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Jimmy Cheatham

James Rudolph Cheatham was an American jazz trombonist and teacher who played with Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, and Ornette Coleman.

In 1978, Cheatham was invited to lead the jazz program at University of California, San Diego. In 1979 he began to direct the school's African American and jazz performance programs. He retired in 2005.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, it was while serving in the United States Army during and just after World War II, that Cheatham played in the 173rd Army Ground Force Band.

Cheatham met his wife, Jean Evans, in 1956 in Buffalo, New York, when the local musicians' union chief called them separately to replace two musicians who could not make a job at the local Elks Ballroom. They married in 1959.

In the mid-1980s Cheatham formed The Sweet Baby Blues Band with his wife. The Sweet Baby Blues Band played Kansas City style blues. Cheatham's Sweet Baby Blues album won a French Grand Prix du Disque. Their album Luv in the Afternoon was voted blues album of the year in a 1991 critics poll in Down Beat magazine.

Cheatham also taught jazz at Bennington College in Vermont and at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin.

Cheatham's legacy is carried on by several students who went on to become, like him, prominent composer/performer/educators: flutist Nicole Mitchell, bassist Karl E. H. Seigfried, and drummer Vikas Srivastava.

Cheatham died in San Diego, California, in January 2007 following heart surgery, at the age of 82. Source: Wikipedia

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Read "With Archie Shepp, 7-Tette & Orchestra Revisited" reviewed by Chris May


If Bill Dixon is today, in 2023, less widely remembered than other New Thing warriors such as Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler, it is partly because he had little desire for celebrity, devoting much of his energy to organizing on behalf of his fellow musicians and composers, and teaching. In 1964, midway through making the 1962-1967 recordings collected on this album, Dixon organized the historic October Revolution in Jazz at the Cellar Café in Manhattan, which ...

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Album Review

Jeannie and Jimmy Cheatham: The Concord Jazz Heritage Series

Read "The Concord Jazz Heritage Series" reviewed by Ed Kopp


Since 1984, Jeannie and Jimmy Cheatham have recorded eight infectious blues-based jazz albums on the Concord label. The Cheathams combine Kansas City blues, jump, swing, and occasional doses of bop and boogie-woogie in their danceable amalgam. This retrospective CD compiles 11 of the best tracks from their Concord recordings, and it's well worth checking out. This Cheathams are raucous enough to energize a frat party, yet mainstream enough to find on the jukebox at any good jazz club.Jimmy ...

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Obituary

Jimmy Cheatham: Trombonist, Bandleader Was Fixture in San Diego

Jimmy Cheatham: Trombonist, Bandleader Was Fixture in San Diego

Source: All About Jazz

By George Varga Music Critic San Diego Union-Tribune / Copley News Service Jimmy Cheatham's trombone playing sounded very much like he did in conversation - warm, inviting and filled with the joyful spirit he radiated on and off stage. A pillar of the San Diego music scene since the late 1970s and a veteran of the bands of jazz icons such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Ornette Coleman, Mr. Cheatham died Friday after being taken ...

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