Jimmie Lunceford

James Melvin “Jimmie” Lunceford was born June 6, 1902 on a farm near Fulton, Mississippi. His family moved to Oklahoma City before Jimmie was a year old. The Luncefords eventually settled in Denver, where he went to high school and received instruction in music from Wilberforce J. Whiteman, the father of bandleader Paul Whiteman. Under Whiteman’s tutelage Jimmie learned to play several instruments, and he pursued further studies at Fisk University. After college, Jimmie Lunceford joined Morrison’s Jazz Orchestra, a Denver society band whose repertoire included light classics as well as popular tunes. In 1927, while a physical education teacher at Manassas High School in Memphis, Tennessee, Lunceford formed a student band, The Chickasaw Syncopators. The band quickly achieved professional stature, and recorded in Memphis for Columbia in 1927 and for Victor in 1930. By 1933, the band—now merely Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra—had acquired its distinctive discipline and polish, with the tight section work for which it was to become celebrated. The Lunceford Orchestra played in The Cotton Club Revue in 1934. That year they recorded the jazz classics “White Heat” and “Jazznocracy” for Victor and signed with Decca. The Decca recordings, featuring arrangements by S