Joe Smith (jazz musician)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joe "Fox" Smith (* 28 June 1902 as Joseph Smith Emery , even Toots mentioned in Ripley , Ohio ; † 2. December 1937 in New York City ) was an American jazz - trumpet and - cornet .

Life

Smith came from a family of trumpeters; his father played the trumpet in a brass band , and one of his brothers, Russell Smith , was also a jazz trumpeter .

Smith began his musical career in smaller bands in Missouri and first came to New York City around 1920 . The following year he was part of the Black Swan Masters in Chicago . He then accompanied a number of well-known blues singers , including Mamie Smith (1922-23), Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith , whose favorite trumpeter he became. He was also a member of Billy Paige's Broadway Syncopators . After being the musical director of Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake's band , he joined, like his brother, the Fletcher Henderson orchestra in 1925 , where he was one of the star soloists. He became the successor and colleague of famous musicians such as Louis Armstrong , Rex Stewart and Tommy Ladnier . From 1929 until 1934 he was part of McKinney's Cotton Pickers . In the 1930s he became mentally ill after he, as drummer Kaiser Marshall told in Hear Me Talkin 'to Ya , in 1930 caused the death of a musician friend (singer George "Fathead" Thomas) in a car accident under the influence of alcohol. He lived in Kansas City (where he briefly worked for Bennie Moten , Kaiser Marshall, McKinney and Fletcher Henderson), later spent several years at New York's Bellevue Hospital and eventually died of tuberculosis .

Appreciation

Gunther Schuller described Smith as one of the most interesting trumpeters of the 1920s, because he combined instrumental technical mastery with an emotional and lyrical style that were hardly known in the early days of jazz. According to the Reclams Jazz Lexicon , he had "the most lyrical and song-like tone of all trumpeters". According to Scott Yanow , he has often been compared to Bix Beiderbecke . Smith was also an absolute master on the stuffed trumpet, playing the wawa-mute technically just as well, but in a less "earthy", "downhome" blues style like King Oliver , as well as on the openly played instrument. His best "open" solos for fans of traditional jazz come close to the lyrical beauty of Beiderbecke's best solos (example: Fletcher Henderson's The Stampede from 1926, on which Smith plays the middle solo, this being performed by two Rex Stewart Solos at the beginning and at the end are contrasted).

Fletcher Henderson described Smith as "the most soulful trumpeter he had ever known".

Lexical entries

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary of Joe Smith, Ohio Memory Collection
  2. ↑ Nat Hentoff , Nat Shapiro (editor), JAS, Frankfurt 1984
  3. ↑ J. Magee The Uncrowned King of Swing 2005, p. 84
personal data
SURNAME Smith, Joe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Smith, Fox (nickname); Smith, Joseph C. (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz trumpeter and cornet player
DATE OF BIRTH June 28, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Ripley , Ohio
DATE OF DEATH December 2, 1937
Place of death New York City