Wilbur Sweatman

American jazz clarinetist, composer, and bandleader.

Born: February 07, 1882 in Brunswick, Missouri.
Died: March 09, 1961 in New York City, New York.

Wilbur Sweatman's musical career reads like the history of African-Americans in popular music. He got his professional start in a circus band, then moved on to minstrel shows and vaudeville. He led a successful syncopated orchestra based in Chicago early in the century and is said to have made the first recording of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1903 for an Edison subsidiary (the cylinder hasn't been found). In the years before World War I, Wilbur Sweatman led a band at the Big Grand Theatre in Chicago (3110 State Street at 31st Street). He moved to New York in 1913 and was one of the first African-Americans to join ASCAP in 1917. After the success of the Original Dixieland Jass Band, Sweatman jumped on the jazz bandwagon and released dozens of records in the late 1910s and 1920s, the most famous being "Down Home Rag."

Sweatman is remembered less as a jazz musician and more as a great showman, famous for playing at first two, then three clarinets at once. Duke Ellington, Sonny Greer, Otto Hardwick, Cozy Cole and Coleman Hawkins all played in his orchestra early in their careers. In the 1930s, Sweatman was active in music publishing and was the executor of Scott Joplin's estate. Unfortunately, Joplin's estate fell into disarray after Sweatman's death in 1961, and many unpublished and original manuscripts were lost.

In the 1940s, Sweatman led a trio at Paddells Club in New York and continued to play live into the 1950s.