Louis Smith
Edward Louis Smith (Memphis, Tennessee, May 20, 1931 - August 20, 2016) was an American jazz trumpeter.
While studying at the University of Michigan, he played with visiting musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thad Jones and Billy Mitchell, before going on to play with Kenny Burrell, Horace Silver, Sonny Stitt, Count Basie and Al McKibbon, Cannonball Adderley, Percy Heath, Philly Joe Jones, Lou Donaldson, Donald Byrd, Kenny Dorham and Zoot Sims.
He began his career with two albums for Blue Note. The first, Here Comes Louis Smith, originally recorded for the Boston based Transition Records, featured Cannonball Adderley (then under contract to Mercury) playing under the pseudonym "Buckshot La Funke", Tommy Flanagan, Duke Jordan, Art Taylor and Doug Watkins. Smith's initial music career was brief; he became a teacher at the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor's public school system, but later recorded for the SteepleChase label.
His cousin Booker Little was also a trumpeter.
Louis Smith died August, 20, 2016.
He was in the front ranks of modern jazz players who emerged from Memphis in the 1950s, though his 1931 birth year made him slightly older than most of the players he was showcased with on the 1959 album Young Men From Memphis. The United Artists release marked the virtual recording debuts of his cousin, 21-year-old Booker Little, and 22-year-old Frank Strozier, and it was among the earliest recordings by Phineas Newborn, Jr. and George Coleman.
By that time, Smith had two Blue Note releases to his credit, Here Comes Louis Smith and Smithville; the former featured Cannonball Adderley under the nom de disque, Buckshot Le Funke. (Branford Marsalis revived the name as an album title in 1994.) Smith made his devotion to Clifford Brown evident on Hear Comes, which opened with “Tribute to Brownie.” The trumpeter sounded right at home the following year with Horace Silver’s quintet at the Newport Jazz Festival, and he was the lone trumpeter on Kenny Burrell’s marathon Blue Note blowing session, Blue Lights, Volumes 1 and 2.
Notwithstanding this promising start, Smith left the New York scene to teach, first in public schools in Atlanta, then on to Tennessee State University in the mid-sixties, and finally to his alma mater, the University of Michigan. He went nearly 20 years before he recorded again in 1978 for Steeplechase Records; Just Friends was his first release for the Danish jazz label, and it reunited him with Memphis colleagues George Coleman, Jamil Nasser, and Harold Mabern. It was followed by Prancin’, which marked a reunion between Smith and Junior Cook, his front-line mate in Silver’s quintet. For the next two decades, he continued making one great album after another of state-of-the-art bebop.
Smith was largely unknown to American audiences beyond Ann Arbor, but he’s left a substantial legacy.
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