Frank Comstock born 20 September 1922

Frank G. Comstock (September 20, 1922 – May 21, 2013) was an American composer, arranger, conductor, and trombonist. For television, Comstock wrote and arranged music for major situation comedies and variety shows; his theme and incidental music for Rocky and His Friends (1959–1964) are probably his best-remembered works. Additionally, his music for Adam-12 earned him a 1971 Emmy nomination. 

Born in San Diego, California, Comstock had no formal training other than a few trombone lessons, and his junior high school music teacher helped him write his first arrangements for the school dance band. While still in high school, Comstock sold arrangements to local San Diego dance bands. After graduation, Comstock's high school friend, the late trumpeter Uan Rasey, landed a job touring with Sonny Dunham's nationally known dance band. Dunham hired Comstock on Uan's recommendation. When Sonny Dunham's band folded, Dunham's manager recommended Comstock to Benny Carter. Carter, a musician and arranger himself, soon delegated arrangement-related chores to Comstock. 

Les Brown & Doris Day

In 1943, Comstock's reputation led to an arranger position with Les Brown and His Band of Renown, which critics claimed was one of the key causes of the band's success. In 1947, while continuing to arrange for Brown, Comstock began freelancing in the Hollywood studios and for various record labels. Doris Day sang his arrangements with the Brown band, and that resulted in Comstock writing arrangements for her on such films as I'll See You in My Dreams (1951), On Moonlight Bay (1951), By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953), April in Paris (1952), Calamity Jane (1953) and others. Comstock and Day remained friends to the end of his life and, as late as the 1990s, still joked about going back on the road. 

                            Here’s “Patterns” from above LP

                                   

He often went uncredited, as with his arrangement of "I Wanna Be Loved by You" for Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot (1959) or work on The Desert Song (1953), Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and Finian's Rainbow (1968). He did get screen credit for his orchestrations on The Eddie Cantor Story (1953), The Helen Morgan Story (1957), The Music Man (1962), Hello, Dolly! (1969) and other films. 

In the 1950s, Comstock became friendly with producer-star and jazz fan Jack Webb, who hired Comstock to supply the themes and underscore for his TV series The D.A.'s Man (1959), Temple Houston (1963-64), Adam-12 (1968-75) and Escape (1973). His sole Emmy nomination was for scoring the 1970 Adam-12 episode "Elegy for a Pig." In addition, he scored many episodes of Pete Kelly's Blues (1959) and Dragnet (1968-70); the feature film The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961) and the TV-movies The D.A.: Murder One (1969) and The D.A.: Conspiracy to Kill (1971), all Webb productions. He also arranged much of the jukebox music heard during the early seasons of the 1970s hits Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley; and scored the TV-movie The Night That Panicked America (1975). 

His association with Les Brown resulted in his contributions of arrangements to Bob Hope TV specials for 15 years. Over the years, he also arranged songs for variety shows headlined by Judy Garland, Andy Williams and Carol Burnett.In addition to his work in the studios, he was a busy arranger for records, especially in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Comstock's recording credits include eight Hi-Lo's albums in collaboration with vocal arranger Gene Puerling, throughout the 1950s; he also wrote charts for Frankie Laine, Rosemary Clooney and other singers, and contributed arrangements for theme-park rides at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. 

His own albums included A Young Man's Fancy (1954), Patterns (1955), and  a favorite among TV-theme collectors TV Guide Top Television Themes (1959), on which he shared arranging duties with Warren Barker His cult exotica favorite Project Comstock: Music From Outer Space (1962) became a classic and was released on CD in 2004. In 2007, Brian Setzer "rediscovered" Frank Comstock and commissioned new arrangements for his Wolfgang's Big Night Out and Songs from Lonely Avenue CDs. 

He died in Huntington Beach, California, May 21, 2013 (aged 90)

(Edited from Wikipedia  & The Film Music Society) 

Lovie Austin born 19 September 1887

Cora "Lovie" Austin (September 19, 1887 – July 8, 1972) was one of the premier bandleaders in the hot jazz scene in Chicago in the 1920’s. She was the house pianist at Paramount records, where she accompanied the best women singers, as well as leading her own sessions with formidable sidemen of the era. She and Lil Hardin Armstrong are often ranked as two of the best female jazz blues piano players of the period. 

She was born Cora Calhoun in Chattanooga, Tennessee and grew up with eight brothers and sisters. Her early career was in vaudeville where she played piano and performed in variety acts. She was married in 1908 for a short time to a movie house operator in Detroit and then later married a vaudeville performer, Phillip Austin in 1910. She studied music theory at Roger Williams University in Nashville, and Knoxville College in Knoxville, Tennessee, which was uncommon for African American women and jazz musicians alike during the time. Austin could have chosen a respectable career as a music teacher. But, like her contemporary Lil Hardin Armstrong, also a classically trained pianist, Austin opted for the more lucrative world of live entertainment, playing piano and performing in variety acts on the thriving black vaudeville circuit. 

                                   

Tiring of the relentless touring and poor conditions, Austin had settled in Chicago in 1923, a magnet for entertainers and musicians. She lived and worked there for the rest of her life. She led her own band, the Blues Serenaders, which usually included trumpeters Tommy Ladnier, Bob Shoffner, Natty Dominique, or Shirley Clay on cornet, Kid Ory or Albert Wynn on trombone, and Jimmy O'Bryant or Johnny Dodds on clarinet, along with banjo and occasional drums. The Blues Serenaders developed their own unique sound within the jazz genre. Together they recorded 16 sides for Paramount between 1924 and 1926. 

From the 1920s into the late 1940s, Austin recorded with many of the great blues singers, including Chippie Hill, Ida Cox, Edmonia Henderson, Alberta Hunter, and Ma Rainey. Austin's skills as songwriter can be heard in the classic "Down Hearted Blues", a tune she co-wrote with Alberta Hunter. Singer Bessie Smith turned the song into a hit in 1923. Austin worked with many other top jazz musicians of the 1920s, including Louis Armstrong, with whom she worked on the song "Heebie Jeebies". Austin was often seen racing around town in her Stutz Bearcat with leopard skin upholstery, dressed to the teeth. 

When the classic blues craze began to wane in the early 1930s, Austin settled into the position of musical director for the Monogram Theater, at 3453 South State Street in Chicago where all the Theatre Owners’ Booking Association (TOBA) acts played. She worked there for 20 years. During wartime, many jazz musicians had to find other forms of work to support themselves and Austin worked in a war plant during World War II. In a 1950 profile of Lovie published in DownBeat, she lamented that after the death of Paramount’s owner her royalty checks stopped coming, and by 1954, a piece in Hue Magazine titled “What Happened To Lovie Austin?” revealed that after twenty years at the Monogram, she was working as a pianist at Jimmy Payne’s Dancing School where she performed and recorded occasionally. 

Lovie Austin & Alberta Hunter

In 1961 jazz critic Chris Albertson brought Hunter and Austin back into the studio to record “Alberta Hunter with Lovie Austin and her Blues Serenaders”, in which the two performed “Down Hearted Blues” together for the first time since 1922. This album would be Austin’s last recording although she did continue to perform throughout the 1960s, finally retiring in the early 1970s. Austin, unfortunately, would not have a long retirement, for she passed away at the age of 84 years, in Chicago on July 10, 1972, surrounded by scores and staves, of accomplished songs and others barely sketched, of records, books, letters, portraits of loved ones and fragments of the past immortalized on photographs, of immeasurable memorabilia, and of her eternal and precious piano. She was buried in Mount Glenwood Memory Gardens South, Glenwood, Cook County, Illinois. 

In later life, Hunter remembered Austin as “a wonderful woman. She was kindhearted. She tried to help everybody she could.” Mary Lou Williams, who became one of the most influential female jazz musicians and composers of the twentieth century, never forgot her debt to Austin. “She was a fabulous woman and a fabulous musician too,” Williams was quoted as saying in the liner notes for a Stash Records retrospective, reproduced on the Red Hot Jazz website. “I don’t believe there’s a woman around now who could compete with her. She was a greater talent than many of the men.” 

(Edited from encyclopedia.com., All About Jazz, Wikipedia, Historia Hoy & Find a Grave) (Please note I have noticed many photos on the web of Lovie Austin which are actually Alberta Hunter, so beware!) 

Louis Myers born 18th September 2024

Louis Myers (September 18, 1929 - September 05, 1994) was an American blues guitarist, harmonicist, bassist, arranger and singer. Associated with the Chicago blues scene of the 1960's and on, having backed and played with countless Chicago notables. Though he was certainly capable of brilliantly fronting a band Louis Myers will forever be recognized first and foremost as a top-drawer sideman and founding member of the Aces -- the band that backed harmonica wizard Little Walter on his immortal early Checker waxings. 

Born in Byhalia, Mississippi, along with his older brother David they left for Chicago with his family in 1941. Fate saw that the family move next door to blues great Lonnie Johnson, whose complex riffs caught young Louis' ear. Another Myers brother, harp-blowing Bob, hooked Louis up with guitarist Othum Brown for house party gigs. The Myers brothers originally performed as the Little Boys. With the addition of harmonica player Junior Wells, they became the Three Deuces and then the Three Aces. With the enlistment of the drummer Fred Below (pronounced BEE-low) in 1950, they became the Four Aces and finally the Aces. Influenced by jazz, their music led to the rise of the blues shuffle beat and helped launch the drums to a new prominence in blues bands. 

In 1952, Wells quit to join the Muddy Waters band, filling the vacancy created by the recent departure of Little Walter from that group. Walter quickly signed the remaining Aces as his new backing unit, renaming the trio the Jukes to capitalize on his current hit single, "Juke". Myers and the Aces backed Walter on his seminal "Mean Old World," "Sad Hours," "Off the Wall," and "Tell Me Mama" and at New York's famous Apollo Theater before Louis left in 1954 (he and the Aces moonlighted on Wells' indispensable 1953-1954 output for States). 

                                   

The resulting gradual dissolution of the Jukes as Little Walter's band freed the members to reform as a backing band for other Chicago blues musicians. Plenty of sideman work awaited Myers -- he played with Otis Rush, Earl Hooker, and many more. But his own recording career was practically non-existent; after a solitary 1956 single for Abco, "Just Whaling"/"Bluesy," that found Myers blowing harp in Walter-like style. 

In the late 1950s, Dave Myers switched from the guitar to the electric bass, becoming one of the first Chicago bluesmen to adopt this relatively new instrument and helping to popularize it in Chicago blues. During the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s the original Aces periodically reunited for recordings, tours, festivals and visited Europe often as a trusty rhythm section for touring acts. Myers cut a fine set for Advent in 1978, I'm a Southern Man, that showed just how effective he could be as a leader. 

Myers was hampered by the effects of a stroke while recording his last album for Earwig, 1991's Tell My Story Movin'. He courageously completed the disc but was limited to playing harp only. His health soon took a turn for the worse, ending his distinguished musical career when he died on September 05, 1994 in Chicago, Illinois. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic & Discogs) 

 

Curtis Peagler born 17 September 1929

Curtis Peagler (September 17, 1929 — December 19, 1992) was an American jazz saxophonist who was well rooted in the hard swing-oriented sound of the mid west, and played with some of the best in the business. He specialized in straight-ahead jazz and hard bop. 

Peagler was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He played in the blues genre during the first phase of his career. At 13, he started on the C-melody sax and soon joined the Sons of Rhythm on alto. He worked with other territory bands and backed singer Big Maybelle before joining the U.S. Army for two years from 1953 to 1955. After being discharged he attended the Cincinnati Conservatory for two years and played locally. 

In 1960, with the assistance of Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, he started recording for Prestige. Peagler then recorded with Lem Winchester and joined his Modern Jazz Disciples, which specialized in hard bop and recorded for Columbia. The band included a euphonium and normaphone player, William "Hicky" Kelley, an unusual instrument for jazz musicians to play during the era. The Disciples recorded two albums: the self-titled Modern Jazz Disciples (1959) and Right Down Front (1962). Peagler recorded as a member of Lem Winchester's sextet that recorded the album Lem's Beat in 1960, just a year before the vibraphone player died of a gun accident. 

                                     

Peagler moved to Los Angeles in 1962 to freelance and spent 1966-1967 and 1969 with Ray Charles. He did some studio work and toured with Count Basie for seven years (1971-1978). After the Basie years, back on the coast, he resettled in Los Angeles and started his own label Sea Pea Records, doing “For Basie and Duke,” as a leader. He also recorded “I'll Be Around,” as the Curtis Peagler 4, for Pablo Records. While at Pablo he did some fine work on albums by Harry “Sweets” Edison, Big Joe Turner, and the now famous dates where Oscar Peterson and Count Basie teamed up. 

Curtis in the Ray Charles band

Throughout the '80's Peagler was a featured saxophonist with the esteemed Jeannie and Jimmy Cheatham and the Sweet Baby Blues Band, and can be heard on all their Concord records recorded during that time. Jeannie Cheatham recollected that while on a European tour in Nice, France, a man pushed his way through the audience and asked Curtis to autograph a record. Curtis was always gracious and mannerly with folks earning him the nickname “Bourgeois.” “Of course” he said. Then took the obviously old record in his hands and stared at it in  disbelief. “Hey” he exclaimed, “this is the very first record I ever recorded! How did it get to Europe?”

Not waiting for an answer to his question, he launched into a story. “There was this record company in Cincinnati when I was a teenager. I told the owner I could play alto sax, but he wouldn’t listen to me. Told me I could hang around if I painted the outside of the studio. I told him I would.” Curtis closed his eyes, as if he were seeing that paint go onto the walls. “One day while I was painting, and straining to listen to the music inside, the owner came running out. He said one of the sax players hadn’t shown up and would I bring my horn in and play with the group.” We waited in anticipation. anticipation. 

“Well, I took my alto in there and tore it up! I knew this was my big chance.” He stared at the record again. “I was just a kid. I never had a chance to see or hear this record.” Curtis signed the cover. You could tell he was really overcome. He’d had a quadruple bypass operation earlier that year, and we knew this record signing was precious to him, “Every day is my lucky day!” Curtis was always philosophical and humorous. We all laughed. C’est si bon!   

Curtis Peagler was a solid, hard working sax man whose performance and recording resume was quite impressive. He remained in Los Angeles until his death December 19, 1992 following heart surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 55. 

Jazz critic Leonard Feather described Peagler as "an exciting, extrovert saxophonist who lent colour to every band he played in, from Ray Charles in the 1960s to Count Basie in the ‘70s." James Nadal referred to him as "a solid, hard working sax man whose performance and recording resume was quite impressive."

(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic & All About Jazz)

Cy Walter born 16 September 1915

Cy Walter (September 16, 1915 – August 18, 1968) was an American café society pianist based in New York City for four decades. 

Through the course of a musical career spanning some four decades (from 1929 through 1968), many sobriquets have been applied to describe Cy Walter’s talent, among them the “Art Tatum of Park Avenue”; the “darling of New York supper clubs”; the “champion of the genre”; the “poet of the piano”; the “Michelangelo of music”; the “grand master of harmony”; and the “Dean of Cocktail Pianists”. One WNEW radio announcer, struggling for an apt yet new accolade, even likened Cy Walter to Diogenes. 

Although sometimes categorized as a “jazz improvisationalist”, Cy preferred to characterize himself as a “stylist of show tunes”. The reality of Cy’s piano playing, however, was that his creative style was unique, largely defied stereotyped definition, and set its own standard. He was praised for his extensive repertoire (with an emphasis on show tunes) and improvisatory skill. His long radio and recording career included both solo and duo performances, and stints as accompanist for such elegant vocal stylists as Greta Keller, Mabel Mercer, and Lee Wiley. 

Born Cyril Frank Walter in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he grew up in a musical family and received early classical training from his mother, a professional piano teacher. In 1934, after a summer job playing piano on the overnight New York to Boston night cruise, he enrolled briefly at New York University but soon accepted an offer to join the Eddie Lane Orchestra on a full-time basis. Four years later, he formed a two-piano team with Gil Bowers and played at Le Ruban Bleu when it opened. Solo engagements followed at upscale bars and supper clubs like the Algonquin, the Blue Angel, and Tony's on West 52nd Street. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Walter explored other musical surroundings: as pit pianist with the Jerome Kern musical "Very Warm for May," as accompanist for Mabel Mercer and Greta Keller, and as leader of his own orchestra at the night club La Martinique. 

In 1942, Cy opened his own nightclub, Cy Walter’s Night Cap, whose days were numbered as Cy was called into the Maritime Service for, as he described it, “1 year, 2 months, 5 days, 22 hours, and 10 minutes”.  From 1944 to 1952, Walter appeared regularly (as part of a duo piano team with Stan Freeman, and later with Walter Gross) on ABC's popular weekly radio series Piano Playhouse. Reaching an international audience over Armed Forces Radio, and with commentary by Milton Cross, Playhouse featured (in addition to the anchor duo) notable guest pianists from the jazz and classical worlds, teamed up "in all sorts of unusual combinations as duos, trios and quartets." Richard Rodgers, Cy Walter, and Stan Freeman on the Piano Playhouse Show, performed before a live audience, circa late 1940s. 

                                    

Walter found an ideal showcase for his talents when he opened the elegant Drake Room of New York's Drake Hotel on December 21, 1945. The following year, a Metronome profile noted that "The Cy Walter appeal can be summed up with two t's: taste and the tune. ...

 Sinatra, Whiting and other bigtimers are constantly dropping by... to pick up on some obscure show tune that he has resurrected from the vast storehouse of his musical mind... obscure little melodies that never made the Hit Parade and great timeless songs that have been lost in the shuffle." Walter continued at the Drake Room from 1945 until 1951, building a reputation as the "dean of Manhattan's piano professors," according to The New Yorker (1950).He also played on Frank Sinatra’s Radio show from late 1946-7. 

By then a fixture on the New York music scene, Walter spent the rest of the 1950s performing at various Manhattan venues and recording both as a solo pianist and accompanist—-for example, on Ahmet Ertegun's fledgling Atlantic label. While not a prolific songwriter, he also crafted a number of songs in an advanced harmonic style. For example, he composed both words and music for "Some Fine Day" (1953), and collaborated with Alec Wilder on "Time and Tide" (1961) and Chilton Ryan on "You Are There" (1960) and "See a Ring Around the Moon" (1961). 

In 1959, Walter was invited to resume playing solo piano at the Drake Room. "I guess by now I know how to work the Drake Room," he quipped with typical understatement to an interviewer in 1966. This six-nights-a-week engagement would continue until a week before the pianist's death from lung cancer in 1968.  

From his earliest (and coveted) Liberty Music Shop 78 rpm records, through his last 33 1/3 rpm Cy Walter At The Drake LP release in 1966, Cy’s solo piano performances revealed an highly original musician whose compositions, and variations on well-known standards, had no parallel. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & cywalter.com)

Jimmy Gilmer born 15 September 1940

Jimmy Gilmer (September 15, 1940 - September 7, 2024) was better known as the lead singer to the most successful R&R band to emerge from New Mexico, The Fireballs. 

Jimmy Gilmer was born in Chicago, Illinois but grew up in Amarillo, Texas, where he studied music at the Musical Arts Conservatory. Her graduated from Amarillo High School in 1958. He led a rockabilly band, the Jimmy Gilmer Combo, that played at high school and college dances in a 100-mile radius of Amarillo. The Combo’s drummer, Gary Swaffert, also played drums for the Norman Petty Trio and was responsible for introducing Gilmer to Petty.  Jimmy’s first single, released under his own name on Decca in 1958, sold poorly, but Petty saw potential in Gilmer and encouraged him to return and record. 

At Petty’s NorVaJak recording studio in Clovis, New Mexico, Jimmy met a band from Raton, although he didn’t work with them. They were the Fireballs, who scored two instrumental Top 40 hits with ‘Torquay’ (1959) and ‘Bulldog’ (1960). After a major tour, their lead singer Chuck Tharpe suddenly quit and Gilmer joined the Fireballs as both vocalist and rhythm guitarist, though there were still solo releases by Gilmer as well as records by the Fireballs. Jimmy Gilmer first appeared on the UK scene in 1962 with a disc called 'Born To Be With You.' 

He must have liked the song because he recorded it twice – first for Hamilton in 1962 (credited to Chimmy Gilmer and released in the UK on London) and then again for Dot in 1965. ‘Born To Be With you’ was a countrified version of the song made popular by the Chordettes in 1956. A Norman Petty production, the single had hints of the Holly influence, but it’s hard to see who would have been attracted to it. Same goes for the B-side, ‘I’m Gonna Go Walkin’, a simple pop song. In the US, ‘I’m Gonna Go Walkin’ was the top side with ‘Won’t Be Long’ as the B side. 

It was Petty’s decision to eventually market the Fireballs to record companies as Jimmy Gilmer & The Fireballs, since he’d had previous success marketing the Crickets also as Buddy Holly & The Crickets. In 1962, Norman Petty signed the group to Randy Wood’s Dot label. From that point on Jimmy Gilmer, George Tomsco, Stan Lark and Doug Roberts would climb the ladder to stardom. 

                                    

1963 was a top year for the group as their song ‘Sugar Shack’ hit the top of the charts. Released in May 1963, it didn’t enter the Billboard charts until September 21, but three weeks later ‘Sugar Shack’ was at No.1, where it would stay for five weeks, becoming the biggest selling record of 1963 in the US. The follow-up, ‘Daisy Petal Pickin’ (which, like ‘Sugar Shack’, was co-written by Keith McCormack of The String-a-Longs), peaked at No.15. The group and Jimmy cut various flops for Dot in the mid-60s, and Gilmer recorded a Buddy Holly tribute album on his own. Signing to Atlantic in 1967, the Fireballs had another Top Ten hit with Tom Paxton’s ‘Bottle of Wine’, without giving top billing to Gilmer, although he was still in the band. The Fireballs were one of the very few groups in rock ‘n’ roll history to chart both instrumental and vocal hits on the Billboard Top 100. 

Gilmer’s albums included Sugar Shack (1963), Buddy’s Buddy (1964), Lucky ‘Leven (1965), Folkbeat (1965), Campusology (1966), Firewater (1968), Bottle of Wine (1968) and Come On, React! (1969). He left the Fireballs in 1969 and relocated to Nashville. He was hired by United Artists Music, where he built a 30-year publishing career. Through a number of mergers and acquisitions, he rose to become a vice president at CBS Songs, plus successive executive positions at EMI and SBK. Among the many songwriters he aided were Richard Leigh, Bobby Goldsboro and Pat Alger. He also signed Brad Paisley, whom he also managed through the early years of the star’s career. 

In 1989-91, he served as the president of the Nashville chapter of The Recording Academy. He was a 1992 graduate of Leadership Music. Meanwhile in 1989, George Tomsco, Stan Lark, and Chuck Tharp all original members of the Fireballs re-united for the Clovis Music Festival, then continued performing with original members until 2006, when Tharp died of cancer. When Gilmer retired in 2007 he re-joined his old group as lead vocalist and sang occasionally at oldies shows. Stan Lark retired from the group in 2016. 

Gilmer last performed with the Fireballs in February 2022 at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa.  He had suffered from Alzheimer’s in recent years and died in his hometown of Amarillo, while in hospice care, on September 7, 2024, eight days before his 84th birthday. 

Edited from 45cat, Wikipedia, Myhighplains.com, & Music Row) 

 

Jimmy James born 13 September 1940

Michael "Jimmy" James (13 September 1940 – 14 May 2024) was a Jamaican-British soul singer, known for songs like "Come to Me Softly", "Now Is the Time" and "I'll Go Where Your Music Takes Me". Based in Britain, he performed as the lead singer of Jimmy James and the Vagabonds from the mid-1960s. 

Michael James was born in Brown's Town, Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica on 13 September 1940. He grew up and began performing in Kingston, Jamaica, where he recorded as a solo artist with producers Coxsone Dodd, Clancy Eccles, and Lyndon Pottinger. His most successful release was an early version of "Come to Me Softly", which found local success and persuaded James to give up a job with the Inland Revenue for a music career. 

The Vagabonds were originally formed in 1960. James teamed up with them under Canadian band manager Roger Smith and in April 1964, they relocated to the UK. Ska-Time (Decca Records) was recorded as Jamaica's Own Vagabonds within two weeks of their arrival, and is one of the first examples of Jamaican ska music to be recorded in the UK. It was reissued as Skatime in 1970 on Decca's Eclipse label. After meeting manager Peter Meaden in 1965, Jimmy James and the Vagabonds supported the Who and Rod Stewart who was with his group the Steampacket at the Marquee Club in London. 

The band played the Shanklin Pier ballroom on the Isle of Wight in June 1965 and returned for two further sold-out concerts that summer. That same year they played the Richmond National Jazz and Blue Festival and they were also on the bill the following year when the festival was at Windsor. He and the Vagabonds shared several bills with Jimi Hendrix's band, the Experience, during the late 1960s when they were both trying to establish themselves. "We used to hang out a lot at clubs like The Bag O'Nails, the Cromwellian and Whiskey A Go Go. A great guy, very quiet and unassuming," James recalled. The Vagabonds and the Experience also played the Ricky Tick and Upper Cut clubs in London in December 1966 and January 1967 respectively, and at the Beachcomber Ballroom in Nottingham. 

                          

They signed a recording contract with Pye Records and released their best known studio album, The New Religion in 1966. The band also played as support for the Who, Sonny & Cher, Rod Stewart (who was also on Pye Records at the time) and the Rolling Stones. The band often used the Abbey Road Studios, once being there at the same time the Beatles were recording. Their live performance was captured in the album London Swings – Live at the Marquee Club, also featuring the Alan Bown Set. Jimmy James and the Vagabonds were labelmates and rivals of Geno Washington & the Ram Jam Band. 

The Vagabonds disbanded in 1970, but James, who owned the name, enlisted Alan Wood to form a band with a new, all-white line-up in 1973. They had hits in the UK Singles Chart with "I'll Go Where Your Music Takes Me" (1976) and "Now Is the Time". In 1976, they recorded funky disco song "Disco Fever" also. Phil Chen performed bass on Rod Stewart songs such as "Hot Legs", "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" and "Young Turks". Former Vagabonds bass player Alan Wood (1973–77) now runs his own management agency and represents Paul Carrack. 

In 1979 a new band, Big Business, was formed by Alan Kirk and Andrew Platts, former Vagabonds and they continue to tour to this day. Big Business toured with Mick Jackson ("Blame It on the Boogie"). Kirk owns Hilltop Studios in Dronfield near Chesterfield. In 1999, drummer Russ Courtenay co-wrote the track "Whatever You Need", which appeared on Tina Turner's album, 24/7, and later on her All the Best, Love Songs and The Platinum Collection compilation albums. 

James regularly performed around the UK with former Foundations frontman, Clem Curtis. The pair, along with Flirtations vocalist Earnestine Pearce toured with 'The Soul Explosion'. In 2007 he contributed to the track "The Other Side of the Street" for Ian Levine's Northern Soul album. In April 2007, James performed at the Classic Gold Weekender along with Marmalade, Love Affair and Showaddywaddy.  In 2013, they toured with James' early hero, Ben E. King. 

At the age of 80, James continued with concert appearances into the latter half of 2021, but he later retired from performing due to Parkinson’s disease and a heart condition. He died at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, London on 14 May 2024, at the age of 83. 

(Edited from Wikipedia)