Frankie Trumbauer
In today's installment of our continuing series of tributes to jazz musicians with St. Louis roots, we mark the birth of Frankie Trumbauer, born on May 30 all the way back in 1901. Trumbauer, one of the most famous jazz saxophonists of the Twenties and Thirties, actually was hatched down the road in Carbondale, IL, but is often associated with St. Louis because he worked here during the earliest part of professional career, and also co-led a band in the Gateway City with Bix Beiderbecke during 1925 and '26.
Trumbauer was known for playing the C melody saxophone, which is in concert key and sounds a bit like the missing link between tenor and alto saxes. In addition to his ongoing collaboration with Bix, he also worked with Jean Goldkette, Paul Whiteman, Jack and Charlie Teagarden, Eddie Lang and others, and his cool style and vibrato are said to have influenced Benny Carter and Lester Young.
When war came and styles changed, Trumbauer got out of the music business. He was a test pilot during World War II, and afterwards he played briefly in studio groups from 1945-7 before leaving music forever to work in aeronautics.You can find out more about him by reading this short biography and his All Music Guide page. You can also see a discography and hear Real Audio samples of Trumbauer's own Orchestra here.
(You say you don't like Real Player, and that it's full of ads, makes constant annoying attempts to update itself and download unwanted content, and is otherwise also quite troublesome? I agree, and thus suggest you go here to download the BBC version of Real Player, which is ad-free and (mostly) reminder-free as well. It seems Real had to agree to produce a more well-behaved version of their player in order for the BBC to continue encoding its content in the .rm format, and you and I are the ancillary beneficiaries of the deal. It comes in handy for certain types of content, such as the above Frankie Trumbauer samples, not readily available elsewhere.)
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