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David Boggs says...
On 09/14/10
at 02:45 PM
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There are two other notable former residents of Piedmont:
(1) Leslie Thrasher, one of the greatest magazine and advertising illustrators of all time, was born in Piedmont in 1889. He produced covers for Liberty and the Saturday Evening Post, and provided advertisement illustrations for periodicals such as Collier’s, Red Book, Popular Magazine and Literary Digest. Some of his original artwork can fetch up to $100,000 at auctions.
(2) Don Redman, the “Little Giant of Jazz”, was born in Piedmont in 1900. His career began in 1923 with Fletcher Henderson at New York’s famous Club Alabam. He then became arranger, saxophonist and vocalist with one of the nation’s top groups, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, from 1927-31. He arranged music for Harry James, Jimmy Dorsey, Paul Whiteman, Charlie Barnet and Jimmie Lunceford in the 1930s and 40s. From 1951 until his death in 1964, he was music director for Pearl Bailey. Leonard Feather, in his Encyclopedia of Jazz, called Redman the “first composer-arranger of any consequence in the history of jazz; the first musician with both the inspiration and the academic knowledge for this branch of music.”
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