Alton Moore

The man who whoops it up on trombone on Fats Waller's classic recording of "The Joint Is Jumpin'" had a long, productive career in music beginning in the days of minstrel shows and medicine shows. His glory days were certainly the '30s and '40s, in which wonderful collaborations took place with Waller, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Carter, and other giants of classic jazz. But no dust formed on Alton Moore's trombone case when he decided to drop out of full-time music in the subsequent decades of his life: he was on hand for the Fletcher Henderson reunion bands in 1957 and in the '60s was part of large ensembles in New York City such as the Prince Hall Symphonic Band. The trombonist actually started out on the baritone horn, a brass instrument that, like the French horn, has had only limited use in jazz. By 17 Moore had switched to trombone and was gigging with the bandleader Georgia Barlowe, followed by a series of touring revues under the guidance of shadowy figures such as Eddie Lemon, Gonzelle White, and Gene Coy. In the early '30s Moore settled in New York City; his rovings prior to that had included a stretch in Dallas, TX, with the Coy band. His associates in the Big Apple at first included Jack Butler, with whom he gigged at the Circle Ballroom, as well as Charlie Skeete and Bobby Neal. Soon he could be said to be much Moore busy than many of his peers, moving from band to band with stays of between one and three months in each. He toured Cuba with the Leon Gross Orchestra in 1938. In most jazz record collections, the robust presence of Moore -- by now nicknamed "Slim," a moniker that is sometimes used in his official credits -- begins close to the end of the '30s when he moved, again in a fairly rapid succession, through the bands of Waller, Hawkins, Hot Lips Page, and Charlie Johnson. In the early '40s Moore played and recorded with Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Carter, appearing with the latter's band in the Hollywood film Stormy Weather. The trombonist was adept at balancing the demands of old and new genres in jazz, delivering progressive jazz with the Gillespie band before settling back into New Orleans jazz with one of Louis Armstrong's ensembles. Moore became a part-time player in 1952 following a disappointing year of freelancing and a few somewhat longer affiliations with lesser-known bands; he spent two years, for example, in a group led by Stafford "Pazuza" Simon. While the majority of his recording credits were on trombone, Moore also blew a bit of tuba and trumpet now and then, did some scat singing on Waller records, and in his final years performed on euphonium, a brass instrument similar to the baritone horn he had started out on. ~ Eugene Chadbourne