Biography
Beginning his career chiefly as a trumpeter, Jimmy Wade started directing ensembles of his own in Chicago from approximately 1916 onward. Accompanying blues singer Lucille Hegamin, he journeyed westward to the Pacific coast and performed during a lengthy stay in Seattle prior to his relocation to New York in 1919. Around 1922, following his departure from Hegamin, Wade made his way back to Chicago, where he collaborated with pianist Doc Cooke. Not long afterward, he resumed leadership of his personal band throughout the Chicago area. Violinist Eddie South took on the roles of frontman and musical director for Jimmy Wade's Syncopators in 1924, at which point he recorded for the first time alongside the ensemble. For a period, the musicians performed at Chicago's Moulin Rouge Café. Prior to South's exit in 1927, the band also appeared at New York's Savoy Ballroom and Club Alabam. Wade conducted a recording session under his own name in Chicago during 1928 on the Vocalion label, featuring sidemen such as trumpeter Punch Miller and pianist Alex Hill. From that point forward, Wade primarily continued as a bandleader, yet his sessions have appeared in reissues credited to his more prominent collaborators South, Miller, and Hill.