Floyd Smith (musician)

Floyd Smith (front right) with Dick Wilson , Howard Theater, Washington, DC, before 1941.
Photograph by William P. Gottlieb .

Floyd Smith (born January 25, 1917 in St. Louis , Missouri , † March 29, 1982 in Indianapolis ) was an American jazz guitarist , composer and music producer who is considered one of the pioneers of the electrically amplified guitar in jazz .

Live and act

Smith, the son of a drummer, first learned the ukulele as a child and began his musical career in territory bands such as Eddie Johnson's Crackerjacks . In the 1930s he worked with Dewey Jackson and the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra , where he played electric guitar for the first time during recordings. He then moved to New York, where he performed with the Sunset Royal Entertainers at Harlem's Apollo Theater . From 1938 to 1942 he was a member of Andy Kirk's band and was best known for his recording of Floyd's Guitar Blues (1939), using a Hawaiian guitar . During this time, recordings with Mildred Bailey and Mary Lou Williams were made .

After military service in World War II, he worked again with Kirk (until 1946) and had his own trio in Chicago. Smith also made some records under his own name in the 1950s ( Floydnasty , Gloomy Evening ) as well as After Yours and Me and You , in which he was accompanied by the Horace Henderson Orchestra. He also played with Wild Bill Davis , Chris Columbus and various orchestras in St. Louis; from 1959 to 1964 he toured the United States and Europe with Bill Doggett . In the late 1960s he performed in a duo with Hank Marr in Atlantic City, and in the early 1970s he was back in Europe, recording records with Al Gray , Buddy Tate and Wild Bill Davis. During this time he was also active as a music producer, had his own label in Chicago and produced disco and gospel music , among others by Loleatta Holloway , whom he later married.

Discographic notes

• Relaxin 'with Floyd - The Definitive Black & Blue Sessions (ed. 2002) with Wild Bill Davis and Chris Columbus

Web links

• Eugene Chadbourne : Floyd Smith at Allmusic (English)

Lexical entries

• Bielefeld Catalog 1988
• Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD . 6th edition. Penguin, London 2002, ISBN 0-14-051521-6 .
• Leonard Feather , Ira Gitler : The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. Oxford University Press, Oxford, etc. 1999, ISBN 978-0-19-532000-8
• John Jörgensen, Erik Wiedemann : Jazz Lexicon . Mosaic, Munich 1967