Sam Wooding

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Sam Wooding was an American jazz pianist, arranger and bandleader. He was born in 1895 in Philadelphia, the son of a butler. He taught himself to play the piano, wrote his first composition as a child and became a professional musician around 1910. In the First World War he served in an army band led by the Broadway arranger Will Vodery.

Music and breakthrough

After the war he played in Atlantic City and, from 1920, in Harlem, with a group of his own. In 1922 he made his first recordings, including under the name of Johnny Dunn's Original Jazz Hounds. His great breakthrough came in 1925, when his orchestra went to Europe as part of the revue Chocolate Kiddies. They played in Berlin, Hamburg, Stockholm and Copenhagen and recorded in Berlin for the label Vox. Tours of Russia followed, in 1927 of Argentina, and around 1929 once more of Europe, with recordings in Barcelona and Paris.

Influence

His orchestra was the first Black orchestra to tour Europe extensively and to make recordings there. In Argentina audiences got to know a jazz that was more syncopated and more centred on improvisation than the ragtime before it. Wooding even played a melody by Wagner in jazz form. He returned to the United States in 1934, studied music and taught, among others Clifford Brown. He died in 1985 in Manhattan.

Listening

In School of Rock

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