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In 2006, Heather Kuhn, a programmer for the Regent Theater, the first vaudeville theater in the Boston area, hired me as musical director for the theater's 90th anniversary.  A huge fan of early jazz, I leapt at the opportunity to explore some of the music of late 1920s Chicago and Harlem.  1929 in particular was a transitional year for jazz.  The music was transforming from the sound of New Orleans in the early '20s, which was mostly centered around small ensemble group improvisation, into more sophisticated arrangements which would become the standard for big band music of the 30s and 40s. 

Two of the torch bearers for this transition were Don Redman and John Nesbitt, important arrangers in the history of jazz.  Redman played many reed instruments but his biggest contribution was as an arranger.  He got his start with the heralded Fletcher Henderson band in the mid 1920s and in 1927 was hired as the lead arranger for a band out of Detroit led by drummer William McKinney named McKinney's Cotton Pickers.  It was with the Cotton Pickers that Redman and arranger John Nesbitt took the jazz orchestra to new frontiers.  The Cotton Pickers moved to Harlem in 1928.  In 1931 Redman left the Cotton Pickers (with some of its members) to lead an orchestra under his own name.

One of the best bands from 1929 Harlem was Charlie Johnson's Paradise Orchestra, the house band at Small's Paradise Club (229 1/2 7th Avenue and 135th Street).  Over the years of its existence, the Paradise Orchestra featured an all-star cast, including saxophonists Benny Carter and Ben Waters (each of whom assisted with Johnson in arranging for the orchestra), tubist Cyrus St Clair, trombonist Jimmy Harrison, and cornetists Jabbo Smith and Thomas Morris, and vocalist Monette Moore.

The vastly underrated Hartzell "Tiny" Parham was a bandleader/composer who grew up in Kansas City and got his start in Chicago playing organ and piano in theaters.  In Chicago, he formed an orchestra in 1926 and recorded for Victor five times between 1928 and 1930.  The combination of Parham's atmospheric melodies and haunting reed lines with slow lumbering low brass lines gave the music a unique quality at the time rivaled only by Ellington.  After 1930, Parham spent the remainder of his life playing vaudeville theaters in Chicago's south side, often playing organ solo.  Tiny Parham died at the early age of 43 in a dressing room in Milwaukee during a show in 1943.

In 1926 Chicago, flamboyant clarinetist and bandleader Stanley "Fess" Williams formed the Royal Flush Orchestra and held residency at the Savoy Ballroom starting on its opening night Thanksgiving Eve 1927.  The Savoy hosted many big name acts during the late 1920s, including Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong.  The Savoy usually hosted two bands a night, seven nights a week.  When one band took a break, the other would go on.  In 1928 Fess fronted Dave Peyton's band at the Regal Theater under the name Fess Williams and His Joy Boys and added a string section (three violins) to the typical 9-piece hot jazz orchestra instrumentation.  The Royal Flush Orchestra recorded its last side in 1930.  Williams remained active as a bandleader, but as the decade progressed he fell out of favor with the public and eventually retired from performing full-time to sell real estate.  Williams was the uncle of bassist Charlie Mingus.