born August 1, 1908 Elmer Crumbley "Man Want Water"

Born on August 1, 1908 in King Fisher, OK, trombonist Elmer Crumbley made a lifetime out of music starting out in the days, and more importantly, the places, where the end of his slide was likely to wind up tangled in tumbleweed or an over-eager lasso. In his later years, the trombonist was still serving up a taste for folks who hadn't tired of traditional swing sounds, as in the audiences who bought tickets for '60s and '70s editions of the Cab Calloway and Earl Hines bands. He would then often be surrounded by much younger players, this veteran of outfits such as the Dandie Dixie Minstrels, a group Crumbley joined in 1926 in between stints with bandleader Lloyd Hunter.

In the fall of 1930 the trombonist had made it as far east as Kansas City and the George E. Lee band; not bad considering he had started out in an Oklahoma town named after a snake and had only proceeded to move further west initially. Crumbley worked with western swing pioneer Tommy Douglas in Nebraska in the early '30s as well as another of that state's bandleaders, Bill Owens. But he continued to work with Hunter as well as players such as Jabbo Smith and a Chicago hit with Erskine Tate. The trombonist called up his own ensemble in Omaha in 1934, but by the end of the year he'd joined up with the Jimmie Lunceford band. He was like many players who had the experience of playing in this wonderful band -- totally satisfied, or at least contented enough to stay on the band for the next 13 years.
Subsequently, Crumbley blew, sometimes bursting into song, with Eddie Wilcox as well as Lucky Millinder and Erskine Hawkins. European audiences enjoyed the trombonist in the late '50s on tour with Sammy Price, a period when he also became part of the scene at the Apollo in Harlem with a lively combo led by Reuben Phillips. By the middle of the next decade, the seemingly indestructible careers of both Calloway and Hines were keeping Crumbley in slide oil.

Biography by Eugene Chadbourne

AllMusic

Recording information:

Disclaimer: I do not own the copyright to this recording. This video is for historical and educational purposes only.