William Thornton Blue

William Thornton Blue

Sometimes credited as just plain Bill Blue -- not to be confused with several other performers who use that stage name -- this reed player came out of the St. Louis music scene, where his father taught music part-time. Blue was a popular player with quite a few local bands of that era, including the Wilson Robinson's Bostonians outfit, which introduced Blue to the rigors of the road. In 1924, Blue was associated with Charlie Creath, and the following year he vamoosed to New Orleans and joined up with Dewey Jackson. The latter player took Blue back home to St. Louis as part of his touring plans, but the reedman was basically right back out the door again, this time to New York City and an extended stint with Andy Preer & the Cotton Club Orchestra.

1928 marked Blue's first European tour as part of the Noble Sissle orchestra on an itinerary that had a great impact on foreign jazz audiences. Blue hung around Paris and collaborated with bassist

John Ricks throughout the fall of that year. Then he was back in New York with the Missourians, a move that showed a smidgen of hometown loyalty, at least when it came to choosing a band to play in. In the early '30s there were also brief jobs with the zany Cab Calloway and the progressive Luis Russell. At this point, Blue's story becomes quite blue, however; he has few credits for the remainder of the '30s, apparently due to a breakdown in his health. The last years of his life were spent in a New York sanatorium, and he was buried in St. Louis. Colorblind jazz scholars sometimes confuse him with

the trumpeter and saxophonist Thornton Brown. Eugene Chadbourne