Vance Dixon merits attention for dubbing one ensemble Dixon's Jazz Maniacs and another Vance Dixon and His Pencils during the 1930s music scene. The reedman and vocalist proved versatile enough to deliver alto saxophone or clarinet solos and to launch into vocals whenever audiences demanded them. His drive to helm ensembles, paired with arranging and directing abilities, already opened doors early in his path.
Dixon stepped down in 1925 as music director of Lois Deppe's Sereneaders to enter the Sammy Stewart band in Chicago. That prior post had stretched across “many years,” biographer John Chilton noted, possibly beginning while Dixon was still a teenager. Additional Chicago work included stints with Clarence Jones in 1928 and Erskine Tate in 1930. He formed his own units at the decade’s start, yet those leadership years proved brief. From 1933 onward he also appeared with a house band at Brooklyn’s Casa Mia club that featured banjoist Ikey Robinson. The reedman and singer’s final documented collaboration of consequence came in 1936 alongside trumpeter June Clark. After that point the record of Vance Dixon ceases; he is presumed to have died, though neither the date nor the location has surfaced.
