Background
His father, a carpenter, performed piano and organ for Charleston"s Central Baptist Church.
His father, a carpenter, performed piano and organ for Charleston"s Central Baptist Church.
Smalls was raised in Charleston, South Carolina. He taught Smalls classical music at an early age. Jazz, early years of bebop
Smalls left Charleston with the Carolina Cotton Pickers, and also recorded with them, for instance "Office and on Blues" and "Deed I Do" (arranged by Smalls and also featuring Cat Anderson) in 1937, when Smalls was 19.
His career coincided with the early years of bebop.
From 1942 to 1946 he was a trombonist, arranger and also backup piano-player for band-leader and pianist Earl Hines, alongside Dizzie Gillespie and Charlie Parker, also then in the Hines band which often broadcast seven nights a week on open mikes coast-to-coast across America. Hines also used Teddy Wilson, Jess Stacy and National "King" Cole as backup piano-players but Smalls was his favorite.
Smalls also played in the Jimmie Lunceford and Erskine Hawkins bands. Singers, popular direction, return to jazz roots
In 1949 he recorded with JJ Johnson and Charlie Rouse.
Smalls was the pianist on Earl Bostic"s 1950 hit "Flamingo" but had a serious automobile accident, with Earl Bostic, in 1951 "so I laid in bed all of 1952, til March of 1953".
Recovering, Smalls shifted his musical career to serve as music director/arranger for singers Eartha Kitt, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis, Junior., Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Clyde McPhatter, Roy Hamilton and Brook Benton. He recorded Bennie Green with Art Farmer in 1956 and was, for many years, a regular with Sy Oliver"s nine-piece "Little Big-Band" including, from 1974-1984, a regular stint in New York"s Rainbow Room. In the 1970s Smalls returned to jazz-recording, including four solo tracks for The Complete Master Jazz Piano Series in 1970, with Sy Oliver in 1973, Texas Twister with Buddy Tate in 1975, Swing and Things in 1976 and "Caravan" in France in 1978.
In 1980 Smalls was featured playing piano in The Cotton Club, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.