Biography
Elmer Crumbley, a trombonist, constructed a lifelong career in music that began in locales where his slide risked snagging on tumbleweed or an eager lasso. Audiences still drawn to traditional swing sounds continued to hear him decades later, purchasing tickets for the Cab Calloway and Earl Hines orchestras that toured throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Frequently the senior figure amid much younger sidemen, the veteran had already logged time with outfits such as the Dandie Dixie Minstrels, which he entered in 1926 between engagements with bandleader Lloyd Hunter.
Autumn 1930 found the trombonist in Kansas City alongside the George E. Lee band, an eastward advance from his starting point in an Oklahoma town named after a snake, after he had first headed farther west. Early in the decade he also worked in Nebraska with western swing pioneer Tommy Douglas and another local leader, Bill Owens, while sustaining ties to Hunter and to players including Jabbo Smith and the Chicago success Erskine Tate. In 1934 Crumbley assembled his own ensemble in Omaha, but before the year closed he joined the Jimmie Lunceford band. Like many musicians who passed through that celebrated group, he found the experience satisfying enough to remain for the next thirteen years.
Thereafter he played trombone, occasionally adding vocals, with Eddie Wilcox as well as Lucky Millinder and Erskine Hawkins. Late in the 1950s European listeners encountered him on tour with Sammy Price, a period that also placed him in Harlem’s Apollo scene inside Reuben Phillips’s lively combo. By the middle of the following decade the durable careers of both Calloway and Hines again kept Crumbley active on the instrument.
Autumn 1930 found the trombonist in Kansas City alongside the George E. Lee band, an eastward advance from his starting point in an Oklahoma town named after a snake, after he had first headed farther west. Early in the decade he also worked in Nebraska with western swing pioneer Tommy Douglas and another local leader, Bill Owens, while sustaining ties to Hunter and to players including Jabbo Smith and the Chicago success Erskine Tate. In 1934 Crumbley assembled his own ensemble in Omaha, but before the year closed he joined the Jimmie Lunceford band. Like many musicians who passed through that celebrated group, he found the experience satisfying enough to remain for the next thirteen years.
Thereafter he played trombone, occasionally adding vocals, with Eddie Wilcox as well as Lucky Millinder and Erskine Hawkins. Late in the 1950s European listeners encountered him on tour with Sammy Price, a period that also placed him in Harlem’s Apollo scene inside Reuben Phillips’s lively combo. By the middle of the following decade the durable careers of both Calloway and Hines again kept Crumbley active on the instrument.