Jimmy Mundy

James "Jimmy" Mundy (born June 28, 1907 in Cincinnati , † April 28, 1983 in New York ) was an American jazz saxophonist, composer and arranger especially for Benny Goodman and Count Basie .

Mundy first learned the violin and other instruments and from 1926 played in Chicago as a tenor saxophonist with Erskine Tate , Tommy Miles and Carroll Dickerson . From 1932 he was with Earl Hines for four years , in whose orchestra he increasingly switched from the saxophone to the role of composer and arranger. There he was poached in 1936 by Benny Goodman, for whom he arranged from then on (with well-known arrangements such as Air Mail Special , Sing Sing Sing , Solo Flight ). In 1939/1940 he had his own band in New York (with which he also recorded; a record with his recordings until 1947 was published by Classics ). From 1940 he arranged for Paul Whiteman , Count Basie (1940 to 1947), Gene Krupa , Dizzy Gillespie (1949), Charlie Spivak , Harry James , Gene Ammons , Sonny Stitt and others. a. In 1958 he recorded an album on Epic. In 1959 he moved to Paris , where he worked as the musical director of the Disques Barclay record company . In the 1960s he returned to the USA, where he remained active as an arranger until the 1970s. He wrote A Lover Is Blue with Charles Carpenter .

Discographic notes

• Jimmy Mundy 1937–1947 (Classics) with Irving Ashby , Billy Kyle , Babe Russin , Artie Shapiro , Willie Smith , Chick Webb , Shadow Wilson & Trummy Young

literature

• Carlo Bohländer , Karl Heinz Holler, Christian Pfarr: Reclam's Jazz Guide . 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-15-010355-X .
• Richard Cook & Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings . 9th edition. Penguin, London 2008, ISBN 978-0141034010 .

Web links

• Works by Jimmy Mundy in the catalog of the German National Library
• Jimmy Mundy at Allmusic (English)