Slim Lamar, from 1930 Victor catalog.

Details regarding the life of territory band leader Slim Lamar are scarce, and there doesn’t appear to be any biography of him available on the web.  As such, I’ve rewritten and republished this article in an effort to shed some light on the obscure musician’s life.  A special thanks goes out to Messrs. Joseph Scott and Paul Lindemeyer for their research on Lamar, without which this article would not have been possible.

Slim was in fact Henry Elbert Lamar, born in Galveston, Texas on October 27, 1905, the son of John and Lucille Lamar.  By the 1920s, the Lamars had taken up residence in the cradle of jazz, New Orleans.  Slim played reeds, and apparently moonlighted selling musical instruments.  At least as early as 1927, Lamar was leading the Southerners, an exceptional territory jazz band which included the talents of Tony Almerico and Sunny Clapp among its ranks.  He would seem to have been associated with the cabal of influential territory band leaders that included Clapp and Blue Steele.  In September of 1927, the Southerners played the Edgewater Gulf Hotel in Biloxi, Mississippi, and made their first recordings a year later, during a Victor field trip in Memphis, Tennessee.  While in Memphis, Lamar also recorded with Mart Britt’s orchestra, and may have accompanied Irene Beasley on one session that yielded no issued recordings.  Following those sessions, Lamar’s Southerners ventured to Indianapolis for a two week engagement at the Indiana Roof Ballroom, reported in the Indianapolis Star as the band’s first trip north of the Mason-Dixon Line.  After Indianapolis, they played at the Egyptian Room of the Kosair Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky.  Lamar’s band recorded several more sides in February of 1929 in Camden, New Jersey, after which Slim Lamar is not known to have made any further recordings.  In 1938, he relocated to Florence, Alabama, where he married Edna Reams and started the Lamar Furniture Company.  Henry “Slim” Lamar remained in Florence until his death on June 3, 1989.

In the 1930s, Henry Lamar’s younger brother Ewell Ayars Lamar (1911-1992), a pianist known as the “Greyhound of the Ivories,” took up the moniker of “Slim” and led a dance band called the Music Gentlemen in Indianapolis, which reportedly included some former members of Joe Sanders’ orchestra, and featured a vocalist named Helen Folk.  Ewell had composed “My Castle of Love”, recorded by the Southerners in 1928, but not issued, and played piano in his older brother’s band in its first year.

Victor 21710 was recorded on September 6 and 4, 1928, respectively, at the Memphis Auditorium in Memphis, Tennessee, the Southerners’ first and third sessions.  In the band are Tony Almerico and Irwin Kunz on cornets, Sunny Clapp on trombone, Slim Lamar and Jim Rush on clarinet and alto sax, Bedford Brown on clarinet and tenor sax, Dick Wilson on violin, Adrian J. Larroque on piano, Jack Cohen on banjo and guitar, Bonnie Pottle on string bass, and Bobby Turley on drums.  The band is directed by Bob Nolan, composer of “Goofus”, and the band’s usual vocalist (though he doesn’t sing on these sides).  It was issued in January of 1929.

“Goofus” was immortalized in a comic by R. Crumb, in which he describes his saga of finding the record, only to have it snatched away, leaving him hunting for years before winning a copy in an auction.  He aptly descries it as “crazy, eccentric jazz.”  The scat quartet is made up of Tony Almerico, Jim Rush, Dick Wilson, and Jack Cohen.

Goofus, recorded September 6, 1928 by Slim Lamar’s Southerners.

On the other side, though “Happy” may not be as well known as the previous, it doesn’t disappoint, offering an encore performance of more of this band’s unique hot style, with hot solos by Wilson and one of the cornetists, not to mention more wild bass work by that Bonnie Pottle.

Happy, recorded September 4, 1928 by Slim Lamar’s Southerners.

This record was originally posted on August 16, 2016 in honor of cornetist Tony Almerico’s birthday.  The article has been rewritten and republished with content relevant to bandleader Slim Lamar.  Updated with improved audio on April 30, 2018.