Norris grew up in Buffalo, where he worked in a variety of local bands between 1927 and 1932. This is how Lunceford heard him, ever the talent scout, and the contact resulted in employment for pretty much the entire life of that band, give or take a few years spent assisting the political goals of Uncle Sam. It also resulted in a pile of recordings that is certainly respectable, although not capable of dwarfing the parcel backlog come Christmas time at the post office. When Norris does appear on recordings by other artists besides Lunceford, it is often in the context of a retrospective devoted to any of the other jazz instrumentalists who learned their trade in the Lunceford band. Norris started out playing banjo in the band in 1932, but two years later had switched to guitar with occasional features on violin. Following Lunceford's death in 1947, Norris worked in a group co-led by Ed Wilcox and Joe Thomas. When the guitarist decided to retire in the early '50s he was playing in a band fronted solely by Wilcox. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi