JIMMY CHEATHAM

Instruments: Trombone, Bandleader
Date of Birth: June 18, 1924
Place of Birth: Birmingham, Alabama

Jimmy Cheatham, bass trombonist and bandleader, and Jeannie Cheatham singer and pianist, are a husband and wife team that falls into a Kansas City-style jazz-blues category. Although Jimmy Cheatham is formally trained, having studied at the New York Conservatory of Modern Music and other institutes, and possesses a jazz sophistication, a good portion of his and his wife's catalogue is blues-based.

The two musicians met in 1956 and married in 1959. In the ;50s Jeannie Cheatham worked with Dakota Staton, Jimmy Rushing, Jimmy Witherspoon, and other jazz and jazz-based blues artists. While living in New York in the 1960s Jimmy Cheatham worked as Chico Hamilton's music director, and in 1972 worked briefly with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. To complement their performance careers, Jimmy Cheatham taught in the jazz program, first at Benington College in Vermont, then at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in the mid ‘70s. Currently Cheatham heads the jazz studies program at the University of California at San Diego.

In 1983 Jeannie Cheatham was featured in the documentary Three Generations of Blues, with singers Sippie Wallace and Big Mama Thornton. Increased exposure led to a recording contract with Concord Records a year later. The Cheathams also ran weekly jam sessions in two San Diego hotels, the Sheraton and Bahia, from 1978 to 1984. When Jimmy Cheatham isn't teaching, the duo tours with its band, Sweet Baby Blues. The Cheathams' most recent album, Blues and the Boogie Masters, was released on Concord in 1993.

Essential Listening: Sweet Baby Blues / Concord (CJ 258)
Midnight Mama / Concord (CJ 297)
Homeward Bound / Concord (CJ 321)
Back to the Neighborhood / Concord (CJ 373)
Luv in the Afternoon / Concord (CCD 4429)
Basket Full of Blues / Concord (CCD 4501)

page 88, The Big Book of Blues: A Biographical Encyclopedia by Robert Santelli