Bill Coleman on Jazz Profiles

Sunday, November 9, 2014 - 2:00pm to 7:00pm

Join us from 2-7pm Sunday November 9 for an in depth profile of the trumpet playing of jazz musician Bill Coleman hosted by Charles Iselin. Bill Coleman’s career was intricately linked to the spread of Jazz in Europe and specifically in France. Appropriately, he was born in Paris, Kentucky in 1904. As a musician he played early on in the non-professional band of trombonist J.C. Higginbotham in Cincinnati. Coleman moved to New York in 1927 with Cecil Scott’s band. He worked around New York until the mid-thirties, making recordings with Cecil Scott, Luis Russell, Teddy Hill and the original configuration of Fats Waller and His Rhythm. He went on the first of his extended trips abroad in 1935 when he moved to Paris to join Freddy Taylor’s band. He would perform in Paris with Willie Lewis, Dicky Wells, Django Reinhardt, Alix Combelle and with many of his own groups. He made an extended trip to Bombay in 1936 and spent most of 1938 leading a band in Cairo and Alexandria in Egypt. In 1940 Coleman returned to the United States, where he played in the Bands of Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson, Mary Lou Williams and others for the rest of the swing era. He moved back to France in 1948, where he would reside for the rest of his life into 1981. Though indebted to the Armstrong tradition, Coleman possessed a profoundly individual style which flourished especially during the swing era. The show will present recordings from the entirety of his career but focus specifically on this period when his original voice was at its most prominent.