American jazz clarinetist,tenor saxophonist, arranger, composer and music educator Jimmy Hamilton, was born on May 25, 1917 in Dillon, South Carolina, and grew up in Philadelphia. Having originally learned to play the piano and brass instruments, in the 1930s he started playing the latter in colacl bands, before switching to clarinet and saxophone.
In 1939 he played with Lucky Millinder, Jimmy Mundy, and Bill Doggett, going to join the Teddy Wilson sextet in 1940. After two years with Wilson, he played with Eddie Heywood and Yank Porter.
In 1943 he replaced Barney Bigard in the Duke Ellington orchestra, and stayed with Ellington until 1968. His style was very different on his two instruments: on tenor saxophone he had an R&B sound, while on clarinet he was much more precise and correct, though fluent. He wrote some of his own material in his time with Ellington.
After he left the Ellington orchestra, Hamilton played and arranged on a freelance basis, before spending the 1970s and 1980s in the Virgin Islands teaching music (though he occasionally returned to the U.S. for performances with John Carter's Clarinet Summit). On his retirement from teaching he continued to perform with his own groups from 1989 to 1990.
Hamilton died in St.Croix, Virgin Islands at the age of seventy-seven, in September,1994.
Jimmy plays.
Reference - Wikipedia
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