Reginald Foresythe
b. 28 May 1907, London, England, d. 28 December 1958. Son of a Yoruba (Nigerian) barrister and English mother, Foresythe received a public school education as well as studying piano and composition. American singer Walter Richardson, whom he accompanied in Australia, encouraged him to go to the USA. There he scored the D.W. Griffith film ABRAHAM LINCOLN and played with Paul Howard's Quality Seranaders, who recorded two of his compositions. In Chicago, he wrote for trumpeter Wild Bill Davison and pianist Earl Hines, his Deep Forest becoming Hines's signature tune. He returned to London to lead a revolutionary 10-piece band in which two clarinets and a bassoon replaced the brass section. ‘In my band each instrument has its own part to play in the rhythm,’ he said, thereby anticipating a later view of jazz although he himself was not really a jazz artist. Back in the USA he guested with Paul Whiteman, who recorded his dramatic SOUTHERN HOLIDAY (A PHANTASY OF NEGRO MOODS), the string writing far in advance of anything then current. In 1935 he recorded four compositions with a band that included Benny Goodman, John Kirby and Gene Krupa, one piece being the oft-recorded Dodging A Divorcee. With his New Music he played London's exclusive 400 Club, then broadcast as a piano soloist and duettist. His work was played and recorded by a variety of others, including Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Henry Hall and Lew Stone. Foresythe, who was of mixed race, used his dignified bearing and upper-class British accent to achieve some measure of acceptance in otherwise segregated establishments. His writing, described variously as ‘enigmatic’, ‘singular’ and ‘quirky’ sat awkwardly amongst much of what passed for jazz in the UK dance band scene between the wars. In retrospect this can be seen as a consequence of his being ahead of his time. After World War II, during which he served in the Royal Air Force, he accompanied Elizabeth Welch and played in Italy before leading bands in obscure, English west country hotels. At the time of his death, which followed a fall downstairs, he was working as a solo pianist in small drinking clubs in London's Soho and Kensington, no longer causing a sensation with the witty compositions and highly individual writing that had created a permanent impact on his pre-war jazz contemporaries.