Eddie White
Biography
"My brothers have forsaken me!" could have been the way pianist Eddie White greeted the news that Harry White and Willie White -- a trombonist and combination trumpeter and saxophonist, respectively -- would be spending a larger portion of their bandstand time working with the up-and-coming Duke Ellington aggregation rather than their own, presumably precious White Brothers Orchestra. The White group also involved two cousins, the tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Gil White and the saxophonist and pianist Morris White. That concludes the veritable blizzard of professional musicians emerging from this clan in the early 20th century.
Eddie White and the rest of the brood relocated to Washington, D.C., from Bethlehem, PA, well before the start of the Roaring Twenties. The boys had already become professional musicians as teenagers, some of them already on the road with minstrel shows, vaudeville, and other traveling revues. Ellington as well as the excellent Claude Hopkins began dipping into the White family employment pool by 1920, placing this jazz dynasty among the early collaborators in the world of Ellingtonia. The family band did less and less work as members such as Harry White began spending more and more time away from the capital. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi
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