Singer/Songwriter
Joe Keyes
Über Joe Keyes
Genre
Singer/Songwriter
Make no mistake about it, trumpeter Joe Keyes was a mainstream player, not an avant-garde man. But the manner of his death has much in common with one of the kingpins of the latter style, tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler. The corpses of both men were found floating in one of New York City's rivers; it was the Harlem River in the case of Joe Keyes, whose professional career began in Houston, TX, back when it more like a small town. Both men were reported flashing unusually large wads of money in the days before they were found in their respective watery graves. Both deaths, although reported officially as drownings, involved mysterious circumstances and have inspired conspiracy theories.
No mystery is involved in the conclusion that for Keyes, this tragic end is in sharp contrast to the merry music he must have made in one of his earliest professional gigs, the brass section of Johnson's Joymakers. Mysterious figures from the early days of Houston's jazz scene provided the trumpeter with gigs in the late '20s and early '30s: Eugene Coy, Jap Allen, Blanche Calloway. After working with Bennie Moten in 1932, Keyes unlocked the first of several stints with the great Count Basie. By 1937 his Basie years were behind him, and new collaborations with fellow trumpeter Hot Lips Page and pianist Claude Hopkins loomed in the immediate future. During the early '40s, Keyes had a run of work with big-name bandleaders, including both the innovative Fletcher Henderson and the hilarious Fats Waller.
Hopkins came up with one interesting opportunity as the United States began to prepare for the Second World War and much of the entertainment business shut down, assembling a combo at a factory whose workers were otherwise occupied assembling fighter aircraft. The so-called Wildcats Band was the trumpeter's last group assignment of any note, where he played any notes. Soon Keyes was jangling his way to the bottom of bottles, drinking far too much and creating concern among his peers. Bandleader Cab Calloway apparently tried to help out, buying a new trumpet after Keyes pawned his regular instrument in a booze delirium, offering a chance for a regular gig if Keyes could just clean up his act. This never happened. The last people to see Keyes alive reported that he had plans to go back and live with his mother in Texas. ~ Eugene Chadbourne
