Sonny Dunham papers and audio recordings

Sonny Dunham was born on November 16, 1914 in Brockton, Massachusetts to Elmer Lewis and Ethel Dunham. His attended Massachusetts Public Schools as a child. Sonny began to play valve trombone at the age of 7 and switched to slide trombone at age 11. He performed with Boston area bands by the time he turned 13, marking the start of his career. By 1929 he had moved to New York City and joined Paul Tremaine's Orchestra, during which time he also sang, arranged and doubled on trumpet, an instrument on which he became equally proficient. In 1931 he left Tremaine's Orchestra and formed his own band, "Sonny Dunham and His NY Yankees".

Glen Grey recruited Dunham to join Grey's Casa Loma Orchestra, and in 1931 he was featured with the band on his own composition "Memories of You," which became his signature piece (Decca, Dec. 1, 1937) along with his original composition "Come and Get It" (9/28, 1939 Varsity Records). After moving to Europe for several years, he returned to the United States, rejoined the Casa Loma Orchestra and then attempted to form his own band. This time he was more successful and secured performance engagements at the Glendale Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles in July 1940. Dunham's band toured the US, performing at many well-known venues, and returned to New York in early 1941, when they began regularly broadcasting a radio show from the Roseland Ballroom as well as performing at the Meadowbrook in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. Places of note where the Sonny Dunham Orchestra played include the Paramount Theater and Cafe in the Pennsylvania Hotel, the Hotel New Yorker, the Earle Theater in Pennsylvania, the Hollywood Palladium, Eastwood Gardens in Detroit, the RKO Theater in Boston and the Hotel Sherman in Chicago. The band was featured in a film Behind the Eightball, for which Dunham served as musical director.

Musicians in his band included trumpet players Uan Rasey, Nick Buono, Paul Cohen and Pete Candoli; trombonists Kai Winding and Frank Comstock; saxophonists Corky Corcoran, Musky Ruffo, Bob Dukoff, Zoot Sims, Johnny Bothwell and Billy Usselton; pianist Stan Wrightsman; drummers Irv Cottler and Don Lamond; vocalists Ray Kellogg, Dorothy Claire and The Sonnysiders; and arrangers George Williams and Hal Mooney. In 1951 the band briefly disolved but soon reorganized, continuing to perform for thirty more years. By the 1960s Dunham had downsized his ensemble to a quintet, and he played the trombone almost exclusively. He also found employment on cruise ships, including the S.S. Argentina in 1964. In the 1970s, he recorded with the Lords of Dixieland sextet, who made a series of LPs in Florida that were released on the Jazz Forum label, including Washington and Lee Swing, All That Jazz, St. Louis Blues and Boubon Street Parade. Dunham retired in 1982.

Sources

Bruyninckx, Walter, compiler. 70 Years of Recorded Jazz: 1917-1987. volume 11. Mechelen, Belgium: Walter Bruyninckx, 1991.

"Dunham, Sonny." The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd edition. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed November 21, 2014, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/J131800.