Club Kaycee -- Kansas City Jazz History -- Durham, Eddie

Durham, Eddie

August 19, 1906 -- March 6, 1987
composer, arranger, guitarist, trombonist

Born in San Marcos, Texas, Eddie Durham came from a musical family.

Eddie
Durham
After mastering the banjo, he switched to guitar and trombone. He toured the minstrel circuit with his family's band, the Durham Brothers, and played trombone with a circus band. After leaving the circus band in 1926, Durham toured with various territorial bands in the southwest including Edgar Battle's Dixie Ramblers and the Blue Devils.

Durham joined the (Bennie) Moten band in 1929 and contributed to its evolution and modernization with compositions and arrangements. He also revolutionalized the band's rhythm section by using a resonator to amplify his guitar. He recruited Walter Page and encouraged him to switch from sousaphone to double bass.

Durham's composition, "Moten's Swing" -- recorded by the Moten band during its last recording date for Victor in 1932 -- was one of the first recordings to use a riff, which became the foundation of the Kansas City sound.

After leaving Moten in 1933, Durham worked with Willie Bryant's band and Jimmie Lunceford. He joined Basie's band in 1936 and contributed many compositions and arrangements to the early Basie band book including:

"Topsy,"
"One O'Clock Jump" and
"Blue and Sentimental."

After a year with the Basie band, Durham departed and began freelancing with other bands -- including Jan Savitt, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller and Ina Ray Hutton. During the 1940s, he led his own band and was the musical director for an all-girl band, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm.

Sources:

Hester, Mary Lee.: Going to Kansas City. Sherman, Texas: Early Bird Press, 1980.
Dance, Stanley.: The World of Count Basie. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1980.