Artist: Doc Cheatham

Doc Cheatham an American jazz trumpeter, singer, and bandleader. He is also the grandfather of musician Theo Croker. 

Doc Cheatham was born in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Cheatham started playing music when he was 15, first on the cornet and soon after the trumpet, taking trumpet lessons from Fisk University  professor N.C. Davis. He abandoned his family's plans for him to be a pharmacist (although retaining the medically inspired  nickname  "Doc") to play music, performing in Nashville's African American Vaudeville theater. 

Cheatham later toured in band accompanying blues singers on the Theater Owners Booking Association circuit. His early jazz influences included Henry Busse and Johnny Dunn, but when he moved to Chicago in 1924, he heard King Oliver. Oliver's playing was a revelation to Cheatham. Cheatham followed him around, and Oliver gave young Cheatham a mute, which Cheatham treasured and performed with for the rest of his career. A further revelation came the following year when Louis Armstrong returned to Chicago. Armstrong would be a lifelong influence on Cheatham. describing him as "an ordinary-extraordinary man." 

Cheatham played in Albert Wynn's band (and occasionally substituted for Armstrong at the Vendome Theater),and recorded on sax with Ma Rainey before moving to Philadelphia in 1927, where he worked with the bands of Bobby Lee and Wilbur de Paris, before moving to New York City the following year. After a short stint with Chick Webb, he left to tour Europe with Sam Wooding's band. 

Cheatham returned to the United States in 1930, and played with Marion Handy and McKinney's Cotton Pickers, before landing a job with Cab Calloway. Cheatham was Calloway's lead trumpeter from 1932 through 1939. According to a personal discussion with Doc Cheatham, he studied with Max Schlossberg for six months in 1931.

He performed with Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson, Fletcher Henderson, and Claude Hopkins in the 1940s; after World War II he started working regularly with Latin bands in New York City, including the bands of Perez Prado, Marcelino Guerra,  Ricardo Ray (on whose catchy, hook-laden album Jala, Jala Boogaloo, Volume II, he played exquisitely (but uncredited), particularly on the track "Mr. Trumpet Man"), Machito, and others.

In 1959, the U.S. State Department funded a trip for bandleader Herbie Mann to visit Africa, after they heard his version of "African Suite". The grueling 14-week tour took place between December 31, 1959, to April 5, 1960.

In the 1970s, Cheatham made a vigorous self-assessment to improve his playing, including taping himself and critically listening to the recordings, then endeavoring to eliminate all clichés from his playing. The discipline paid off, and he received ever-improving critical attention.