‹ Deck
Jimmie Lunceford card front Flip the card ⟳

Swing-Era Dossier

Jimmie Lunceford

1902 – 1947

Born

June 6, 1902, on a 53-acre farm in the Evergreen community west of the Tombigbee River, near Fulton, Mississippi. Given name James Melvin Lunceford. Father James was the farm owner; mother Idella "Ida" Shumpert, an organist, from Oklahoma City. Family moved to Oklahoma City when he was about seven months old, then on to Denver, where he grew up.

Died

July 12, 1947, Seaside, Oregon, age 45. Collapsed during an autograph session at the Hill brothers' record shop, between his McElroy's Ballroom (Portland) date the night before and a scheduled gig that evening at The Bungalow dance hall in Seaside. Brothers Edward and Walter Hill noticed him looking weak and ill; moments later he went into severe convulsions. He died en route to Seaside hospital by ambulance. Official cause: coronary occlusion (heart attack), per autopsy by Dr. Alton Alderman in nearby Astoria. He'd been complaining of an aching leg on arrival, had a history of high blood pressure, and had recently said he wasn't feeling well. Persistent rumor: he and several band members had eaten earlier that day at a Seaside restaurant whose white owner reportedly objected to serving Black customers and was talked into it; other band members got sick within hours of the meal, but no investigation was ever opened. Jazz musicologist Lewis Porter (Rutgers) is publicly skeptical of the racial-poisoning theory; local Oregon historians have called the conspiracy framing a "giant leap." Buried at Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis.

Instruments

Trained on guitar, banjo, violin, trombone, piano, flute, and all the saxophones; settled on alto. Despite the range, he was not a sideman, soloist, singer, composer, or arranger in his own band. By roughly 1935 he had given up playing reeds in performance entirely to conduct. The only known recorded solo under his name is a flute feature on "Liza," preserved from a mid-1940s radio appearance. On stage he led with a conducting baton.

Nicknames

  • "King of Syncopation" — christened by Fats Waller, in recognition of the band's signature two-beat feel. The band's promotional billing in the mid-1930s was "Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra — the New King of Syncopation."
  • Band sometimes billed as "Jimmie Lunceford's Harlem Express" during the Cotton Club years.

Bands / years

  • Chickasaw Syncopators (Memphis, 1927) — student band he organized while teaching at Manassas High School; named after the local Chickasaw neighborhood. Recorded for Victor in 1927 and 1930 ("In Dat Morning," "Sweet Rhythm"). Recognized as the first Black public-school jazz band director in the U.S.
  • Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra (1929–1947) — turned professional 1929, first commercial recordings 1930.
  • Cotton Club house band (Harlem, 1934) — succeeded Cab Calloway in the Cotton Club Parade revue starring Adelaide Hall, which opened March 11, 1934 and drew 600,000+ paying customers over six months.
  • European tour 1937; second European tour cancelled 1939 on the outbreak of WWII.
  • After Lunceford's death the band continued under joint direction of pianist Eddie Wilcox and tenor saxophonist/vocalist Joe Thomas until 1949.

Active

1927–1947.

Education

  • High school in Denver under Dr. Wilberforce J. Whiteman (Paul Whiteman's father), who taught him several instruments.
  • B.A. (Bachelor of Music), Fisk University, Nashville, 1926.
  • Postgraduate study at City College of New York.
  • Athletic and music instructor at Manassas High School, Memphis, from 1926/27.

Signature tunes (with composer credits)

  • "Rhythm Is Our Business" (1934, recorded Dec 17) — theme song. Music by Lunceford; lyrics by Sammy Cahn & Saul Chaplin. The closest thing to a Lunceford composition in the band's hit list.
  • "For Dancers Only" (1937) — the band's most celebrated number; written by Sy Oliver, became the second theme.
  • "'Tain't What You Do (It's the Way That You Do It)" (1939) — co-written by Sy Oliver & trombonist Trummy Young, who also sang the vocal. The band's biggest crossover hit; covered within months by Ella Fitzgerald, Fats Waller, Adelaide Hall, Harry James.
  • "Organ Grinder's Swing" (1936) — Will Hudson / Mitchell Parish / Irving Mills; arranged by Sy Oliver into Lunceford's signature shape.
  • "White Heat" / "Jazznocracy" (1934) — both sides of the breakout single, both written by Will Hudson, a white outside composer who supplied "hot" instrumentals to Black bands.
  • "My Blue Heaven" (Walter Donaldson / George Whiting, 1927 standard) — Sy Oliver arrangement; Lunceford recording is the canonical swing-era version.
  • "Stomp It Off" (1934) — Sy Oliver.
  • "Lunceford Special" & "Hittin' the Bottle" (1935) — Eddie Durham, who also played the historic amplified-guitar solo on the latter (Sept 1935), one of the first ever recorded.
  • "Uptown Blues" (1939) — feature for Willie Smith and Snooky Young.
  • "Stratosphere" (1934), "Wham (Re-Bop-Boom-Bam)" — Eddie Durham contributions.

Famous compositions (under Lunceford's own name)

  • "Rhythm Is Our Business" — music credit; lyrics by Cahn & Chaplin.
  • Essentially nothing else. Lunceford was a conductor and curator. The band's identity was the work of its arrangers — Sy Oliver (1933–1939), Eddie Durham, Will Hudson (outside, 1934), and later Billy Moore Jr. and Gerald Wilson.

Interesting facts

  • First Black public-school jazz band director in the U.S. — taught music and athletics at Manassas High School, Memphis, from 1926, and recruited his original orchestra's core from his own students. Five of his original nine members reportedly stayed with him until his death.
  • The "Lunceford two-beat" — a light, loping, medium-tempo swing emphasising 2 and 4, created and refined by Sy Oliver. Distinct from the Basie/Goodman four-beat drive; Britannica calls it the "Lunceford beat."
  • The show band. Lunceford pioneered synchronized big-band showmanship: trumpets tossing and catching horns in unison, reed sections moving as one, players jumping onto chairs, glee-club vocal numbers, choreographed bows, costume changes, an "Anvil Chorus" tableau where the brass section beat on chairs with mallets. Lunceford's reasoning, often quoted: "A band that looks good will always be sure of a return visit."
  • Replaced Cab Calloway at the Cotton Club in 1934 for the highest-grossing revue the club ever staged.
  • 22 hit recordings 1934–42 — more than any Black band except Ellington's and Calloway's (Britannica).
  • 1940: won a Battle of the Bands over 28 groups, including Basie, Glenn Miller, and Goodman. Glenn Miller is on record saying that at its peak no band could top Lunceford's.
  • Sy Oliver's defection (May 1939) gutted the sound. Lunceford had raised the band's asking price through the late '30s but not the sidemen's salaries; Oliver was on the verge of quitting music for law school. Tommy Dorsey sent his manager to fetch Oliver to Hotel Pennsylvania, where Dorsey, shaving in the bathroom, offered him $5,000 a year more than Lunceford was paying him (≈ $75,000 in today's money) to arrange. The band continued, but the distinctive Lunceford architecture never fully returned.
  • Eddie Durham's amplified-guitar solo on "Hittin' the Bottle" (1935) is one of the earliest recorded — Durham played a pickup-equipped acoustic through a low-watt amp. Lunceford's session.
  • 1941 film appearance: Blues in the Night (Warner Bros.).
  • Stan Kenton and Tommy Dorsey both named Lunceford a primary influence. Dorsey's poaching of Oliver was the most expensive compliment a competing bandleader could pay.
  • The death dispute is unresolved. Coronary occlusion is the medical record. The poisoning rumor — racially motivated, restaurant-meal, multiple band members sick — has been carried in print biographies and in some local Seaside oral history; it has been challenged by Lewis Porter and by Oregon local historians. Both versions belong on the card.

Sources