Biography
Ben Thigpen, whose son Ed Thigpen would later earn acclaim as a bebop and modern jazz drummer, owed much of his own rhythmic foundation to older sister Eva Thigpen. She first placed him at the piano before allowing the switch to drums. Professional work began for him in the early 1920s in South Bend, Indiana, inside Bobby Boswell’s band, and he soon added dance accompaniment to his schedule before relocating to Chicago for percussion lessons with Jimmy Bertrand.
Throughout the middle of the decade the drummer worked alongside numerous skilled classic jazz figures active in the Windy City, among them trumpeter Doc Cheatham. From 1927 he spent two years in Charlie Elgar’s Creole Band, although that association produced no recordings. A multi-year engagement in Cleveland with J. Frank Terry’s combo preceded the longest and most celebrated chapter of his career, his membership in Andy Kirk’s Clouds of Joy. Kirk, the pivotal Kansas City bandleader who helped develop such talents as pianist Mary Lou Williams, kept Thigpen in the rhythm section from 1930 through 1947. A large share of Thigpen’s recorded legacy stems from this period, some of it later reissued within collections focused on Williams’s early output. Far fewer documents survive from his subsequent years, during which he led his own quintet in St. Louis and, in the 1960s, teamed with bassist Singleton Palmer.
Throughout the middle of the decade the drummer worked alongside numerous skilled classic jazz figures active in the Windy City, among them trumpeter Doc Cheatham. From 1927 he spent two years in Charlie Elgar’s Creole Band, although that association produced no recordings. A multi-year engagement in Cleveland with J. Frank Terry’s combo preceded the longest and most celebrated chapter of his career, his membership in Andy Kirk’s Clouds of Joy. Kirk, the pivotal Kansas City bandleader who helped develop such talents as pianist Mary Lou Williams, kept Thigpen in the rhythm section from 1930 through 1947. A large share of Thigpen’s recorded legacy stems from this period, some of it later reissued within collections focused on Williams’s early output. Far fewer documents survive from his subsequent years, during which he led his own quintet in St. Louis and, in the 1960s, teamed with bassist Singleton Palmer.