Frank Newton born 4 January 1908

Frankie Newton (January 4, 1908* – March 11, 1954) was one of jazz trumpet's most individualistic, dynamic stylists who has been consigned largely to the footnotes and margins of the music's history.

William Frank Newton (he preferred “Frank” to “Frankie”) was born in Blacksburg, an African-American community located near Emory, Virginia. Blacksburg was named for and was the location of Emory and Henry College. Virginia researcher Jennifer Wagner believes he was educated in a segregated schoolhouse and stayed in school until he was 14. There are no indications that he got early musical education. 

In an interview, Newton said his first music was played: “…in Roanoke, Virginia, at a very early age, with a guy named Johnny Locklear, after which I left Roanoke with a banjo player, Ike Williams.” Newton then played in McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, (formerly Milt Senior’s Synco Jazz Band) before joining the Lloyd Scott band in West Virginia around 1926. 

The Scott band spent most of its time on the road, but got to New York City and spent two years playing in the Capitol Palace, a Harlem after-hours club. Newton spent the following few years on the road, playing with bands led by Scott, Charlie Johnson, Chick Webb, and Sam Wooding. His first recorded solo is in a song called “In A Corner,” with Cecil Scott and His Bright Boys in 1929. 

The first opportunities Newton had to record as an individual sideman, not as part of an orchestra, were provided by record producer John Hammond. Hammond had heard Newton at the Capital palace, and hired him for a gig in 1932 at the Mt. Kisco Country Club, north of New York City, with Fats Waller and others.

Onyx Club Band 1937. Newton far right.

In 1932, he joined Benny Carter’s Orchestra and, in 1933 he distinguished himself as a sideman on Bessie Smith’s last sessions. Newton apparently continued playing off and on with bands between 1933-1936 which included one led by Charlie Johnson, but there are no recordings of him after the 1933 Bessie Smith sessions until he recorded a session led by tenor saxophonist Art Karle in 1935. This octet resulted in 4 releases, but from 1936-1939 he appeared on scores of recordings, both as sideman and, starting in 1937, as leader. 

                                   

In 1938, Newton was brought in to lead the house band at the new Café Society, per the suggestion of record producer John Hammond to club owner Barney Josephson. Politically, the club and Newton were an excellent fit. It was the first self-declared integrated nightclub in New York City and became the habitué of leftist writers and activists. Billie Holiday was the featured vocalist and in the spring of 1939, Newton’s band recorded “Strange Fruit” with her; possibly the most powerful song about white-on-black violence in America ever recorded. 

In the first eight months of 1939, Newton had recorded for all three of the major labels (Columbia, Victor and Decca) plus two new independent labels (Blue Note, for which label he was the first horn player to record, and Commodore), all of which used the same business model: flat fees for the musicians, followed by extensive distribution of records, with all of the profits going back to the company and no residuals for the musicians (unless they were able to receive composer credits). 

Newton with Sidney Bechet

Around 1940, after having established himself as one of the foremost swing players in the country, he continued to play, but music no longer dominated his life. In the fourteen years until his death, he left only a handful of recordings. There are famous guerilla live recordings with Art Tatum at Monroe’s Uptown in 1941, then sessions in 1944 as a sideman on Mary Lou Williams’ recordings and a session in 1946 as sideman with vocalist Stella Brooks. While all these positive activities were happening, Newton was also drinking heavily. 

He’d been going back and forth between New York and Boston for gigs in the late 1940s-early ’50s, but eventually Newton’s drinking became too much for George Wein to handle and he stopped booking him gigs. Several sources say that Newton made his final appearance at Storyville in Boston March 16-29, 1953, but the sessions weren’t released and have never surfaced. In 1954, Newton tried to make a comeback, deciding to audition for a spot on the television show, Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts. Apparently he passed the audition, but before he could appear on the show he died on March 11, 1954, of acute gastritis. 

(Edited from article by Steve Provizer @ Syncopated Times) *(some sources give 1906 as birth year)