by Jason Mellard, Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University
This Week in Texas Music History, a San Marcos jazz artist electrifies the musical world.
On August 19, 1906, a jazz pioneer was born in San Marcos. Eddie Durham—trombonist, composer, arranger, and trailblazer on the electric guitar—learned music theory from his older brother Joe and began his professional career at age ten with the Durham Brothers Orchestra. He traveled as far as New York City with territory bands, including Walter Page’s highly influential Blue Devils and Bennie Moten’s band, where he would play alongside fellow Texans Hot Lips Page and Buster Smith. In 1935, Durham recorded what may be the very first amplified electric guitar solo with Jimmie Lunceford’s band on “Hittin’ the Bottle.” Durham’s pioneering work on the electric guitar paved the way for a fellow traveler in Southwestern territory bands, Bonham, Texas, native Charlie Christian, who cemented the electric guitar’s place in popular music.
By the late 1930s, Durham had joined former Blue Devil Count Basie for whom he composed or arranged classic Basie Band numbers like “One O’Clock Jump,” “Good Morning Blues,” and “Topsy,” a composition named for his daughter. He also served as arranger and instrumentalist on Walter Page’s classic Kansas City Six sides, which featured the legendary Lester Young on tenor saxophone. In all, Durham’s work is a testament to how foundational Texas and Oklahoma players were to the uptempo Kansas City styles that would revolutionize jazz midcentury.
Durham eventually worked with Glenn Miller and arranged a major hit for the bandleader entitled “In the Mood,” a work now synonymous with both Miller and the swing era. Durham’s work slowed in later years, but he remained active as a recording artist well into his seventies. He also appeared in the documentary film Last of the Blue Devils, a chronicle of a 1970s jazz reunion in Kansas City. Eddie Durham has been memorialized in his birthplace of San Marcos, where a park is named in his honor and the Eddie Durham Jazz Festival has taken place every fall since 2004. Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra with Eddie Durham, “Hittin’ the Bottle” Count Basie with Eddie Durham, “Time Out” Count Basie, “One O’Clock Jump”
Sources:
“Eddie Durham Jazz Festival,” Calaboose African American History Museum, https://www.calaboosemuseum.org/eddie-durham
Dave Oliphant in Laurie E. Jasinski, Gary Hartman, Casey Monahan, and Ann T. Smith, eds. The Handbook of Texas Music. Second Edition. Denton, TX: Texas State Historical Association, 2012.
Dave Oliphant. Texan Jazz. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.
