Chick Bullock

Chick Bullock was a prolific vocalist from the '30s, whose entire career seems somewhat shrouded in mystery and confusion. Even the details of his birth provoke wide geographical disagreement, perhaps if only to preserve the reputation of a corrupt typesetter somewhere. A reliable jazz biographical source says he hailed from Butte, Montana, adding another name to the list of musical talent proud to hail from a state better known for cattle ranching and remote speed labs. Before Montana gets too proud, howver, consider an alternate version of his birth, which names a place called Mutte, Massachusetts as the spot. Commonly, Bullock is described as being particularly shy of publicity, a sort of Howard Hughes type who vanished into the Los Angeles real estate business rather than remain in the spotlight. Such descriptions of Bullock's life tend to leave out the fact that he suffered from an eye disease that disfigured his face; obviously, something of a kiss of death for a performer in a genre known for handsome frontline singers. This meant that Bullock was banished to the recording studios. He made the most of it, and was responsible for some 500 sides. His group Chick Bullock's Levee Loungers was strictly a studio all-stars affair. Bullock's list of associates are top flight indeed: he sang with Duke Ellington, but turned down Paul Whiteman. He also recorded with artists such as Luis Russell and Cab Calloway and featured a host of jazz heavyweights on his own records including trumpeters Bunny Berigan and Bill Coleman, trombonists Jack Teagarden and Tommy Dorsey, saxophonist Jimmy Dorsey, violinist Joe Venuti and guitarist Eddie Lang. All this might excite the average jazz fan, but it wasn't what Bullock's proper British parents had wanted. Their goal was for him to...