John Spikes

Jazz musician
The basics

Quick Facts

IntroJazz musician
PlacesUnited States of America
wasJazz musician
Work fieldMusic
Gender
Male
Birth22 July 1881
Death28 June 1955 (aged 73 years)
Star signCancer
The details

Biography

John Curry Spikes (July 22, 1881 – June 28, 1955) was an American jazz musician and entrepreneur.

Along with his brother Reb Spikes, John ran a traveling show band in early 1900s. At one point, Jelly Roll Morton was a member of the band. The Spikes brothers were performing in San Francisco around 1915, under the name The Original So-Different Orchestra, with Reb Spikes billed as the "World's Greatest Saxophonist". Around 1919, they settled in Los Angeles, where they started a music store, a nightclub, an agency and a publishing house.

They were the first to record an all-black jazz band in 1922. In 1927, they shot a short sound film that predated The Jazz Singer, the first full-length sound film. Their most enduring musical collaborations were writing the lyrics to Morton's Wolverine Blues and their own composition, Someday Sweetheart, which has become a jazz standard.

The contents of this page are sourced from Wikipedia article on 31 May 2020. The contents are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.