McPartland, Jimmy
[James Dugald
]
- Marcello Piras
Extract
[James Dugald ]
(b Chicago, IL, March 15, 1907; d Port Washington, NY, March 13, 1991). American cornetist. His father was a music teacher and his elder brother Dick a guitarist. He started studying violin at age five and spent part of his childhood in orphanages. He took up cornet at 15 and embraced jazz as a member of the Austin High School Gang, with Frank Teschemacher (clarinet), Bud Freeman (tenor saxophone), Joe Sullivan (piano), Jim Lanigan (bass and tuba), Dave Tough (drums), and his brother. In the period 1924–5 McPartland played with the Wolverines, replacing Bix Beiderbecke, who gave him a cornet that he played throughout his life. He also worked in dance bands, including those of Ben Pollack, Benny Goodman, Jack Teagarden, and Glenn Miller, and participated in the McKenzie–Condon Chicagoans session that produced “China Boy,” which was later described as a prototype of the Chicago style, a nervous, aggressive, solo-oriented variant of Dixieland....
