The musician whose name looks like a word jumble started banjo at the age of 17 during an era when that instrument was a required item in every jazz rhythm section. This was indeed the instrumental status quo during Brick Fleagle's early days working with bands in Florida and on the road with Sam Robbins and His Baltimoreans. In the late '20s, however, a switch to guitar was demanded by the changing styles. Fleagle did just that and began working steadily in the swingingdance bands fronted by performers such as Orville Knapp, Roy Ingram and Hal Kemp. It was a busy period of performances and recordings, many of the latter marketed under a variety of band names even though the same musicians were sometimes featured.

Fleagle began leading his own group at the Arcadia Ballroom venue in New York City during the mid '30s. There was a collaboration with Joe Haymes in 1936, yet clearly the major musical alliance Fleagle strummed his way into was with the fine trumpeter Rex Stewart. The two became lifelong friends and managed to record together many times, material that has become easily accesible to the jazz listener via reissues with dramatic titles such as The Rex Stewart Story: 1926-1945. Meanwhile the connection with players of Stewart's calibre as well as Fleagle's own finesse with pen and paper led to arranging opportunities for many of the era's top big bands. Fleagle's arrangements were played by Chick Webb, Jimmie Lunceford, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington and of course Stewart.

Ellington became a regular employer, utilizing Fleagle's services as a music copyist as well as putting the man in the guitar chair for certain recording sessions. The music copying racket--actually, it can be quite a quiet activity--would later become bread and butter for Fleagle. But first he explored opportunities in both radio an recording session work, providing guitar and arrangements on an either/or basis.

Fleagle worked with the D'Artega Orchestra in the early '40s and in 1943 went out to New Mexico with his old friend Stewart to play in a group led by Dick Ballou. More recordings under his own name emerged in this period including the autobiographical Brick's Boogie and a tune hilariously entitled The Fried Piper. These sides were both issued oriinally under the name of Brick Fleagle and his Orchestra and have been reissued by Mosaic on a compilation entitled The Complete HRS Sessions. Beginning in the '50s Fleagle launched his own arranging and copying firm, an endeavour that has provided sustenance ever since. While it is true that being a copyist is a good way to keep one's name out of the limelight, some jazz scholars have gone too far with Fleagle's name, incorrectly suggesting that no such person ever existed and it was just a pseudonym for Stewart! ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi