Bob Zurke

Among the legions of jazz music artists to have got lived hard and died little, the Detroit-born Zurke was most widely known for his stint seeing that pianist with vocalist Bob Crosby’s Bobcats. Zurke spent period with Oliver Naylor’s Orchestra in Philadelphia through the past due ’20s and early ’30s; he also documented with bassist Thelma Terry & Her Playboys in 1928. Around that point, arranger Don Redman employed Zurke (and Glen Grey from the Casa Loma Orchestra) to duplicate parts for agreements he’d created for McKinney’s Natural cotton Pickers. Zurke became a member of the Bobcats past due in 1936, and (aside from a 1937 hiatus due to a broken lower leg experienced in horseplay with Bob Haggart) continued to be with them before summer season of 1939, when he created his personal short-lived big music group. That band split up the following springtime. Alimony problems got Zurke in prison briefly in 1940. After his launch that August, he worked well as a single pianist. Through the 1st fifty percent of 1941, he performed in Chicago, Detroit, and St. Paul. He relocated to LA in the summertime of 1942. That August he started a tenure in the Hangover Golf club, where he’d continue steadily to play until his loss of life in early 1944. On Feb 15, Zurke collapsed in the golf club and was taken up to LA General Medical center; he died the next day at age group 32. Zurke was fairly well-known in his day time, earning the Down Defeat journal poll in 1939 as greatest pianist. He was an adept boogie-woogie participant and apparently a preferred of Jelly Move Morton. While his most well-known association was with Bob Crosby, Zurke also caused other music artists of notice, including Connee Boswell, Bunny Berigan, the Andrews Sisters, and Bing Crosby (Bob’s sibling). In 1983, the town of Hamtramck, MI, honored Zurke’s memory space having a memorial cruise; participants included Bob Crosby.