Norman Mason

The performing career of the historic jazz multi-instrumentalist lasted an excellent six decades, but Norman Mason’s musical life began even a decade earlier when his father began teaching him trumpet. Mason was a ripe eight years of age at that time but still surviving in the Bahamas, where he was raised. American audiences started enjoying his shows when at age 18 Mason started touring using the Rabbit Feet Minstrel Display. Like a lot of his contemporaries, this type of entertainment resulted in involvement with the brand new Orleans jazz picture; later on, Mason added reeds to his instrumental arsenal and became connected with jazz rings in both Chicago and St. Louis. His sibling Henry Mason was a specialist trumpeter aswell. Slightly prior to the ’20s began roaring, Mason started gigging with Destiny Marable, the framework where he turned from trumpet to alto saxophone. In the first ’20s he was section of Ed Allen’s poetically called Whispering Gold Music group but was also energetic being a bandleader in his very own best, fronting the Carolina Melodists, an organization that might have been melodic but weren’t actually through the Carolinas, North or South. Mason came back to Marable’s group for six years from 1927. Through the early ’30s he started shifting between St. Louis and Chicago and became known even more being a clarinet participant. The final years of his profession had been spent in the previous city, concluding whenever a stroke shut him down being a musician in 1969. Until then his primary association was with bandleader Singleton Palmer. He shouldn’t be confused using the newer pianist from the same name that has documented and performed with Latin jazz rings.