Biography
Edgar Junius Hayes was born on 23 May 1904 in Lexington, Kentucky, and died on 28 June 1979 in San Bernadino, California. His reputation rests permanently on the delicate, cocktail-lounge reading he gave Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Star Dust’, issued as a 1938 coupling whose B-side was his own version of ‘In The Mood’. After completing studies at Fisk and Wilberforce Universities, Hayes made his first professional appearance alongside Fess Williams and, in 1924, organized the Blue Grass Buddies in Ohio. During the remainder of the decade he performed with several ensembles before joining the Mills Blue Rhythm Band in 1931 as pianist-arranger; he remained in that chair when Lucky Millinder took over the leadership three years later. Hayes departed Millinder’s ranks in mid-1936 and launched his own orchestra, which made its debut early the following year and cut its initial sides for Varsity and Decca. The fourteen-piece group included former Millinder colleagues Shelton Hemphill on trumpet, Joe Garland on tenor saxophone, Elmer James on bass and Crawford Wetherington on alto saxophone, while the rhythm section featured twenty-two-year-old drummer Kenny Clarke, who would later emerge as a central figure in bebop. Hayes took the band to Scandinavia in 1938 for a series of recordings on the Swedish Odeon label, yet neither those sessions nor any subsequent Decca releases yielded another success comparable to ‘Star Dust’, and the ensemble disbanded in 1941. By 1942 he had relocated to California, where he held a residency at Somerset House in Riverside until 1946; thereafter he fronted a smaller unit billed as the Stardusters at various West Coast locations into the early 1950s. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Hayes worked principally as a solo pianist, concentrating on lounge engagements and regularly returning to ‘Star Dust’ for audiences who recalled his earlier years as a bandleader.