Occupation(s) Drummer Role Drummer Instruments Drums Genres Jazz | Years active 1920s–1970s Children Sonny Payne Name Chris Columbus | |
Birth name Joseph Christopher Columbus Morris Also known as Crazy Chris Columbo, Joe Morris Born June 17, 1902
Greenville, North Carolina, United States ( 1902-06-17 ) Died August 20, 2002, New Jersey, United States Associated acts Wild Bill Davis, Duke Ellington, Al Grey Similar People Wild Bill Davis, Sonny Payne, Louis Jordan, Duke Ellington, Bill Doggett | ||
Joseph Christopher Columbus Morris (June 17, 1902 – August 20, 2002), better known as Crazy Chris Columbo, was an American jazz drummer. He was sometimes credited as Joe Morris on record, though he is no relation to free jazz guitarist Joe Morris or trumpeter Joe Morris.
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Career
Columbus was active as a jazz musician from the 1920s into the 1970s, and was the father of Sonny Payne. He led his own band from the 1930s into the late 1940s, holding a residency at the Savoy Ballroom for a period. After the middle of the 1940s he drummed behind Louis Jordan, remaining with him until 1952. In the mid-to-late 1950s, Columbus backed Wild Bill Davis's organ combo, and he recorded with Duke Ellington in 1967. He worked again as a leader in the 1970s, in addition to doing tours of Europe with Davis. While in France he played with Floyd Smith, Al Grey, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Buddy Tate, and Milt Buckner.
Prior to a stroke which partially paralyzed him in 1993, Columbo was the oldest working musician in Atlantic City.
Columbo got his first professional gig playing with Fletcher Henderson in 1921. Between the 1920s and the 1960s, he played at most of the city's nightclubs, and led the Club Harlem orchestra for 34 years until 1978, when the club shut its doors. Thereafter, Columbo's band went on to perform at practically every Atlantic City casino hotel. At the time of his stroke, he was playing regularly at the Showboat.
Columbo worked, recorded, and toured with such luminaries as Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Jordan, Louis Armstrong, Wild Bill Davis, and Ella Fitzgerald. Columbo did an album on the Strand label called Jazz: Re-Discovering Old Favorites by the Chris Columbo Quintette [sic] including a version of "Summertime" featuring organist Johnny "Hammond" Smith. This record (with flip side an uptempo minor blues called "Minerology" [sic]) was fairly successful on radio in the early 1960s. Columbo flipped his sticks in the air, bounced them off the floor and often leaped from a motorcycle seat which was his drum throne. His son was the Count Basie Orchestra drummer Sonny Payne. Columbo also appeared in the 1945 film It Happened In Harlem, based on the Harlem nightclub Smalls Paradise, and the 1947 film Look Out Sister.
Family
Chris is survived by two daughters, Yvette Mathison and JoAnn Morris, grand daughters Sheril Plunkett and Tana Lee, and great grand-children Dylan Plunkett, Kacie Mae Plunkett and Chance Lee.
Death
Columbo suffered a stroke in 1993 and died in 2002; he was 100 years old. To recognize his contributions to the history and music of Atlantic City, a section of Kentucky Avenue, home of Club Harlem, was renamed Chris Columbo Lane in 2005.