Frank Galbreath

A trumpeter and vocalist with the word "breath" located inside his surname can't go wrong, so it is no surprise that the career of Frank Galbreath spans minstel shows, classic jazz, rhythm and blues and vocal music. Along the way he worked with some of the biggest names, gigging in the '30s with the likes of Jelly Roll Morton and Fletcher Henderson, joining the orchestra of Louis Armstrong the following decade and in the '60s proving that he still had plenty of air as he blasted away in the show bands of artists such as Ray Charles, Fats Domino and Sammy Davis, Jr. When Galbreath headed out on the road from his rural North Carolina home it was in the company of groups whose obscurity is about equal to the fame of all the aforementioned artists combined. By 15 he was gigging around the tiny village of Washington, North Carolina with a group called the Domino Five and at 17 had moved to Fayetteville to work with Kelly's Jazz Hounds. Roving assignments with the Florida Blossoms Minstrel Show and the Kinston Nighthawks followed in due course. In the spring of 1933 he played at the Chicago World's Fair as a member of Smiling Billy Steward's Floridians. From the mid '30s the trumpeter was active in New York City, gigging with Henderson and Morton as well as others including Willie Bryant and Edgar Hayes. By 1937 Galbreath had drifted south to Philadelphia, joining up with Lonnie Slappey's Swingers. Enterprising bandleader Lucky Millinder got him back up to New York City, eventually leading to the orchestral Armstrong project which finally imploded in the fall of 1943. The trumpeter was in the Charlie Barnet outfit for only a few weeks before joining the army. Following the second World War he worked with Luis Russell, Tab Smith, Billy Eckstine and Sy Oliver. Starting in 1948...