Elmer Snowden

Elmer Chester Snowden, born in Baltimore, Maryland on October 9, 1900, was an American jazz musician, bandleader, and Broadway performer who died on May 14, 1973. A multi-instrumentalist, Snowden played banjo, guitar, and reed instruments, though he became best known for his work on banjo during the jazz age. By the time of his World War I draft registration in 1917, a month before his seventeenth birthday, he was already identifying his occupation as musician. The 1920 Federal Census recorded him still living at home with his mother, Gertrude, a laundress, and his brother James, employed as a musician in a dance hall.

Snowden's most historically significant contribution to jazz came through his leadership of the Washingtonians, a group he organized and brought to New York City from Washington, D.C. in 1923. When the band struggled to secure bookings, Snowden sent for Duke Ellington, who joined the group and was present when it recorded three test sides for Victor that were never released. Ellington ultimately assumed leadership of the band, which formed the nucleus of his celebrated orchestra. Snowden also served as a launching point for numerous other major figures in jazz, with Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford, Bubber Miley, Tricky Sam Nanton, Frankie Newton, Benny Carter, Rex Stewart, Roy Eldridge, and Chick Webb all having worked in his bands at various points.

During the 1920s, Snowden was exceptionally active as both a musician and an agent, at one point operating five bands simultaneously under his name in New York City, one of which was led by pianist Cliff Jackson. While most of these ensembles went unrecorded, a Snowden band featuring Roy Eldridge, Al Sears, Dicky Wells, and Sid Catlett appeared in the 1932 Vitaphone Varieties short film Smash Your Baggage. His Broadway career included an appearance in 1943 in the comedy The Moon Vine.

Following the mid-1930s and the retirement of his longtime musical partner Bob Fuller, Snowden's profile diminished considerably. He continued performing into the 1950s but largely outside public attention, and after a dispute with the musicians' union in New York he relocated to Philadelphia, where he taught music. Among his students there were pianist Ray Bryant, Ray's brother bassist Tommy Bryant, and saxophonist Sahib Shihab, originally known as Edmond Gregory.

In 1959, disc jockey Chris Albertson encountered Snowden working as a parking lot attendant in Philadelphia. Albertson subsequently helped revive his career, bringing Snowden together with singer-guitarist Lonnie Johnson in 1960 for two albums on the Prestige label. That same year, Albertson assembled a quartet including Cliff Jackson for a Riverside session that produced the album Harlem Banjo. In 1961, a sextet session featuring Roy Eldridge, Bud Freeman, Jo Jones, and Ray and Tommy Bryant was released on the Fontana and Black Lion labels. By 1963, Snowden appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival, and he subsequently moved to California to teach at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also played with Turk Murphy and took private students in guitar and banjo. He toured Europe in 1967 with the Newport Guitar Workshop. Snowden returned to Philadelphia in 1969 and remained there until his death on May 14, 1973.