Little Brother Montgomery (April 18, 1906* – September 6, 1985) was an American jazz, boogie-woogie and blues pianist and singer. Largely self-taught, Montgomery was an important blues pianist with an original style. He was also versatile, working in jazz bands, including larger ensembles that used written arrangements. He did not read music but learned band routines by ear.
Eurreal Wilford "Little Brother" Montgomery was born in Kentwood, Louisiana, United States, a sawmill town near the Mississippi border, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, where he spent much of his childhood. Both his parents were of African-American and Creek Indian ancestry. As a child he looked like his father, Harper Montgomery, and was called Little Brother Harper. The name evolved into Little Brother Montgomery, and the nickname stuck. He started playing piano at the age of four, and by age 11 he left home for four years and played at barrelhouses in Louisiana. His main musical influence was Jelly Roll Morton, who used to visit the Montgomery household.
Early in his career he performed at African-American lumber and turpentine camps in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. He then played with the bands of Clarence Desdunes and Buddy Petit. He lived in Chicago from 1928 to 1931, regularly playing at rent parties and Chicago was where he made his first recordings in 1930 for Paramount. From 1931 through 1938, he led a jazz ensemble, the Southland Troubadours, in Jackson, Mississippi (also called the Collegiate Ramblers), that played in ballrooms throughout the South. They never recorded, but as a solo pianist or with only one accompanist, Montgomery cut twenty-two blues sides, all released on singles on the Bluebird label, in 1935-36, including the original versions of his standards “Shreveport Farewell” and “The First Time I Met the Blues.”
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Montgomery, hailed in Down Beat magazine in 1940 as “the greatest piano man that ever invaded Dixie,” spent time in Yazoo City, Hattiesburg, and Beaumont, Texas, before permanently settling in Chicago in 1942. His graceful New Orleans-style swing and uncommonly wide repertoire that encompassed blues, boogie-woogie, ragtime, popular songs, and jazz standards, made him a popular pianist in traditional jazz groups. In 1948 he played in Kid Ory’s Dixieland band at Carnegie Hall. He also accompanied classic blues singer Edith Wilson, but he appeared most often as a solo performer or leader of his own groups.
Otis Rush benefited from his sensitive accompaniment on several of his 1957-1958 Cobra dates, while Buddy Guy recruited him for similar duties when he nailed Montgomery's "First Time I Met the Blues" in a supercharged revival for Chess in 1960. That same year, Montgomery cut a fine album for Bluesville with guitarist Lafayette "Thing" Thomas that remains one of his most satisfying sets.
Montgomery toured Europe several times in the 1960s and recorded some of his albums there. He appeared at many blues and folk festivals during the following decade and was considered a living legend, a link to the early days of blues in New Orleans. Among his original compositions are "Shreveport Farewell", "Farrish Street Jive", and "Vicksburg Blues". His instrumental "Crescent City Blues" served as the basis for a song of the same name by Gordon Jenkins, which in turn was adapted by Johnny Cash as "Folsom Prison Blues."
In 1968, Montgomery contributed to two albums by Spanky and Our Gang, Like to Get to Know You and Anything You Choose b/w Without Rhyme or Reason. His fame grew in the 1960s, and he continued to make many recordings, some of them on his own record label, FM Records, which he formed in 1969 (FM stood for Floberg Montgomery, Floberg being the maiden name of his wife).
In 1975, Folkways issued an album of Monrtgomery’s “Church Songs”, which enhanced his reputation for turning his hand and voice to many styles. This brought his output of albums to over 30. He gave many interviews about his life in the Blues and his endless stream of stories made him a one-man-repository of Blues history, as his remarkable memory gave us insights into the story of the Blues from it’s origins into the digital age.
Montgomery died on September 6, 1985, in Champaign, Illinois, and was interred in the Oak Woods Cemetery. In 2013 he was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
(Edited from Wikipedia, All Music, Britannica, All About The Blues Music.com & Mississippi Blues Trail) (*birth year possibly a year or two later according to some documents)