Featured African American Violinist +

yes, that's

 

Aye. Maybe the one eyed squinty pose was all the rage in the 1920s

 

I figured he lost the baby fat, which he has in the first photo. BUT, as the person who responded after you noted, the ears are different. I don't think ears change. So, it's probably not Morrison Sr.

You're spot on about that.

I would say this is him. But, I'm pretty sure I'm wrong about Morrison. However, this does look my guy. The main difference, that I don't think can be changed is his hairline. When he has a part, it's to the right. In my photo it's in the center. In no other photo is his part in the center.

This is probably him, because to me, he looks the least like my guy. Though one photo does resemble him. However, that hairline is different.

The one thing that's different about all these photos compared to mine is, my guy is in a pretty formal tuxedo with bow tie

It sure does say that. I was excited about getting Little's autograph, Hoffman was a huge bonus.

Someone on facebook pointed out (I've been to so many Broadway shows, and it didn't dawn on me) this playbill is from opening night. It's at the top of page, opening night Dec 29, 1974. This isn't a note that that's the date the play opened, it's from that date.

 

Well. I went so far down the rabbit hole looking for your violinist that I probably smell of carrots! There were a plethora of African American men who played the violin during the appropriate time period, but you would certainly never guess that from initial search results online.

I might do a separate post with the resources and references I amassed during my deep dive, but for the time being, I was able to verify my recollection that one of the reasons there were so many big swing and jazz bands was the surfeit of classically trained black musicians who couldn’t get work playing classical music.

Anyway, one avenue possibly worth pursuing is jazz violin scholar Anthony Barnett. An email address for him is ab@abar.net and perhaps he might recognize your violinist if you sent him a a digital image. Don’t put it off, though, as he is over 80.

I must, however, share these pictures I found of a young “Papa” John Creach, who many of us probably remember from Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, and guest appearances with the Grateful Dead and Charlie Daniels. However, he was initially classically trained, then played with with Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Stuff Smith, Charlie Christian, Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker, Nat King Cole and Roy Milton. You can actually catch a glimpse of him backing Nat King Cole about 19 minutes into the 1953 movie “The Blue Gardenia” - but I digress.

In these two different versions of the same picture from two different newspaper ads in the early 1940’s, he would have been in his mid twenties. These are the earliest pictures I could find, by 20+ years.