John Spikes

John Curry Spikes (July 22, 1881 – June 28, 1955) was an American jazz musician and entrepreneur.

Along with his brother Reb Spikes, John ran a traveling show band in early 1900s. At one point, Jelly Roll Morton was a member of the band.[1] The Spikes brothers were performing in San Francisco around 1915, under the name The Original So-Different Orchestra, with Reb Spikes billed as the "World's Greatest Saxophonist".[2] Around 1919, they settled in Los Angeles, where they started a music store, a nightclub, an agency and a publishing house.[1]

They were the first to record an all-black jazz band in 1922.[1] In 1927, they shot a short sound film that predated The Jazz Singer, the first full-length sound film.[1] Their most enduring musical collaborations were writing the lyrics to Morton's Wolverine Blues and their own composition, Someday Sweetheart, which has become a jazz standard.[3]

Notes
  1. The Rough Guide to Jazz. Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather, Brian Priestley and Charles Alexander. Rough Guides, 2004. pp. 752-753. ISBN 1-84353-256-5
  2. Floyd Levin: "The Spikes brothers - a Los Angeles saga", Jazz Journal, December 1951
  3. Someday Sweetheart at jazzstandards.com - retrieved on 7 May 2009
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