Parisian Redheads

Parisian Redheads – An all-girls dance band.  Organized by Indianapolis show business agent Charlie Green in the 1920s, the Parisian Redheads was a well-known all-girls dance band that included around twelve females, who were mainly classically trained.  After playing at summer resorts and various stops on the Vaudeville Circuit, they landed a booking at the Times Square Palace in New York Theatre in 1928 and 1929.  For the second appearance, they were the featured act over the Marx Brothers.  The group had two recoding sessions and released one album on Brunswick.  When the Babe Eagan Hollywood Redheads threatened a lawsuit over the group’s name, the Indiana group became the Bricktops.  In the 1940s, many members of the Bricktops joined the Phil Spitalny all-girl orchestra.      

Chuck Parrish – Trumpet player.  Chuck Parrish grew up in Terre Haute and learned to play the trumpet at Indiana State University Laboratory School.  After graduating from Terre Haute South High School in 1981 (after State High School had closed in 1978), Parrish took time away from the trumpet in favor of preparing for a medical profession.  His life changed directions in the fall of 1986 when he enrolled at Indiana State University (back in Terre Haute) and devoted himself to his instrument.  After a year at ISU and a short time at the University of Illinois, he landed the lead trumpet job with the Ray Charles Band, with which he toured worldwide for seven years.  He also played lead with Mel Torme (2 years) and the Woody Herman Orchestra (1 year).  Since 1992, he has freelanced in Chicago and has been a member of Bill Russo’s Chicago Jazz Ensemble (7 years), Barrett Deems Orchestra at the Elbow Room (3 years), the Big Band of Chicago at the Green Mill (7 years), and the Clark Street Band.    

Carl Perkins (b. Indianapolis, August 16, 1928 – d. March 17, 1958) – Pianist and composer.  A native of Indianapolis, Perkins honed his craft on Indiana Avenue before moving to the West Coast in 1949.  In California, he joined the Oscar Moore trio in 1953 and later played with the Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet and bassist Curtis Counce’s group, which included saxophonist Harold Land.  Out west, he also got the chance to reunite on stage with old Indy cohort Leroy Vinnegar, who had been Perkins’s schoolmate.  In addition, Perkins toured with Jay McNeely and Tiny Bradshaw, and he recorded with Chet Baker, Jim Hall, Art Pepper, and Dexter Gordon.  Known for his unusual technique of holding his left arm sideways—due to Polio-inflicted limitations—Perkins sometimes played bass notes with his elbow.  In short, he was a very gifted pianist and composer, although he remains little known.  Had it not been for his early passing at age twenty-nine due to alcoholism, his discography and performance history would be more extensive.       

Eddie Polo (b. Toluca, Illinois, December 22, 1901 – d. Chicago, Illinois, July 11, 1949) – Clarinetist and saxophonist.  As a baby, Polo moved to Clinton, Indiana, and as a youngster played in the local Majestic Band, an Italian marching group.  After starting his career in Terre Haute, he moved on to Chicago and formed his own band in 1936.  Hailed by Benny Goodman as the “world’s greatest clarinet player,” Polo played with many greats, including Jack Teagarden, Bing Crosby, and Coleman Hawkins.  After playing in the English Ambrose band, Polo was recruited by his old Terre Haute friend Claude Thornhill in the early 1940s.  In fact, he was one the leading soloists in Thornhill’s famous band.      

John “Jack” Purvis (b. Kokomo, December 11, 1906 – d. San Francisco, March 30, 1962) – Multiple Instrumentalist (primarily a trumpet player) and composer.  Although primarily a trumpet player, Purvis was a versatile musician, who played many instruments professionally including trombone, piano, bass and harp.  After learning the trombone and trumpet as a youngster in Kokomo, Purvis played with the high school band and with a local dance band called the Pirates, led by Johnny Smith.  According to Duncan Schiedt, he joined the Pirates as a teenager right after serving time at a correctional facility in Plainfield (possibly the Indiana Boys’ School).  After leaving Kokomo, he first established himself in Lexington, Kentucky.  Through the late 1920s and early to mid 1930s, he toured and recorded with various bands, including groups led by Hal Kemp, Bud Rice, Charlie Barnet, the Dorsey Brothers and Fletcher Henderson.  During this period, he led a peripatetic existence as he lived in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, New York, California, Texas, New Orleans, and France.  At times, he also worked as a chef, aviator and as a radio broadcaster.  Following an arrest for robbery in 1937 in El Paso, Purvis served about three years in Huntsville Prison, where he directed the Rhythmic Swingers, which played radio broadcasts.  After breaking his parole in 1940, he returned to prison for another six years and is thought to have taken his own life in 1962.  In spite of his checkered life (even believed to be a mercenary at one time), he was one of the most innovative white jazz trumpeters in the 1920s and 1930s.                

Phil Ranelin (b. Indianapolis, May 25, 1939 -   ) – Trombone player.  Part of the Indiana Avenue crowd of Wes Montgomery, J.J. Johnson, Freddie Hubbard, Pookie Johnson, Jimmy Coe and others, Ranelin has distinguished himself as a leading jazz musician in Detroit and Los Angeles, his home since 1977.  Over the years, he has performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Kool Jazz, Indiana Black Expo, Vera Cruz Muestra International Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Atlantic City Jazz Festival, Montreux Detroit, the Newport and Playboy Jazz Festivals, Jazz At Drew, USC Spectrum LA Jazz, UCLA Jazz & Reggae Festival, The Indy Jazz Fest and the Inaugural Indianapolis Jazz Community Festival.  Known for his work as a sideman on trombone with several of Freddie Hubbard’s commercial jazz albums, Ranelin has also released several CDs of his own groups, and his A Close Encounter of the Very Best Kind ranked No. 10 in Billboard’s CD reviews of 2003.     

Bill Rank (b. Lafayette, June 8, 1904 – d. May 20, 1979) – Trombonist.  Bill Rank, a trombonist from Lafayette, was part of Jean Goldkette’s famous Victor Recording Orchestra (1924-29), which is considered the first all-white swing band.  He also played with small groups that included Bix Beiderbecke – appearing on 13 sides together with Okeh Recorders – and with the Paul Whiteman Band.  From 1942 to 1947, Rank played with Cincinnati’s WLS staff band while also leading a local Dixieland band called the Over the Hill Gang. 

Ira John Rapson, III (b. Gary, February 4, 1953 -   ) – Trombonist, composer, and academician.  After growing up in various Midwestern cities, John Rapson moved to Santa Barbara, California, with his family at age around age eleven.  While still living In Santa Barbara, he earned a bachelor’s degree at Westmont College (B.A., 1976), where he later taught from 1980 to 1990.  He also completed an M.A. in composition at California State University in Northridge.  During his California days, he also studied composition with Barney Childs (1982-83), Nobuya Matsuda (1987-88), and Pulitzer-Prize winner Henry Brant (1988-1990).  From 1979 to 1990, he played trombone in a Los Angeles group led by Vinny Golia.  At that time, he also played with saxophonist Tim Berne, trumpeter Bobby Bradford, and John Carter (a multi-talented woodwind specialist).   Concurrently, Rapson also led his own West Coast groups that collectively included pianist Wayne Peet, drummer Alex Cline, bassist Ken Filiano, trumpeter John Fumo, and saxophonist Kim Richmond.  After relocating to study ethnomusicology at Wesleyan, he formed alliances with jazz musicians on the east coast and performed with vibraphonist Jay Hoggard, woodwind specialist Anthony Braxton, saxophonist David Murray, trumpeter Doc Cheatham, and drummer Ed Blackwell.  Since 1993, he has taught at Iowa University, where he is director of Jazz Studies and the director of a jazz ensemble.  His playing activities in the last two decades have included several projects with the late drummer Billy Higgins.  Throughout his several-decade career, Rapson has played on nineteen albums, including nine by groups that he has led.  He has written 125 jazz compositions, many of which appear on his albums.            

Reuben “Red” Reeves (b. Evansville, October 25, 1905 – d. New York City, September 1955) – Trumpet player and bandleader.  One of his early experiences was playing with Paul Stuart’s Wee Hour Serenaders in Terre Haute along with brothers Gerald (trombone) and Bob (bass).  In 1924, he moved to New York City and then to Chicago in the following year.  For the remainder of the decade, he played in the bands of Erskine Tate, Tess Williams, and Dave Peyton.  From 1931 to 1932, he was a member of Cab Calloway’s band.  He also led groups called the Tributaries and the River Boys during the 1930s as well an army band during WW II.  His entire output as leader has been released on a single CD by RST Records.   

Melvin Rhyne (b. Indianapolis, October 12, 1936 -    ) – Pianist and jazz organist.  A largely self-taught pianist, Rhyne attended Crispus Attucks High School and learned the craft of a jazz musician at the clubs of Indianapolis’s Indiana Avenue.  He then went on to play with Roland Kirk (1956-57).  Around the same time, he backed R & B and blues artists such as T-Bone Walker and B.B. King.  As an organist, he played with Wes Montgomery’s quartet from 1959 to 1964 and recorded four albums with them.  In 1969, he moved to Wisconsin, where he dropped out of the limelight; however, his career picked up again in 1990, when he started recording again with major artists including Joshua Redman.  Recently, he has co-led a quartet with fellow Indy-native “Killer” Ray Appleton.  Currently, he is back in Indianapolis playing organ weekly at the Jazz Kitchen with Rob Dixon.  In fact, he is under contract with Owl Studios as part of the Dixon-Rhyne Project.             

Larry Ridley (b. Indianapolis, September 3, 1937 -    ) – Bass player, scholar, director and educator.  After first playing violin in public schools in Indianapolis, Ridley switched to the double bass in the interest of learning jazz.  As a teenager, he played his first professional gig while sitting in for Monk Montgomery in brother Wes’s band at Indy’s Turf Club.  After completing a Bachelor’s degree at Indiana University in 1959, Ridley played professionally and amassed an impressive discography, which includes work—mainly on Blue Note—with Horace Silver, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Roy Haynes, Philly Joe Jones, the Ellington Band, Dexter Gordon, and Thelonious Monk.  He has also recorded with his own Jazz Legacy Ensemble since 1985.  In the world of academia, he was a Professor of Music at Rutgers University from 1971 to 1999 and was chairman of the music department from 1972 to 1980.  From 1974 to 1978, Ridley served as a Jazz Panelist for the National Endowment of the Arts, and he was the national coordinator for the Jazz Artists in Schools Pilot Program from 1978 to 1982.  Beginning in 2000, he has been the executive director of the African American Jazz Caucus.  Lastly, he was inducted into Down Beat’s Jazz Education Hall of Fame in 1999.        

Hank Roberts (b. Terre Haute, March 24, 1954-   ) – Cellist and vocalist.  Terre Haute native Hank Roberts is a well-known jazz cellist who has absorbed a wide range of influences including rock, folk and classical.  After leading his own Indiana-based group early in his career, he moved to New York, where he became part of the avante garde jazz scene of the 1980s.  Since 1987, Roberts has released seven CD projects as a leader.  He also collaborated extensively with other like-minded experimentalists like guitarist Bill Frisell and saxophonist Tim Berne.  From 1989 to 1991, he recorded three CDs with the Arcado Trio, an improvisational string trio.  Having traveled far and wide, Roberts is currently (as of January 2009) on a fifteen-gig tour of Europe with Buffalo Collision, a new four-piece group that includes Tim Berne.  In 2003, he returned to his hometown of Terre Haute for an appearance at the Verve, a nightspot on Wabash Avenue (old National Road).  Lastly, he and singer-songwriter Kevin Kinsella play together in various configurations, including Ti-Ti Chikapea (for which Roberts plays and sings).              

J. Russel Robinson 

J. Russel Robinson (b. Indianapolis, July 8, 1892 - d. Palmsdale, California, September 3, 1963) – Pianist, songwriter, and composer.  A graduate of Shortridge High School in Indianapolis, Robinson started out playing for silent movies and later went on the road with his brother, a drummer.  In 1919, he joined the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (not long after ODJB made the world’s first jazz recording).  On the creative side of things, Robinson published ragtime compositions in his teens and later wrote popular songs, including the title song for Portrait of Jennie (1948).  He also wrote many jazz standards that were played by the ODJB and covered by many other musicians.  In collaboration with lyricist Leo McElroy, he composed Mermaid Tavern, an off-Broadway musical that still gets performed in regional theaters.