Herb Morand

Herb Morand emerged as a skilled New Orleans-style trumpeter whose career gained its widest exposure through his central role in the Harlem Hamfats across the 1930s. After first encountering King Oliver’s playing, he took up the trumpet at age eleven. One of his earliest significant engagements came when he toured the South alongside Nat Towles. Following his relocation to New York in the mid-1920s, he performed with his stepsister Lizzie Miles and appeared in Cliff Jackson’s ensemble. Returning to New Orleans, Morand fronted his own unit and performed with the renowned but unrecorded Chris Kelly. He next moved to Chicago, where he worked on the local scene and cut sides with the Beale Street Washboard Band, a quartet featuring Johnny Dodds, in 1929. Between 1935 and 1938 Morand served as the Harlem Hamfats’ principal soloist; the band blended swing, New Orleans-style ensemble jazz, blues, jive, and country music, the latter element strengthened by Charlie McCoy’s prominent mandolin work. After settling back in New Orleans in 1941, he again led his own band and joined George Lewis’ group from 1948 to 1950, remaining until health issues prompted his retirement. Beyond the extensive sessions he made with the Hamfats in 1936–1938 and those recorded with Lewis, Morand cut a handful of titles as a leader for the American Music label in 1949–50.