Jabbo Smith

about

Jabbo Smith, born as Cladys Smith (24 December 1908 - 16 January 1991) was a United States jazz musician, known for his hot virtuoso playing on the trumpet. Smith was born in Pembroke, Georgia. At the age of 6 he went into the Jenkins Orphanage in Charleston, South Carolina where he learned trumpet and trombone, and by age 10 was touring with the Jenkins Band. At age 16 he left the Orphanage to become a professional musician, at first playing in bands in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Atlantic City, New Jersey before making his base in Manhattan, New York City from about 1925 through 1928, where he made the first of his well regarded recordings. In 1928 he toured with James P. Johnson's Orchestra when their show broke up in Chicago, Illinois, where Smith stayed for a few years. His series of recordings for Brunswick Records in 1929 are his most famous, and Smith was billed as a rival to Louis Armstrong. In March 1935 in Chicago, Smith was featured in a recording session produced by Helen Oakley under the name of Charles LaVere & His Chicagoans, which included a vocal by both Smith and LaVere on LaVere's composition and arrangement of "Boogaboo Blues". It an example inter-racial blues recordings, although far from the first as such had been made at least since c. 1921. In the 1930s, Smith moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin which would be his main base for many years, alternating with returns to New York. In Milwaukee he collaborated with saxophonist Bill Johnson. Subsequently,

top songs

albums

1929 - The Complete Set

Lina Blues (Best Of)

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Hot Jazz In The Twenties Vol.1

Complete Jazz Series 1929 - 1938

Jazz Foundations Vol. 38

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1929-1938

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Jazz Legends 1930 - 1939

Hidden Treasure

Volume 2

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Archive Of American Popular Music 1893-1946

The Complete Hidden Treasure Sessions

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Saga Jazz: Scat Singing (The Art of Vocal Jazz)

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