Morris McClure, better known under the stage name Red Mack (born January 18, 1912, Memphis, Tennessee - June 14, 1993, Los Angeles, California) was an American jazz trumpeter and vocalist.
A stage name is a pseudonym used by performers and entertainers, such as actors, comedians, singers and musicians. Such titles are adopted for a wide variety of reasons and may be similar or nearly identical to an individual's birth name. In some situations, a performer will eventually adopt his or her title as a legal name, although this is often not the case. Personal names or nicknames that make up the professional name should not necessarily be considered as a "fake name" like Lady Gaga : for example: Miley Cyrus: born Destiny Hope Cyrus, uses her personal nickname "Miley" and her maiden name "Cyrus" as her professional name.
Memphis is a city located along the Mississippi River in southwestern Shelby County, Tennessee, United States. The 2017 city population was 652,236, making Memphis the largest city on the Mississippi River, second-largest city in Tennessee, as well as the 25th largest city in the United States. Greater Memphis is the 42nd largest metropolitan area in the United States, with a population of 1,348,260 in 2017. The city is the anchor of West Tennessee and the greater Mid-South region, which includes portions of neighboring Arkansas and Mississippi. Memphis is the seat of Shelby County, the most populous county in Tennessee. As one of the most historic and cultural cities of the southern United States, the city features a wide variety of landscapes and distinct neighborhoods.
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, United States. It originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in blues and ragtime. Jazz is seen by many as "America's classical music". Since the 1920s Jazz Age, jazz has become recognized as a major form of musical expression. It then emerged in the form of independent traditional and popular musical styles, all linked by the common bonds of African-American and European-American musical parentage with a performance orientation. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as "one of America's original art forms".
Mack was raised in Los Angeles and was a pianist for his local Church of God in Christ as a youth. After learning trumpet as a teenager, he played with Sonny Clay and Les Hite, the latter alongside Louis Armstrong. From 1931 to 1933 he worked with Charlie Echols, then joined Gene Coy's band in Chicago; around this time he also played with Erskine Tate. He moved back to Los Angeles and worked again with Echols as a drummer in 1934, and worked later in the decade with Floyd Ray, Alton Redd, Lorenzo Flennoy, and Lionel Hampton. He also appeared in several Hollywood films.
The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) is a Pentecostal-Holiness Christian denomination with a predominantly African-American membership. The denomination reports having more than 12,000 churches and over 6.5 million members in the United States making it the largest Pentecostal church in the country. The National Council of Churches ranks it as the fifth largest Christian denomination in the U.S.
William Rogers Campbell "Sonny" Clay was an American jazz pianist, drummer, and bandleader, who had an unusual impact on the development of Australian jazz.
Les Hite was an American jazz bandleader.
Around 1940 he joined Will Osborne's band; as a black musician, Mack's arrival made the group interracial, and Mack was often treated poorly as a result. [1] The group disbanded in 1941, and Mack moved back to Los Angeles once again, working there with Lee Young, Monette Moore, Barney Bigard, and Kid Ory. He toured Alaska with Luke Jones in 1945 and worked with him for several years thereafter, as well as with Jimmy Mundy and with his own ensembles. A group led by Mack was the house band at The Downbeat, a Los Angeles jazz club, late in the 1950s. He was cast as a bandmember of Kid Ory's in the 1955 film The Benny Goodman Story , but he does not play on the soundtrack; his on-screen trumpeting is actually performed by Alvin Alcorn. [1] He was less active as a trumpeter later in his career but continued to perform on keyboards into the 1970s.
Will Osborne was a Canadian-born American bandleader, trombonist, and vocalist.
Black people is a term used in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification or of ethnicity, to describe persons who are perceived to be dark-skinned compared to other populations. As such, the meaning of the expression varies widely both between and within societies, and depends significantly on context. For many other individuals, communities and countries, "black" is also perceived as a derogatory, outdated, reductive or otherwise unrepresentative label, and as a result is neither used nor defined.
Leonidas Raymond Young was an American jazz drummer and singer. His musical family included his father Willis Young and his older brother, saxophonist Lester Young. In 1944 he played with Norman Granz's first "Jazz at the Philharmonic" concert.
