then started recording regularly for Decca. Their tight ensembles and colorful shows made them a major attraction throughout the remainder of the swing era. Among their many hits were "Rhythm Is Our Business," "Four or Five Times," "Swanee River," "Charmaine," "My Blue Heaven," "Organ Grinder's Swing," "Ain't She Sweet," "For Dancers Only," "'Tain't What You Do, It's the Way That Cha Do It," "Uptown Blues," and "Lunceford Special." The stars of the band included arranger Sy Oliver (on trumpet and vocals), Willie Smith, Trummy Young (who had a hit with "Margie"), and tenor saxophonist Joe Thomas.
In 1939, it was a major blow when Tommy Dorsey lured Sy Oliver away (although trumpeters Gerald Wilson and Snooky Young were important new additions). Unfortunately, Lunceford underpaid most of his sidemen, not thinking to reward them for their loyalty in the lean years. In 1942 Willie Smith was one of several key players who left for better-paying jobs elsewhere, and the orchestra gradually declined. Jimmie Lunceford was still a popular bandleader in 1947 when he suddenly collapsed; rumors have persisted that he was poisoned by a racist restaurant owner who was very reluctant about feeding his band. After Lunceford's death, pianist/arranger Ed Wilcox and Joe Thomas tried to keep the orchestra together, but in 1949 the band permanently broke up.
https://www.press.umich.edu/741039/rhythm_is_our_business
Rhythm Is Our Business
Jimmie Lunceford and the Harlem Express
The life and times of famed band leader, entrepreneur, and entertainer Jimmie Lunceford
In the 1930s, swing music
reigned, and the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra was the hottest and hippest
attraction on the black dance circuits. Known for its impeccable
appearance and infectious rhythms, Lunceford's group was able to
out-swing and outdraw any band. For ten consecutive years, they were the
best-loved attraction at Harlem's famed Apollo Theater. The group's hit
recordings sold in the hundreds of thousands, and Jimmie Lunceford's
band rivaled Ellington's for popularity in the African American
community.
Jimmie Lunceford was also an innovator, elevating big-band showmanship to an art and introducing such novel instruments as the electric guitar and bass. The band's arrangements, written by Sy Oliver, Edwin Wilcox, Gerald Wilson, Billy Moore, Jr., and Tadd Dameron, were daring and forward looking, influencing generations of big-band writers.
Rhythm Is Our Business traces the development of the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra from its infant days as a high school band in Memphis to its record-breaking tours across the United States, Canada, and Europe. The book also unveils Lunceford's romantic yet ill-fated involvement with Yolande Du Bois, daughter of famous writer and opinion leader W.E.B. Du Bois. And by reconstructing Lunceford's last day, the book offers a glimpse into the mysteries surrounding the leader's untimely death. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the history and legacy of swing.
Eddy Determeyer has been a freelance music journalist for more than three decades. In 1984 Determeyer wrote a seven-part series on Jimmie Lunceford for the Dutch magazine Jazz Nu. Determeyer has written thousands of articles on music for a variety of Dutch publications and is the author of several books. He currently produces the Holiday for Hipsters radio show for Dutch station Concertzender.
Cover image: Lunceford brass section, ca. late 1936. Left to right: Paul Webster, Eddie Durham, Sy Oliver, Elmer Crumbley, Eddie Tompkins, Russell Bowles. (Bertil Lyttkens Collection)
"The first detailed study of one of the swing era's most important bands and the first biography of its leader, Jimmie Lunceford. This is a most welcome and significant contribution to the literature of jazz, to our understanding of a vital period in jazz history, and to the music of an outstanding and unique ensemble that was emblematic of the swing era."
---Dan Morgenstern, Director, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, and author of Living with Jazz
"We were more popular than Benny Goodman! We were the first black band that played the Paramount Theater, downtown New York. Not Duke Ellington, not Count Basie. Six weeks in a row, four or five shows daily, and it was packed every day, people lining up around the corner constantly! We could outdraw any band in the country."
---Gerald Wilson
"Jimmie Lunceford was a key swing-era figure, and no book covers his biography and music like this one does. Grounded in years of research and inspired by the writer's love of his subject, the book fills a critical gap in the jazz literature and will be essential reading for all swing aficionados."
---Jeffrey Magee, Associate Professor of Musicology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and author of The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz
"It was Jimmie Lunceford and his orchestra that inspired me to become a musician. I was eleven years old at the time. When I heard that band play I said to myself, 'That's for me. I want to become a musician.' I still get inspired when I listen to some of their recordings. The Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra is one of the great jazz orchestras of all time."---Horace Silver
"Jimmie Lunceford has the best of all bands. Duke is great, Basie is remarkable, but Lunceford tops them both."
---Glenn Miller
Jimmie Lunceford was also an innovator, elevating big-band showmanship to an art and introducing such novel instruments as the electric guitar and bass. The band's arrangements, written by Sy Oliver, Edwin Wilcox, Gerald Wilson, Billy Moore, Jr., and Tadd Dameron, were daring and forward looking, influencing generations of big-band writers.
Rhythm Is Our Business traces the development of the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra from its infant days as a high school band in Memphis to its record-breaking tours across the United States, Canada, and Europe. The book also unveils Lunceford's romantic yet ill-fated involvement with Yolande Du Bois, daughter of famous writer and opinion leader W.E.B. Du Bois. And by reconstructing Lunceford's last day, the book offers a glimpse into the mysteries surrounding the leader's untimely death. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the history and legacy of swing.
Eddy Determeyer has been a freelance music journalist for more than three decades. In 1984 Determeyer wrote a seven-part series on Jimmie Lunceford for the Dutch magazine Jazz Nu. Determeyer has written thousands of articles on music for a variety of Dutch publications and is the author of several books. He currently produces the Holiday for Hipsters radio show for Dutch station Concertzender.
Cover image: Lunceford brass section, ca. late 1936. Left to right: Paul Webster, Eddie Durham, Sy Oliver, Elmer Crumbley, Eddie Tompkins, Russell Bowles. (Bertil Lyttkens Collection)
"The first detailed study of one of the swing era's most important bands and the first biography of its leader, Jimmie Lunceford. This is a most welcome and significant contribution to the literature of jazz, to our understanding of a vital period in jazz history, and to the music of an outstanding and unique ensemble that was emblematic of the swing era."
---Dan Morgenstern, Director, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, and author of Living with Jazz
"We were more popular than Benny Goodman! We were the first black band that played the Paramount Theater, downtown New York. Not Duke Ellington, not Count Basie. Six weeks in a row, four or five shows daily, and it was packed every day, people lining up around the corner constantly! We could outdraw any band in the country."
---Gerald Wilson
"Jimmie Lunceford was a key swing-era figure, and no book covers his biography and music like this one does. Grounded in years of research and inspired by the writer's love of his subject, the book fills a critical gap in the jazz literature and will be essential reading for all swing aficionados."
---Jeffrey Magee, Associate Professor of Musicology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and author of The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz
"It was Jimmie Lunceford and his orchestra that inspired me to become a musician. I was eleven years old at the time. When I heard that band play I said to myself, 'That's for me. I want to become a musician.' I still get inspired when I listen to some of their recordings. The Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra is one of the great jazz orchestras of all time."---Horace Silver
"Jimmie Lunceford has the best of all bands. Duke is great, Basie is remarkable, but Lunceford tops them both."
---Glenn Miller
Praise / Awards
- "It was Jimmie Lunceford and his orchestra that inspired me to become a musician. I was eleven years old at the time. When I heard that band play I said to myself, 'that's for me. I want to become a musician.' I still get inspired when I listen to some of their recordings. The Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra is one of the great jazz orchestras of all time."
---Horace Silver - "Jimmie Lunceford has the best of all bands. Duke is great, Basie is remarkable, but Lunceford tops them both."
---Glenn Miller - "We were more popular than Benny Goodman! We were the first black band that played the Paramount Theater, downtown New York. Not Duke Ellington, not Count Basie. Six weeks in a row, four or five shows daily, and it was packed every day, people lining up around the corner constantly! We could outdraw any band in the country."
---Gerald Wilson - “Jimmie Lunceford was a key swing-era figure, and no book covers his biography and music like this one does. Grounded in years of research and inspired by the writer’s love of his subject, the book fills a critical gap in the jazz literature and will be essential reading for all swing aficionados.”
---Jeffrey Magee, Associate Professor of Music, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and author of The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz - "The first detailed study of one of the Swing Era's most important bands and the first biography of its leader, Jimmie Lunceford. This is a most welcome and significant contribution to the literature of jazz, to our understanding of a vital period in jazz history, and to the music of an outstanding and unique ensemble that was emblematic of the Swing Era."
---Dan Morgenstern, Director, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, and author of Living with Jazz (Pantheon Books) - "Rhythm Is Our Business is Eddy
Determeyer's painstakingly researched chronicle of the rise, peak and
collapse of Lunceford's orchestra. . . . [a] finely written book.
Readers interested in jazz history will certainly want to add this
volume to their collections."
---www.bookpleasures.com
- " . . . gives an in-depth picture of just how important Lunceford was."
---Jazzwise
- "Meticulously and exhaustively put together. . . .
The book is especially rich in quoting distinguished jazzmen on the
precision, power and swing of the band . . . . Perhaps Determeyer's most
impressive achievement is the living detail in which he has
reconstructed the actual creation of the Lunceford sound . . ."
---The Mississippi Rag
- "[Determeyer] has collected an impressive body of
both factual record and colorful (sometimes inconsistent) oral history .
. . . [A] definitive document about a major musical ensemble."
---Choice
- Winner of the 2007 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Best Research in Recorded Jazz Music, Best History
Jimmie M. Lunceford (1902-1947)
Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra
Image Ownership: Public Domain
James Melvin “Jimmie” Lunceford, a popular band leader during the swing era, was born near Fulton, Mississippi,
in Itawamba County to James Leonard and Beulah Idella Tucker Lunceford
in June, 1902. His grandparents, Daniel and Gracie Lunceford, had
arrived in Mississippi as slaves from North Carolina in 1860.
The Lunceford family moved to Oklahoma around 1910 and then to Denver, Colorado,
where they maintained a home for many years. There, Lunceford studied
music under Wilberforce Whiteman, the father of Paul Whiteman, a
prominent white musician and band leader of the 1920s and 1930s.
After high school, Lunceford made his way to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and graduated with a bachelor of arts degree. For a year, he studied as an undergraduate at New York City College in New York.
He then took up teaching high school students in Memphis, Tennessee,
where he formed his first band with fellow staff and former students.
They were called The Chickasaw Syncopators originally but upon their
tour of New York became known simply as Jimmie Lunceford and His
Orchestra.
In New York, the band went from dance to dance. Eventually, through
the help of Lunceford’s manager, Harold Oxley, the band was signed to
play the famous Cotton Club
in 1934. Lunceford and his musicians stayed there for several years,
gaining fame to the point where they were hailed as among the best
bands.
Soon after playing the Cotton Club, the band recorded for Victor
Records only to find poor sales. It was then that Lunceford signed with
Decca and saw major success. Recordings of “Jazznocracy,” “Uptown
Blues,” “T’ain’t What You Do,” “Lunceford Special,” and “Rhythm is Our
Business” were among the most popular. The band also appeared in short
films. Lunceford then propelled his band further by touring the country
during the late 1930s, playing for enthusiastic audiences coast to coast
in ballrooms and at college dances. The band mostly did one-night shows
and was constantly on the road. Lunceford toured Europe in 1937 and returned to the jazz circuits throughout the country before war broke out.
The Lunceford orchestra was not known for tremendous soloists like
other bands but was successful based on its precise ensemble work and
showmanship. Although influenced by vaudeville and novelty acts in their
performances, Lunceford maintained a serious, professional group of
musicians. The band at certain times included in its ranks such names as
Sy Oliver, Willie Smith, Eddie Durham, and Gerald Wilson.
During the Second World War,
Lunceford struggled to keep his band employed just like other major
band leaders. Scarcity of money and deepening personnel problems
resulted in the diminished prominence of the band.
After almost twenty years as the leader of his own orchestra, Lunceford collapsed while signing autographs for fans in Seaside, Oregon, during a tour of the Pacific Northwest in 1947. He later died of a heart attack. He was forty-five years old.
Jimmie Lunceford Was The Real Thing
Early jazz era bandleader Jimmie Lunceford was mentioned in an earlier piece about the Cotton Club
but I thought we should dig a little deeper into his story. After all,
he was one of the best, even if his star has dimmed a little in the many
years since his heyday.
Born on a Mississippi farm in 1902, James Melvin Lunceford might have
had a much different life if his parents hadn’t moved when he was an
infant. Relocating to Oklahoma City (his mother’s birthplace) and then
on to Denver gave young Jimmie the chance to excel in school and that
included a music education, one that featured studying under Wilburforce
Whiteman, whose son Paul was destined to become a famous orchestra
leader.
Lunceford learned to play several instruments and continued his
education while attending Fisk University. He also began to appear with
local bands, making contacts and learning the business. After graduation
in 1927 he moved to Memphis and a job at the high school, where he
organized a band that was known as the Chickasaw Syncopators. Within a
couple of years he’d renamed it the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra and made
the leap to professional.
Success started building for the young bandleader and his guys over
the next few years as they toured extensively, and they even managed to
cut a couple of records. By 1934 Lunceford and his band were a polished
and solid group, ready to take advantage of a great opportunity. They
were booked for an extended stay at New York’s famed Cotton Club.
By then the Harlem nightclub had already reached near-iconic status,
having served as a launching pad for Duke Ellington and Cab Callaway. It
might have been intimidating to follow them, but Lunceford’s band
turned out to be very popular. Not only were they a quality outfit with
solid music and arrangements, they were also fan favorites because of
their singing, dancing, and comedic touches.
During the 1930s Lunceford’s group was considered the equal of any of
the big name bands, and they made a lot of records. They also toured
extensively, even to Europe before the coming war made that no longer
feasible. But things went downhill in the 1940s, with slowing record
sales adding to the pressure. Also, many of the notoriously tight-fisted
Lunceford’s best instrumentalists left him for better paying jobs. He
kept leading a diminishing outfit, but in 1947 he suddenly died from a
coronary occlusion. He was just 45 years old.
https://syncopatedtimes.com/james-melvin-jimmie-lunceford/
James Melvin “Jimmie” Lunceford was born June 6, 1902 on a farm near Fulton, Mississippi. His family moved to Oklahoma City before Jimmie was a year old. The Luncefords eventually settled in Denver, where he went to high school and received instruction in music from Wilberforce J. Whiteman, the father of bandleader Paul Whiteman. Under Whiteman’s tutelage Jimmie learned to play several instruments, and he pursued further studies at Fisk University.
After college, Jimmie Lunceford joined Morrison’s Jazz Orchestra, a Denver society band whose repertoire included light classics as well as popular tunes. In 1927, while a physical education teacher at Manassas High School in Memphis, Tennessee, Lunceford formed a student band, The Chickasaw Syncopators. The band quickly achieved professional stature, and recorded in Memphis for Columbia in 1927 and for Victor in 1930.
By 1933, the band—now merely Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra—had acquired its distinctive discipline and polish, with the tight section work for which it was to become celebrated. The Lunceford Orchestra played in The Cotton Club Revue in 1934. That year they recorded the jazz classics “White Heat” and “Jazznocracy” for Victor and signed with Decca. The Decca recordings, featuring arrangements by Sy Oliver and Eddie Durham, represent a consistently excellent body of work.
The Lunceford Orchestra was a show band, and their musical precision was enhanced by the choreographed movements of the band in performance. An example of this showmanship may be seen in a 1936 Vitaphone short. Sections move in unison, the musicians jump on chairs, others come down to the apron of the stage to tap dance and sing (while carrying their instruments), and an “Anvil Chorus” tableau is enacted as members of the brass section remove their jackets to beat on chairs with mallets. The band made at least one more film appearance in the 1941 feature Blues in the Night.
Jimmie Lunceford, as bandleader, never relinquished the title of athletic coach. Though his band performed comic turns and lively novelties (most notably “Rhythm is Our Business”), their musicianship remained impeccable throughout.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
James Melvin “Jimmie” Lunceford
James Melvin “Jimmie” Lunceford was born June 6, 1902 on a farm near Fulton, Mississippi. His family moved to Oklahoma City before Jimmie was a year old. The Luncefords eventually settled in Denver, where he went to high school and received instruction in music from Wilberforce J. Whiteman, the father of bandleader Paul Whiteman. Under Whiteman’s tutelage Jimmie learned to play several instruments, and he pursued further studies at Fisk University.
After college, Jimmie Lunceford joined Morrison’s Jazz Orchestra, a Denver society band whose repertoire included light classics as well as popular tunes. In 1927, while a physical education teacher at Manassas High School in Memphis, Tennessee, Lunceford formed a student band, The Chickasaw Syncopators. The band quickly achieved professional stature, and recorded in Memphis for Columbia in 1927 and for Victor in 1930.
By 1933, the band—now merely Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra—had acquired its distinctive discipline and polish, with the tight section work for which it was to become celebrated. The Lunceford Orchestra played in The Cotton Club Revue in 1934. That year they recorded the jazz classics “White Heat” and “Jazznocracy” for Victor and signed with Decca. The Decca recordings, featuring arrangements by Sy Oliver and Eddie Durham, represent a consistently excellent body of work.
The Lunceford Orchestra was a show band, and their musical precision was enhanced by the choreographed movements of the band in performance. An example of this showmanship may be seen in a 1936 Vitaphone short. Sections move in unison, the musicians jump on chairs, others come down to the apron of the stage to tap dance and sing (while carrying their instruments), and an “Anvil Chorus” tableau is enacted as members of the brass section remove their jackets to beat on chairs with mallets. The band made at least one more film appearance in the 1941 feature Blues in the Night.
Jimmie Lunceford, as bandleader, never relinquished the title of athletic coach. Though his band performed comic turns and lively novelties (most notably “Rhythm is Our Business”), their musicianship remained impeccable throughout.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Gary Price graduated from the Art Institute of Boston, majoring in
Illustration. He worked as the Art Director/Creative Director in the
Boston area where his clients including Converse Sneaker, The Boston
Museum of Science, Fleet Bank and WHDH Radio.
He founded Price Design in 1976. It continues to serve local and
national clients. He has done work for the national children’s magazines
Humpty Dumpty, Young World, and Children’s Digest. Gary looks up to the
work of Maxfied Parrish & Norman Rockwell .
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Jimmie Lunceford - A Musical World Onto Himself
© -Steven Cerra. Copyright protected; all rights reserved.
“Jimmie Lunceford's music redeemed the sentimental excesses of the swing era with dynamic two-beat rhythms, bravura arrangements, and an overall charm that managed to appear calculating and ingenuous at the same time. His was a musical world onto itself: whimsical yet disciplined, flashy yet innovative. Because Lunceford's showmanship lent itself to fey singers and a stock of novelty songs from minstrelsy, vaudeville, and Tin Pan Alley, his recordings may require a stronger taste for irony than those of Henderson, Ellington, or Basie. But in its originality, the Lunceford band stands with those three as one of the most influential orchestras of the '30s.
Lunceford compensated for his seeming lack of profundity with his own "three Ps": Punctuality, Precision, and Presentation. He had the nattiest looking band of the day, with smartly uniformed musicians waving derby mutes and tossing their instruments into the air, but he never succumbed to the cynical party-hat conviviality of such cornpone hacks as Kay Kyser. On the contrary, he used his three Ps to augment the elements of hard jazz: fervent swing, audacious writing, heady solos. To these he added the suggestion of a Panglossian conviction that the music he celebrated (American music in all its motley) was as good as music could be. He made art out of commercial slickness.
Unlike the other figures associated with distinct big band styles, he had little direct impact as composer, arranger, or instrumentalist. In assigning authorship of the Lunceford sound to Lunceford, we are merely acknowledging his captaincy of the ship—the regal-looking commander with the baton. Perhaps this isn't fair. Jazz has upset several accepted notions of Western music, most especially what a composer does and how his role is defined. The distinction between composition and improvisation is blurred by composer-performers like Louis Armstrong or Lester Young, who produced comprehensive musical styles without much recourse to paperwork. Similarly, a jazz bandleader (unless hired strictly for show because of a pretty face or famous name) does some of the work of a composer in selecting talent and delegating responsibility. Lunceford's sound may have reached its apogee in the writing of his most gifted arranger, Sy Oliver, but the fact remains that neither Oliver (notwithstanding several famous arrangements he later wrote for Tommy Dorsey), nor Trummy Young, Joe Thomas, Willie Smith, and Jimmy Crawford, not to mention lesser luminaries such as Eddie Wilcox, Paul Webster, and Eddie Tompkins, would ever again create as memorable a body of work as they did under his authoritarian rule. He knew what he wanted and how to get musicians to give it to him.”
- Garry Giddins, Visions of Jazz: The First Century
In its peak years, from 1937 to 1941, the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra performed with a polish and showmanship that was unmatched by any other big band. Lunceford's demand for perfection earned the group a reputation for ensemble precision that influenced big bands into the 1950s. Hie reed parts, in particular, prefigured the kind of virtuosic technique (hat became the norm in modern jazz.
Lunceford grew up in Denver, Colorado. The son of a choirmaster, he learned to play saxophone, flute, guitar, and trombone. In high school, he studied music with Wilberforce J. Whiteman, the father of bandleader Paul Whiteman, subsequently playing alto sax in George Morrison's orchestra (1922). While enrolled at Fisk University in Nashville he traveled to New York to take music courses at City College and to work in dance bands. After receiving a bachelor's degree in music from Fisk in 1926, he began teaching music at Manassa High School in Memphis.
In 1927 Lunceford organized a student jazz band, which spent the next few summers performing at a resort in Lakeside, Ohio. Two years later, (lie group turned professional, strengthened by the addition of three men whom he had met at Fisk: saxophonist Willie Smith, pianist Edwin Wilcox, and trombonist Henry Wells. Following extended engagements in Cleveland and Buffalo, the band performed at the Lafayette Theatre in New York, and in January 1934 they began an important residency at Harlem's Cotton Club. This job, together with cross-country touring and a series of recordings made for Decca, established their reputation nationally.
The sound of the band in the early 1930s reflected Lunceford's admiration for Alphonso Trent's orchestra, a southwestern-territory band that featured bluesy, riff-based numbers. By 1935, however, a more sophisticated and distinctive "Lunceford sound" had emerged. This was partly the result of the intricate reed-section writing introduced in Wilcox's and Smith's arrangements. Most important were the scores contributed by Sy Oliver (1910—88), a trumpeter, singer, and self-taught arranger who had joined the band in late 1933. The brilliantly unpredictable interplay between soloists and brass and reed sections that Oliver conceived on tunes such as "For Dancers Only," "Margie," and "Organ Grinder's Swing" set a high standard for Swing Era arrangers. The two-beat rhythm that he preferred for medium-tempo tunes produced an unusually buoyant feeling.
Oliver's scores also supported the group's soloists, including tenor saxophonist Joe Thomas, trombonist James "Trummy" Young, Eddie Durham, both a trombonist and a pioneer of the electric guitar, high-note trumpeter Eugene "Snooky" Young, and Willie Smith, reed-section coach and virtuoso alto-sax soloist. The band was visually exciting, with swaying trombones and trumpets pointing skyward. According to Oliver, the band's spirit enabled it to perform "way over its head."
A grueling schedule of one-nighters eventually eroded this spirit. Sy Oliver, the band's principal arranger, left to work for Tommy Dorsey in 1939. By 1943 younger and often more skilled musicians had replaced many of the original members, but they were unable to recapture the band's luster. Their recordings were often remakes of earlier hits. While on tour in 1947 Lunceford died of a heart attack during an autograph session, Wilcox and Thomas took over the group, which finally disbanded in 1950. [Sources: Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era and Len Lyons and Don Perlo, Jazz Portraits: The Lives and Music of the Jazz Masters].
Here’s what George T. Simon, a noted authority on big bands and who for many years covered them for Metronome magazine had to say about the Lunceford Orchestra in his definitive 4th edition of The Big Bands.
“WHAT must go down in dance band history as the greatest gathering of the clan took place in New York's Manhattan Center on the night of November 18, 1940, when Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Glen Gray, Les Brown, Guy Lombardo, Will Bradley, Sammy Kaye and twenty other big bands wowed six thousand enthusiastic fans without a letup from eight in the evening until four the next morning.
In this marathon, MC'd by disc jockey Martin Block, all the bands were scheduled to play fifteen-minute sets—and all except one of those twenty-eight bands got off the stage when it was supposed to. But that one couldn't, for the simple reason that along about midnight it broke the show wide open, to such hollering and cheering and shouting for "More!" that no other band could get on stage until Jimmie Lunceford's was allowed to play some extra tunes.
That this fantastic outfit could top all the others in a show of this sort came as no surprise to those of us who had seen it in action before, and probably comes as no surprise to any reader who ever caught the band during its heyday. For Jimmie Lunceford's was without a doubt the most exciting big band of all time!
Its music was great, but not that much greater than that of several other top swing bands' and, in fact, not as consistently brilliant, perhaps, as one or two others'. But the Lunceford band was so far ahead of all the rest in one department - showmanship - that when it came to any battle of the bands, none could touch it.
It was the sort of band that no one with even the slightest feel for swing could stand in front of and stand still. It propelled a fantastically joyous swinging beat, and.the musicians projected it with uninhibited, completely infectious enthusiasm.
It was not a band that relied on star soloists, though it did have several outstanding jazz men. Instead, it emphasized ensemble sounds, brilliant brass, sweeping saxes and a wonderfully buoyant rhythm section, all playing some of the swingingest arrangements of all time.
There was constant aural and visual interplay among the musicians. The trumpets would throw their horns in the air together; the saxes would almost charge off the stage, so enthusiastically did they blow their horns; the trombones would slip their slides toward the skies; and throughout the evening the musicians would be kidding and shouting at one another, projecting an aura of irresistible exuberance.
In front of all this stood Lunceford, a big, impressive-looking man with a huge smile and baton to match, supervising and controlling the entire proceedings. He may not have displayed the flash of a Goodman or a Dorsey or an Ellington or a James, but as Sy Oliver, the man responsible for so much of the band's music, recently emphasized, "Make no mistake about it, Jimmie definitely was a leader. He was a strict disciplinarian, like a teacher in a schoolroom, but he was consistent in everything he did, and that gave the fellows in the band a feeling of security."
Lunceford had started out as an athletic director at a Memphis, Tennessee, high school; in fact, he had coached some of the musicians who later worked in his band. He had been graduated from Fisk University and had also taken graduate courses at the City College of New York. The band, organized in Memphis in the late twenties, began developing into a mature unit during annual summer engagements in Lakeside, Ohio.
After establishing a name for itself in Buffalo, it came to New York City in 1933, appearing at the Cotton Club. It recorded several numbers that, as Oliver now points out, were not at all typical of the band's music. Such racing flag wavers as "White Heat" and "Jazznocracy" were written for the band by Will Hudson, a white arranger who was working for Irving Mills, the influential music publisher, who was helping the band and who wanted to get his firm's music, which included Hudson's originals, performed on records and on the air.
The real Jimmie Lunceford music was far more relaxed. Its style has often been referred to as "the Lunceford two beat," a light, loping, swing, created and developed by Oliver. Sy, a bright, broad-faced, intelligent trumpeter, who never studied arranging in his life, came from a musical family. Originally his parents had wanted him to study piano, but athletics intrigued him more. Finally, he acquiesced sufficiently to take up the trumpet and, after his father died, played seriously enough to land a job in Zack White's band, for which he also began to arrange, picking up his own technique. "One day in Cincinnati," he recalls, "I heard the Lunceford band rehearsing. I was so impressed, because Jimmie was so careful about every single detail, that I asked him if I could try writing for the band." Lunceford said yes, so Oliver wrote several arrangements for him. Soon thereafter came an offer to join the band. Sy grabbed it.
Right from the start, Oliver began turning out brilliant scores, many of which have survived through the years as the most outstanding in the Lunceford library — "Swanee River," "My Blue Heaven," "Four or Five Times," "Organ Grinder's Swing," "On the Beach at Bali Bali," "For Dancers Only," "Margie," "Cheatin' on Me," "Dream of You," a tune that Sy wrote, plus his own favorite arrangement of "By the River St. Marie." The band recorded it for Decca, but, Sy says, "We never did get to do the full arrangement of 'St. Marie' because it ran six minutes and that was too long for those old seventy-eight sides." Oliver also wrote another tune, which he liked very much but which Lunceford apparently didn't. Jimmie may have turned it down, but Tommy Dorsey, for whom Sy later arranged, didn't. He recorded and made a big hit out of "Yes, Indeed!"
Though praised by many musicians, Oliver's arrangements were curiously deprecated during an interview I had early in 1946 with none other than Sy Oliver himself. "Those arrangements," he insisted, "they were all just alike. I couldn't write. It's just that those guys played so well. Anybody could have written for that band."
The point, of course, is that nobody else did write like that for the Lunceford band, nor for Dorsey's band, nor for Billy May's band, nor for Sam Donahue's, nor for any of the many others which paid Oliver the supreme compliment by basing their styles on his.
Not that everything Sy did was always accepted. Jimmie Crawford, the great drummer, whose simple but always swinging playing inspired the Lunceford band for such a long time, at first wasn't completely sold on Oliver's penchant for emphasizing two instead of four beats in each measure. "Sy would say 'Drop it in two,' and I'd maybe show I didn't agree with him, and so he'd say, ' What's wrong with two beats?' and I'd answer, 'Well, there are two beats missing, that's all.' I felt that if you were really going home in those last ride-out choruses, then you should really go home all the way, full steam and stay in four-four instead of going back into that two-four feel again. Oh yes, Sy and I would have some terrific arguments all right, but then we'd kiss and make up right away." Apparently Sy and Jimmie hear better ear-to-ear these days, because on almost every recording date Sy now conducts, he uses Jimmie on drums. Crawford, by the way, is one of today's most sought-after drummers for Broadway musicals: his drive and his spirit remain as contagious as ever.
Oliver wasn't the only arranger in the band. Several other musicians wrote scores, and one of them, pianist Edwin Wilcox, has been tabbed by Sy as "one of the most underrated musicians in the business. People don't realize how much he contributed to the band. He did as much as I did, and he definitely was the man responsible for all those beautiful sax ensemble choruses that we used to play. Don't ever overlook him, please!"
The sax choruses were blown by a section led by a fine alto man, the late Willie Smith, who also sang some cute vocals, and who later became a mainstay of the Harry James, Charlie Spivak, and in the mid-sixties the Charlie Barnet sax teams. Playing with him were Joe Thomas, a fine tenor saxist, considered by many to have been the outstanding soloist in the band, who also sang; Earl (Jock) Carruthers, an especially spirited baritone saxist; and Dan Grissom (called "Dan Gruesome" by his deprecators), who for many years was also the band's chief ballad vocalist.
The trumpets, in addition to Oliver, spotted a great lead man in Eddie Tompkins and, in the early years, a high-note screecher named Tommy Stevenson, who was replaced by an equally stratospheric trumpeter named Paul Webster.
The trombonists featured a very funny fellow named Elmer Crumbley, an outstanding, soft singer, Henry Wells, who also arranged, and, for a while, a good jazz soloist, Eddie Durham, who doubled wonderfully on electric guitar, an instrument seldom heard during the mid-thirties. Later James (Trummy) Young joined the band and provided it with some of its outstanding jazz trombone and vocal moments.
After Oliver left, Trummy replaced him in the vocal trio which had previously projected such a wonderfully light, free-swinging sound on "My Blue Heaven" and "Four or Five Times." According to Oliver, "nobody in the group could really sing, but yet no group could sound like that."
Both in regard to the vocal trio and to the band as a whole, it is Sy's contention that "the whole was three times as great as the individual components. The band played way over its head simply because of its tremendous spirit. The guys were all individualists. They were all characters in their own fashion. And each one of them was a definite personality."
The characters and their personalities were always there for all to see and hear. This, according to Lunceford, accounted for much of the band's success. "A band that looks good, goes in for a better class of showmanship, and seems to be enjoying its work," he said in the early forties, "will always be sure of a return visit wherever it plays."
"We did have a barrel of fun," Oliver says. "Jock Carruthers was really the playmaker of the band. He was always up to something. I remember one night after we'd finished work around two in the morning and we'd all gotten nice and settled on the bus and suddenly this alarm clock went off. We couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Finally we located it in the bottom of the luggage—in Carruthers' bag. He'd set it to go off at six in the morning!
"So then Paul Webster decided he'd go Jock one better, and one night he put two alarm clocks in his bag, and just to make sure everybody'd hear them, he put them in two pie plates. What a racket that made!"
Traveling was something the Lunceford band did a great deal of. Jimmie recapped some statistics in 1942 as follows: "We do a couple of hundred one-nighters a year, fifteen to twenty weeks of theaters, maybe one four-week location and two weeks of vacation. All in all, we cover about forty thousand miles a year!"
The men got along together surprisingly well, considering the conditions under which they were forced to work. Other top (white) outfits could stay in big cities for weeks at a time, and therefore could benefit by playing the name spots and getting exposure through radio shots. But Lunceford, apparently resigned to the facts of life, rationalized that air time, of which the band still had some, was not that important. He indicated that recordings were more powerful, and he'd point out that if you made a mistake on records, you could try again, but when you made one on live broadcasts, there was nothing you could do about it.
Pride and internal competition buoyed the band's spirits. The brass and sax teams kept trying to outplay each other. If one section made a mistake, the other gloated—often to the accompaniment of stomping feet. "But Jimmie finally stopped that," relates Oliver. "He claimed all those feet stomping ruined the broadcasts."
One exciting bit of showmanship the brass introduced was the waving of derby hats, an effect Glenn Miller picked up and utilized so extensively with his band. Says Oliver: "That was Stevie's idea. [Stevie was Tommy Stevenson.] He was full of ideas like that. The only trouble was that Eddie [Tompkins] and I would remember them, and then he'd be the one who'd forget what to do!"
And something else in the trumpet section bothered Oliver: "I was a lousy trumpet player. If I'd been a leader, I would never have hired me for a record date." However, Sy's opinion of his playing doesn't jibe with that of many others. He was, I always felt, the most interesting trumpet soloist in the band — not as flashy as the others but very musical and warm and emotional. What none of us realized, though, as we listened to what we thought were such great extemporaneous jazz passages, was that Sy had prepared everyone in advance. "I could never ad-lib the way the others did. The way I worked it, I'd write out my chorus and then I'd start building my arrangement around it. It was like taking a mediocre picture and putting it in a good frame so that it seems better than it really is. And you know what? I still use the same formula when I arrange for mediocre singers today.
"Another thing I used to do when I wrote for the band was to write with the various guys' limitations in mind. That way there'd be a minimum of trouble."
When I first reviewed the band in 1936 at the Larchmont Casino just outside New York City, I found it had some surprising limitations. Before then I'd heard it only on recordings. On location I was quite shocked to discover that the saxes especially sounded very ragged on some of the tunes they had not recorded. "Sad displays of out-of-tune slop" is how I described it. Two years later though, such deficiencies had pretty well disappeared and the band had developed a consistency that was truly remarkable. I can't recall any succession of evenings more exciting than those I spent listening to the Lunceford band, night after night, during its stay in the summer of 1940 at the Fiesta Danceteria above the Rialto Theater in New York's Times Square.
Its style had changed somewhat by then. It still played many of Oliver's famous arrangements, but it also performed some by Billy Moore, who had taken over as chief writer and who contributed the score for the band's big hit recording, "What's Your Story, Morning Glory?"
Sy had left the band for no better reason than, as he said it, "I'd grown tired of traveling. I felt I was going out of the world backwards. I wanted to stay in New York and study and write. But Jimmie didn't want me to go until he could find another trumpet player to take my place. He kept me in the band until I just quit one night, and then I found out that he had had Gerald Wilson waiting in New York all the time, ready to come in as soon as I cut out." That's when Oliver joined Tommy Dorsey.
The Lunceford band continued to sound good for a while longer. Late in 1941 I heard it at the Paramount and found it to be great, with the trumpet section of Wilson, Webster and Snooky Young especially impressive and Dan Grissom a vastly improved singer.
About a year later I caught Lunceford again at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and I was so thrilled that I sat through several shows, just as one would sit through several sets if the band were playing in a regular spot — something it was doing distressingly seldom during those days. Some more new members impressed me too: Freddy Webster, a brilliant young trumpeter, and Truck Parham, a stronger bassist than Mose Allen had ever been, though no bassist could match Mose for contagious spirit.
But the great over-all Lunceford band enthusiasm was beginning to fade. "Most of the replacements were better musicians," Oliver agrees, "but they didn't bring the same spirit into the band. That could never be duplicated." Jimmie Crawford cites another reason for the band's eventual deterioration. "We never created anything new. It was always the same old stuff. Jimmie wouldn't spend money on enough good new arrangements."
The sad part of it all, as Crawford found out in later years, was that Lunceford was not in control of the band's finances. "We thought so all the time we were working for Jimmie. But then we discovered that Jimmie was working for Harold Oxley, that Oxley owned the band and we were working for him too, and that Jimmie was just getting a salary like the rest of us."
Soon Crawford and Willie Smith and Paul Webster and Trummy Young and Freddy Webster and others had left. Eddie Tompkins, who had gone into the Army, had been killed during war maneuvers. Al Norris had been drafted. When I caught the band during a very desultory theater engagement in the summer of 1944, only Carruthers, Thomas, Wilcox and trombonist Russell Bowles were there as reminders of the brilliant crew that had once created such sensational music.
"Jimmie made one mistake," notes Oliver in assessing the causes of the band's decline. "He kept looking for good musicianship, good character and intelligence, and he found it all. But so many of the guys were so intelligent that, as they matured, they realized there were other things in life more worthwhile than traveling all year and living in bad hotels."
For several more years the Lunceford band kept plugging away, continuing to travel — and to live in depressing places. But it was never the same. It remained a splendidly routined band (I recorded it for V-Discs and it cut six sides in one hour, which was some sort of record for efficiency), for Jimmie was, to the end, a first-class leader. "The end" came on July 16, 1947, when the band was once again on the road—this time in Oregon, where Jimmie suffered a fatal heart attack.
The band tried carrying on under Edwin Wilcox and Joe Thomas, two of its great stalwarts, but the attempt failed and it wasn't long before the Jimmie Lunceford band passed from the scene for good.
But what great music it left! For many it remains, pressed in the grooves of all the fine Decca and Columbia records it made. And for those of us lucky enough to have caught the band in person it has also left memories of some of the most exciting nights we ever spent listening to any of the big bands!”
The following video features Jimmie Lunceford’s Orchestra performing Sy Oliver’s arrangement of For Dancers Only.
James Melvin Lunceford (June 6, 1902 – July 12, 1947) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and bandleader in the swing era
Biography
Lunceford was born on a farm in the Evergreen community, west of the Tombigbee River, near Fulton, Mississippi. The 53 acre farm was owned by his father, James. His mother was Idella ("Ida") Shumpert of Oklahoma City, an organist of "more than average ability". Seven months after James Melvin was born, the family moved to Oklahoma City.[1][2] The family next moved to Denver where Lunceford went to high school and studied music under Wilberforce J. Whiteman, father of Paul Whiteman, whose band was soon to acquire a national reputation. As a child in Denver, he learned several instruments. After high school, Lunceford continued his studies at Fisk University.[3] In 1922, he played alto saxophone in a local band led by the violinist George Morrison which included Andy Kirk, another musician destined for fame as a bandleader.[4]Career
In 1927, while an athletic instructor at Manassas High School in Memphis, Tennessee, he organized a student band, the Chickasaw Syncopators, whose name was changed to the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra. Under the new name, the band started its professional career in 1929, and made its first recordings in 1930.[5] Lunceford was the first public high school band director in Memphis. After a period of touring, in 1934 the band accepted a booking at the Harlem nightclub The Cotton Club for their revue 'Cotton Club Parade' starring Adelaide Hall.[6][7] The Cotton Club had already featured Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway, who won their first widespread fame from their inventive shows for the Cotton Club's all-white patrons. With their tight musicianship and the often outrageous humor in their music and lyrics, Lunceford's orchestra made an ideal band for the club, and Lunceford's reputation began to steadily grow.[8] Jimmie Lunceford's band differed from other great bands of the time because it was better known for its ensemble than for its solo work. Additionally, he was known for using a two-beat rhythm, called the Lunceford two-beat, as opposed to the standard four-beat rhythm.[9] This distinctive "Lunceford style" was largely the result of the imaginative arrangements by trumpeter Sy Oliver, which set high standards for dance-band arrangers of the time.[5]
Though not well known as a musician, Jimmie Lunceford was trained on several instruments and was even featured on flute in "Liza".[10]
Comedy and vaudeville played a distinct part in Lunceford's presentation. Songs such as "Rhythm Is Our Business" (featured in a 1937 musical short with Myra Johnson (Taylor) on vocals), "I'm Nuts about Screwy Music", "I Want the Waiter (With the Water)", and "Four or Five Times" displayed a playful sense of swing, often through clever arrangements by trumpeter Sy Oliver and bizarre lyrics. Lunceford's stage shows often included costumes, skits, and obvious jabs at mainstream white bands, such as Paul Whiteman's and Guy Lombardo's.
Despite the band's comic veneer, Lunceford always maintained professionalism in the music befitting a former teacher; this professionalism paid off and during the apex of swing in the 1930s, the Orchestra was considered the equal of Duke Ellington's, Earl Hines' or Count Basie's. This precision can be heard in such pieces as "Wham (Re-Bop-Boom-Bam)", "Lunceford Special", "For Dancers Only", "Uptown Blues", and "Stratosphere". The band's noted saxophone section was led by alto sax player Willie Smith. Lunceford often used a conducting baton to lead his band.
The orchestra began recording for the Decca label and later signed with the Columbia subsidiary Vocalion in 1938. They toured Europe extensively in 1937, but had to cancel a second tour in 1939 because of the outbreak of World War II. Columbia dropped Lunceford in 1940 because of flagging sales. (Oliver departed the group before the scheduled European tour to take a position as an arranger for Tommy Dorsey). Lunceford returned to the Decca label. The orchestra appeared in the 1941 movie Blues in the Night.
Most of Lunceford's sidemen were underpaid and left for better paying bands, leading to the band's decline.[10]
Death
After playing McElroy's Ballroom in Portland,[11] Lunceford and his orchestra were in Seaside, Oregon, to play at The Bungalow dance hall on July 12, 1947.[12][13] Before the performance Lunceford collapsed during an autograph session at a local record store. He died while being taken by ambulance to the Seaside hospital. Lunceford was 45.[14] Dr Alton Alderman performed an autopsy in nearby Astoria, Oregon, and concluded that Lunceford died of coronary occlusion.[15]
Lunceford had complained about an aching leg as they arrived in Seaside, and had been suffering with high blood pressure for a while, and had recently complained about not feeling well.[16] Allegations and rumors circulated that he had been poisoned by a restaurant owner who was unhappy at having to serve a "Negro" in his establishment.[17] He was buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis.
Legacy
Band members, notably Eddie Wilcox and Joe Thomas, kept the band going for a time but finally had to break up the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra in 1949.
In 1999, band-leader Robert Veen and a team of musicians set out to acquire permission to use the original band charts and arrangements of the Jimmie Lunceford canon. 'The Jimmie Lunceford Legacy Orchestra' officially debuted in July 2005 at the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands.
The Jimmie Lunceford Jamboree Festival was founded in 2007 by Ron Herd II a.k.a. R2C2H2 Tha Artivist and Artstorian, with the aim of increasing recognition of Lunceford's contribution to jazz, particularly in Memphis, Tennessee. The Jimmie Lunceford Legacy Awards was created by the Jimmie Lunceford Jamboree Festival to honor exceptional musicians with Memphis ties as well as those who have dedicated their careers to excellence in music and music education.
His music continues to have an impact. Most recently the tune "Rhythm is Our Business" was included as track on the compilation set Memphis Jazz Box in 2004 in honor of Lunceford's close ties to Memphis.
On July 19, 2009, a brass note was dedicated to Lunceford on Beale Street, Memphis, Tennessee.
Selected discography
Prior to Lunceford's success on Decca (beginning September 1934), he made the following recordings:
- "In Dat Mornin'"/"Sweet Rhythm" (Victor V-38141) - recorded Memphis, June 6, 1930
- "Flaming Reeds and Screaming Brass"/"While Love Lasts" (test pressings for Columbia, not released until 1967 on LP) - recorded New York, May 15, 1933
- "Jazznocracy"/"Chillun, Get Up" (Victor 24522) - recorded New York, January 26, 1934
- "White Heat"/"Leaving Me" (Victor 24586) - recorded New York, January 26, 1934
- "Breakfast Ball"/"Here Goes" (Victor 24601) - recorded New York, March 20, 1934
- "Swingin' Uptown"/"Remember When" (Victor 24669) - recorded New York, March 20, 1934
Decca recordings
- Jazz Heritage Series #3- Jimmie Lunceford 1: Rhythm Is Our Business (1934-1935) (LP: Decca #79237, 1968/LP reissue: MCA #1302, 1980)
- Jazz Heritage Series #6- Jimmie Lunceford 2: Harlem Shout (1935-1936) (LP: Decca #79238, 1968/LP reissue: MCA #1305, 1980)
- Jazz Heritage Series #8- Jimmie Lunceford 3: For Dancers Only (1936-1937) (LP: Decca #79239, 1968/LP reissue: MCA #1307, 1980)
- Jazz Heritage Series #15- Jimmie Lunceford 4: Blues In The Night (1938-1942) (LP: Decca #79240, 1968/LP reissue: MCA #1314, 1980)
- Jazz Heritage Series #21- Jimmie Lunceford 5: Jimmie's Legacy (1934-1937) (LP: MCA #1320, 1980)
- Jazz Heritage Series #22- Jimmie Lunceford 6: The Last Sparks (1941-1944) (LP: MCA #1321, 1980)
- Stomp It Off (1934-1935 Decca recordings) (CD: GRP #608, 1992)
- For Dancers Only (1935-1937 Decca recordings) (CD: GRP #645, 1994)
- Swingsation: Jimmie Lunceford (1935-1939 Decca recordings) (CD: GRP #9923, 1998)
Columbia recordings
- Lunceford Special (1939-1940 Columbia recordings) (78rpm 4-disc album set/8 songs/#C-175: 1948; original LP issue/12 songs/#CL-634: 1956; expanded LP reissue/16 songs/#CL-2715 and #CS-9515: 1967; CD release/22 songs/#CK-65647: 2001 from Sony-Legacy label)
Majestic recordings
- Margie (1946-1947 Majestic recordings) (LP/13 songs/#SJL-1209: 1989 from Savoy Jazz label)
The Chronological...Classics series
note: every recording by Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra is included in this 10 volume series from the CLASSICS reissue label...
- The Chronological Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra 1930-1934 (#501)
- The Chronological Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra 1934-1935 (#505)
- The Chronological Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra 1935-1937 (#510)
- The Chronological Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra 1937-1939 (#520)
- The Chronological Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra 1939 (#532)
- The Chronological Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra 1939-1940 (#565)
- The Chronological Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra 1940-1941 (#622)
- The Chronological Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra 1941-1945 (#862)
- The Chronological Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra 1945-1947 (#1082)
- The Chronological Jimmie Lunceford's Orchestra 1948-1949 (#1151) -note: these last recordings (1948-1949) were made after Lunceford's death by his long-time band under the joint-direction of Eddie Wilcox (his piano player) and Joe Thomas (his tenor sax player/vocalist).
CD compilations from different reissue labels
- Rhythm Is Our Business (ASV/Living Era, 1992) -note: all tracks recorded 1933-1940, both the Decca and Columbia periods successively.
- It's the Way That You Swing It: The Hits of Jimmie Lunceford (Jasmine, 2002) 2-CD set
- Jukebox Hits 1935–1947 (Acrobat 2005)
- Quadromania: Jimmie Lunceford–Life Is Fine (1935–45, Membran/Quadromania Jazz, 2006) 4-CD box set
- Strictly Lunceford (Proper, 2007) 4-CD box set
- The Complete Jimmie Lunceford Decca Sessions (Mosaic, 2014) 7-CD box set
THE MUSIC OF JIMMIE LUNCEFORD: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH JIMMIE LUNCEFORD: