Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Roy Lee Porter was born on July 30, 1923 in Walsenburg, Colorado and when he was eight his family moved to Colorado Springs. He began playing drums in rhythm and blues bands while a teenager, then attended Wiley College in Texas briefly, where trumpeter Kenny Dorham was a fellow student.

Replacing Joe Marshall he joined Milt Larkin’s band in 1943. After military service, Roy settled in Los Angeles, California and soon was in demand by some of the pioneers of bebop. He worked with Teddy Bunn and Howard McGhee, making his first recordings with the latter. In 1946, he backed Charlie Parker on such Dial classics, A Night In Tunisia, Yardbird Suite, Ornithology and Lover Man.

Porter played on Los Angeles’ Central Avenue with such bebop players as Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray and Teddy Edwards, and in San Francisco, California with Hampton Hawes and Sonny Criss. He organized a big band and went on the road in 1949 that included Art Farmer, Jimmy Knepper and Eric Dolphy.

During the 1950s he was inactive as a jazz musician due to drug problems and returned to music only infrequently afterwards. Drummer Roy Porter passed away on January 24 or 25, 1998 in Los Angeles.

More Posts: bandleader,drums,history,instrumental,music