Artist: Muggsy Spanier

Muggsy Spanier was an American jazz cornetist  based in Chicago. He was a member of the Bucktown Five, pioneers of the "Chicago style" that straddled traditional Dixieland jazz and swing. 

In 1929, he became a member of a band led by Ted Lewis, then spent two years with Ben Pollack. He assembled the eight-man group Muggsy Spanier and His Ragtime Band. In 1939, the band recorded several sessions of Dixieland standards for Bluebird Records, that were later called The Great Sixteen and influenced a Dixieland revival. 

The band's members included George Brunies (later Brunis - trombone and vocals), Rod Cless (clarinet), George Zack or Joe Bushkin (piano), Ray McKinstry, Nick Ciazza or Bernie Billings (tenor sax), and Bob Casey (bass). 

His other most important ventures were the quartet he co-led with Sidney Bechet (the 'Big Four') in 1940. From 1940 until 1941 he played with Bob Crosby. In the 1950s, he moved to the West Coast and joined Earl Hines's band from 1957 until 1959. After touring Europe, he retired in 1964. 

The Ragtime Band's theme tune was "Relaxin' at the Touro", composed by Spanier and Joe Bushkin, named for Touro Infirmary, the New Orleans hospital, where he had been treated for an illness. "Relaxin' at the Touro" is a fairly straightforward 12-bar blues, with a piano introduction and coda by Joe Bushkin.

Photography credit: The Library of Congress, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

This content was excerpted from the Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggsy_Spanier, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).