Bob Zurke
Bob Zurke (January 7, 1912 – February 16, 1944) was a significant American jazz pianist, arranger, composer and briefly a bandleader during the Swing Era.
Biography
Born Boguslaw Albert Zukowski in Hamtramck, Michigan on January 7, 1912, he was already using the name Bob Zurke professionally by the age of 16 when he first recorded with a group led by pioneering female jazz bassist Thelma Terry. At that time, Zurke also began to work as a copyist for the Detroit-based booking agency run by Jean Goldkette. Through the end of 1936, Zurke worked in various Detroit clubs, mostly as a band pianist, and occasionally went on tour with other groups; it was in this period that Zurke developed a long friendship with pianist Marvin Ash, who would later go on to record some of Zurke's compositions.
At the beginning of 1937, Zurke was hired by bandleader Bob Crosby to fill in for Joe Sullivan, then ailing with tuberculosis. It was with Crosby that Zurke gained notice; he contributed arrangements to the band's book and was a featured soloist on several numbers, including his arrangement of Meade Lux Lewis' Honky Tonk Train Blues, which became a hit. In 1938, Bob Zurke was named the winner in the piano category in the Reader's Poll from Down Beat and, in the course of Alan Lomax' Library of Congress interviews, was singled out by Jelly Roll Morton as the "only one (jazz pianist of the present time) that has a tendency to be on the right track."
Podcasts:
Bob Zurke
ALBUMS
- Honky Tonk Train Blues released: 2001
Honky Tonk Train Blues
Released 2001- Southern Exposure
- It's Me Again
- Each Time You Say Goodbye
- Hobson Street Blues
- Melancholy Mood
- Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
- Honky Tonk Train Blues
- I've Found a New Baby
- Faithful Forever
- Tomcat on the Keys
- It's a Hap Hap Happy Day
- Everybody Step
- Fit to Be Tied
- Peach Tree Street
- Cuban Boogie Woogie
- On a Little Street in Singapore
- Somebody Told Me
- Between 18th and 19th Chestnut Street
- Pinch Me
- Holy Smoke
- Nickel Nabber Blues
- I Want My Mama
- You Hit My Heart With a Bang
- Tea for Two
- I Love You Much Too Much
- I'm Losing My Mind
- Cow Cow Blues
- Rhumboogie
Born: 1912-01-17
Died: 1944-02-16
