Herman "Ivory" Chittison (October 15, 1908 – March 8, 1967 )was an American jazz pianist.
Herman Chittison was born in Flemingsburg, KY, on October 15, 1908, to Charles and Sarrah Jame Chittison. Chittison began playing the piano at age 8 and would often play hymns at Strawberry Methodist Church. He and his family left Kentucky for him to attend school in Tennessee when he was 13-years-old. He attended the Waldron Boys School in Nashville, Tennessee.
After completing high school, Chittison enrolled at Kentucky State College (now Kentucky State University) in 1925, which he left to play for the Kentucky Derbies at the Lexington State Fair. He then pursued a professional career in music. His music career began when he joined Zack Whyte’s band, Chocolate Beau Brummels, in Ohio in 1928.
In 1931 he moved to New York and then toured as an accompanist for the comedian "Stepin'" Fetchit. Later he toured with singers Adelaide Hall and Ethel Waters and recorded as a freelancer with pianist and conductor Clarence Williams (1930 – 1933). In the spring of 1934 he joined Willie Lewis' orchestra with whom he travelled to Europe where he remained from 1934 to 1938, working with and outside Lewis' orchestra, also touring with Louis Armstrong.
He also conducted his own orchestra in Egypt, accompanying the singer Arita Day in early 1935. He left Willie Lewis for good in 1938 and worked with several former members of this orchestra, such as trumpeter Bill Coleman and saxo-clarinetist Joe Hayman, under the name "Harlem Rhythmakers".
Returning to the U.S.A. in the spring of 1940, he formed his own trio and toured with "Stepin'" Fetchit in the fall of 1940. Throughout the forties and fifties, he led his trio in many residencies in New York: "The Blue Angel", "The Blue Ribbon", the "Bobili Club", etc. He also had a weekly radio show for seven years on C.B.S. Radio. He recorded on both American and French labels as a soloist and accompanist for Ethel Waters and Mildred Bailey. He also toured with comedian Stepin Fetchit and trumpeter Louis Armstrong. He played “Ernie” in radio series Casey, Crime Photographer (1942-51).
He recorded with a trio in New York City for nine years, appeared regularly on radio, series of music labels that included Columbia, and Musicraft. In October 1959, Chittison was employed as the resident pianist at the Red Garter bar in the Lenox Hotel in Boston. In an interview with John McLellan in March 1960, he noted that “Some clubs will spend $150,000 on decorations, and then they want to put in a $20 piano. They were going to put a spinet in here, but I asked them if they’d have their cook work on a two-burner stove. They got the point. And I got my piano.” He must have been persuasive, because that piano was a Mason & Hamlin concert grand.
Chittison was still working Boston lounges in spring 1961, but later that year he returned to New York, and a few years after that he moved to Cleveland.
He died at the Evangelical Deaconess Hospital of lung cancer, in March 1967 at age 58.His funeral service was held five days later at the J.W. Willis Funeral Home, in Cleveland, and he was interred in the Highland Park Cemetery.
(Edited from Wikipedia & Findagrave)
Here’s Herman Chittison with Cab Calloway in this short video clip