Red was the leader of the Mound City Blue Blowers, in which he played comb, kazoo, and sang. Later, he went on to play with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra.While working as a bellhop in St. Louis he and some friends would get together and play on the street and he was “discovered” and taken to Chicago to record in 1924.
They recorded “Arkansas Blues” and “Blue Blues“. The record sold over a million copies.
While playing in Atlantic City Red met Eddie Lang who joined the band and played with them in London. After his return to America, Red became active as a Jazz Promoter, more than as a Jazz musician. Red worked as a talent scout and set up the first Okeh Recording date for Beiderbecke, Eddie Lang and Frankie Trumbauer which featured the famous recording “Singing the Blues“.
In 1927, he promoted a Paramount Recording session at which a group of Chicagoans recorded the “Friar’s Point Shuffle”. In 1928, Okeh Records cut four sides with his group called McKenzie and Condon’s Chicagoans.
During the 1930s Red was often seen in New York’s 52nd Street jazz club area. But, Red was musically inactive and moved back to his home town of St. Louis and worked in a brewery throughout most of the Depression.
In 1944, he returned to New York and played with Eddie Condon and had one last recording date in 1947, before dying of cirrhosis of the liver.
| Title | Recording Date | Recording Location | Company |
| It’s All Forgotten Now | 10-5-1934 | New York, New York | Decca 243 A |
| It’s The Talk Of The Town | 9-1-1933 | New York, New York | Vocalion 2534 |
| Murder In The Moonlight | 7-12-1935 | New York, New York | Decca 507 A |
| This Time It’s Love | 9-1-1933 | New York, New York | Vocalion 2534 |
| What’s The Use Of Getting Used To You? | 10-5-1934 | New York, New York | Decca 243 A |
| Title | Company | Year |
| The Opry House | Vitaphone | 1929 |
| Nine O’Clock Folks | Vitaphone | 1930 |
Redhotjazz.com was a pioneering website during the "Information wants to be Free" era of the 1990s. In that spirit we are recovering the lost data from the now defunct site and sharing it with you.
Most of the music in the archive is in the form of MP3s hosted on Archive.org or the French servers of Jazz-on-line.com where this music is all in the public domain.
Files unavailable from those sources we host ourselves. They were made from original 78 RPM records in the hands of private collectors in the 1990s who contributed to the original redhotjazz.com. They were hosted as .ra files originally and we have converted them into the more modern MP3 format. They are of inferior quality to what is available commercially and are intended for reference purposes only. In some cases a Real Audio (.ra) file from Archive.org will download. Don't be scared! Those files will play in many music programs, but not Windows Media Player.
