Glover Compton

Background

Compton was born in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, and is first recorded as a pianist and entertainer in Louisville in about 1904.

Career

That year, he met pianist Tony Jackson, collaborating with him in writing a piece, "The Clock of Time", which was reportedly re-used as the basis of the 1922 song "My Daddy Rocks Maine (With One Steady Roll)", recorded by Trixie Smith with a writing cr to music publisher J. Berni Barbour. Compton then worked as an itinerant piano player, working in Chicago in 1906 and also spending time in Wyoming, Washington, and New New York He worked with composer Shelton Brooks, who dedicated his 1916 piece "Walkin" the Dog" to Compton.

He also performed in San Francisco, where he met and worked with Jelly Roll Morton, Florence Mills, and Ada "Bricktop" Smith.

Over the next few years he worked mainly in Chicago and Seattle, with small bands that, in Chicago, included singer Alberta Hunter, clarinetist Jimmie Noone and drummer Ollie Powers. In 1923, Compton recorded with Powers" Harmony Syncopators, later known as J. Glover Compton and the Syncopators, and also travelled to New York to record with Alberta Hunter.

In 1926 he was invited by "Bricktop" to work for part of the year at her cafe, Chez Bricktop, in Paris, France. There, he appeared with the resident band, The Palm Beach Six, sometimes working with Sidney Bechet.

He was shot in the leg by Bechet in 1928, apparently by accident when he tried to intervene in a fight between Bechet and another musician, and remained working in Paris after Bechet was expelled from the country.

He returned to work in New York during this period, making his final trip to perform in Paris in 1939. He worked there again with Noone, and in 1949 he was interviewed by Rudi Blesh for his book They All Played Ragtime. In the early 1950s Compton opened his own bar in Chicago, and he was recorded performing there in 1956 for the album Meet Glover Compton.

He suffered a debilitating stroke in 1957, and died in 1964, aged 80.

Achievements

• However, Compton failed to achieve the status of some of his peers, partly because he wrote little of his own material.