Biography
Garvin Bushell entered the jazz scene at the dawn of recorded music, yet during the 1960s he appeared on sessions alongside John Coltrane at the Village Vanguard in 1961 and with Miles Davis in the Gil Evans Orchestra. He took up piano at age six and turned to clarinet seven years later. A player of exceptional technique, he would likely have pursued a classical career under different circumstances; instead he attended Wilberforce University and performed in theatrical productions and vaudeville circuits. After relocating to New York in 1919 he toured and recorded with Mamie Smith’s Jazz Hounds and also accompanied Ethel Waters. He joined Sam Wooding’s Orchestra for a European sojourn that lasted from 1925 to 1927, and he further worked in the Keep Shufflin’ revue and alongside Johnny Dunn. In 1928, as a member of the Louisiana Sugar Babies—a quartet completed by Jabbo Smith, Fats Waller, and James P. Johnson—he contributed some of the earliest jazz bassoon solos captured on disc; he was likewise an accomplished oboist and flutist. Subsequent associations included stints with Otto Hardwick in 1931, Fess Williams in 1933, Fletcher Henderson from 1935 to 1936, Cab Calloway from 1936 to 1937, and Chick Webb. Throughout the 1940s he performed with Eddie Mallory and Edgar Hayes, directed several ensembles of his own, and recorded with Bunk Johnson in 1947. He later became a music educator whose pupils included King Curtis, performed on bassoon with the Chicago Civic Orchestra, appeared with the Fletcher Henderson Reunion Band in 1958, and replaced the late Omer Simeon in Wilbur DeParis’ New New Orleans Jazz Band for the period 1959–1964. During the 1960s he resided for a time in Puerto Rico before establishing a permanent home in Las Vegas, where he continued teaching into the 1980s. Although his recorded output spans a broad range of contexts, he led only a single session in his entire career, yielding four titles in 1944.
Albums